Book Review: 'Taboo/The Third Awokening' by Eric Kaufmann
Kaufmann provides some useful insights, but after analysing the chilling leviathan of minority-rights fundamentalism, gives too many concessions to it.
It is incredibly frustrating when a book you’ve been anticipating for over a year comes out in the US and Canada, yet you have to wait over TWO MONTHS for it to arrive in your country, under a different name for some bizarre reason. In the US and Canada, this book is called ‘The Third Awokening’ whereas in Britain it is called ‘Taboo’. Kindle’s region codes are a nightmare.
is an amazing guy, who I actually had the privilege of meeting at the 2023 Battle of Ideas conference. Virtually everybody who’s met the man has only had good things to say about him, always emphasising how he makes time for everyone who appreciates and wants to ask him questions about his work, no matter if they are ‘important’ or not.After meeting him, and previously knowing him from his short-form essays and news reports, I bought and read his book ‘Whiteshift’, which was a major influence on me to think more seriously about demographics, before having been an ‘anti-Woke first’ type person. His style of writing was palatable enough for me, as somebody who wasn’t completely on the ethno-nationalist side but interested in the arguments, that it served as the perfect stepping stone for me to access more bold critiques of mass replacement immigration.
‘Taboo’ (I will use the British name for the release from this point on) is aimed at a similar audience to ‘Whiteshift’, aka people who are not entirely in our sphere but are able to consider the ideas when communicated in a specific way. Kaufmann has a very dispassionate look at various issues that makes the blood boil of people like me (Gen Z Wokeness), but yet this is why he is the ideal communicator.
As in ‘Whiteshift’, ‘Taboo’ is filled with hard, quantitive, and empirical analysis, bringing his specialism to the discourse, which is quantitive political science and social science. Often boasting of being ‘one of a tiny minority of conservative social scientists’, he is an enormous asset to those opposing the Woke regime. Like so many other people, he has endured incredible hardship for it, which he talks about in the introduction of this book.
The difference in reading Whiteshift and reading Taboo for me was my level of ‘red-pill’. When I started reading Whiteshift last year I wasn’t quite ‘demographic conscious’ and accepted various normie views on race, to which Kaufmann was non-threatening enough to get me to reconsider my previous viewpoints. However, I was anti-Woke for longer than I was a White advocate, and so this book comes off to me as a little too ‘nice’ and ‘soft’, especially when he spends a good portion of the book saying how ‘Gen Z will be Woke forever’ which sets me off in despair and rage. As a Zoomer, especially one who grew up in the promise of the anti-SJW movement and the promise of the ‘Fourth Turning’, Gen Z Wokeness always feels like an enormous betrayal from my cohort.
When I met Mr. Kaufmann I jokingly said ‘when I read your columns on UnHerd, I know it’s going to be bad news’, referencing his various polls about Gen Z Wokeness, to which he laughed because he’s a fun and chilled out guy, and after which we had a fantastic conversation at the Battle of Ideas afterparty. I wonder if Kaufmann reading this will be able to work out who I am.
But in no way is Kaufmann a ‘black-piller’, though his explanations of the challenge we face touch a specific nerve with me. He also provides a roadmap to what we can do about Woke hegemony, which is also explained in a lecture you can find here on YouTube that covers most of his points throughout the book (though I suggest still buying and reading the book.) I have been greatly influenced by some of his ideas, like a ‘Federalist Society for the Bureaucracy’, and an ‘NRA for the Culture War’. With both Kaufmann and
talking about this (1), I want to try and make it happen and am prepared to make it a full-time job, though there would be details needing to be worked out that I will discuss throughout this review.Some of Kaufmann’s solutions are a little too indulgent of the pathology he masterfully demonstrates throughout the book, and a little too squeamish about departing too far from the ‘Civil Rights Consensus’. However, I do understand (to a point), that Taboo is not necessarily intended for somebody like me who is fully converted, but more somebody who is Intellectual Dark Web (IDW)-leaning who is interested in exploring more radical ideas.
Crossing this divide between preaching to the converting and rallying the converted is a delicate balance, and I think Kaufmann did an impressive job, definitely showing a clear perspective compared to his ‘view from nowhere’ analysis in Whiteshift (which worked for me at the time of reading). However, there are some issues where, even when being forgiving, I still find him too soft.
In this review, I will explain Kaufmann’s core thesis and how it differs from the Postliberal perspective, Richard Hanania/Christopher Caldwell ‘legal Wokeness’ perspective and the
(2) and James Lindsay ‘organised cultural takeover’ perspective. I will then also discuss some of the points he emphasises in his quantitive data analysis; and then summarise his solutions. Like in my review of Hanania’s ‘The Origins of Woke’ I will then talk about the points where I agreed and where I disagreed. My conclusion will be that I think this book is a valuable contribution to the discourse, though it is aimed at people a little bit less down the pipeline than people who read Anglofuturist Magazine are, and sometimes falls into Boomer Truth-narrative traps.Kaufmann’s Explanation of Wokeness
Kaufmann presents his narrative as significantly different from the three main schools of thought in explaining the Origins of Wokeness. 1) the ‘organised cultural takeover’ narrative, put forward by people like James Lindsay and Chris Rufo, of a ‘Long March Through the Institutions’ by ‘Cultural Marxists’, 2) the ‘legal evolution’ narrative put forward by Christopher Caldwell and Richard Hanania, which traces Wokeness back to needing to comply with Civil Rights law, either the parts of the 1964 act itself (Caldwell, Title II and VII) or later amendments and court rulings expanding the act (Hanania), and 3) the Postliberal/National Conservative narrative by Patrick Deneen and Yoram Hazony respectively, who trace Wokeness back to a Social Contract theory of liberalism.
Kaufmann’s view of Wokeness (which he refers to as ‘cultural socialism’ of equal outcomes between non-economic identity groups, a parallel to economic socialism’s equal outcomes between economic groups) is that it emerged bottom up as an ‘instinct’ of ‘Minorities Good, Majorities Bad’. He uses Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory throughout the book to analyse it as a cultural diffusion where care/harm became the overwhelmingly predominant moral foundation.
This started with race, beginning in the 1950s and accelerating in the 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement. He provides a quote from a newspaper article from Susan Sontag which sounds eerily contemporary, to demonstrate that on the elite level, minoritarian instincts were well established in America by the 1960s. He rightly points out that all of the other Woke movements, like feminism and LGBT, were later added to the initial taboo about race, due to weaponizing the language of the Civil Rights Movement and hoping to harness what he calls the ‘identitarian magic’.
Kaufmann also points out that Wokeness emerged predominantly through the anti-communist liberal left, not the Marxist left, which distinguishes his theory from that of Chris Rufo, who focuses on a small band of (Neo-)Marxist radicals. For Kaufmann, one can be a ‘cultural socialist’ without being an economic socialist, and indeed for many of these left-liberals their cultural socialism was to compensate for their lack of economic socialism. However, whilst communism’s horrors made economic socialism discredited, there was no such immunity in Western culture for cultural socialism, so it’s influence grew.
Continuing themes he touched on in Whiteshift, he also talks about the early 20th century developments which would later become Wokeism, focusing on Randolph Bourne’s promotion of ‘Asymmetric Multiculturalism’ that valourised minorities whilst condemning WASP culture as ‘square’. This later evolved into a philosophy of ‘Left-Modernism’, which combined egalitarianism with an enthusiasm for the experimental and avant-garde (though the word ‘modernism’ is used in a different sense to how I would use it).
He talks about the ‘holy trinity’ of race, sex, and gender, where all Woke ‘cultural socialism’ bases itself on a core metric of those. There are other attributes like intelligence and beauty that are not (yet) part of Woke, but it’s only race and sex/gender (LGBT representation isn’t yet as dominant) where equal group outcomes demanded across society. Therefore, the Woke ‘cultural socialism’ is based around the ‘holy trinity’.
To counter Hanania and Caldwell’s theories of ‘Wokeism as law’, Kaufmann recounts the time when Reagan tried to soften diversity quotas and affirmative action, but corporations themselves started a campaign for them to be reinstated. Failing this, most continued with them even though they were no longer (for a short while) required to do so. This shows that elites genuinely believed in the ideals of Wokeness, and a bit like how a moderate Muslim fails to meaningfully respond to an Islamist due to them believing in the same book, for the moderate liberal, it is difficult to resist a Woke drift because they share the same fundamental values, and are mortified by the fact they might not be living up to their own principles, which are based on the care/harm moral foundation.
Kaufmann dismisses the idea that there is still a ‘silent majority’ of people who are with us, and emphasises how hard it will be to fundamentally re-orient this care/harm moral foundation and the ‘Minorities Good, Majorities Bad’ paradigm. I think when he says this, it is aimed at the small group of Gen Xer IDW-types who still believe, despite everything, that the pendulum will just naturally swing. It’s depressing to re-read it, Hanania’s analysis of just repealing a few laws sounds nicer than reversing a cultural takeover that seems to have unstoppable momentum, with deep roots in the Western psyche. But some people unfortunately still need to be reminded of the dire situation we are in.
Kaufmann’s Data Analysis
Kaufmann’s specialism is political science and survey data, and he uses quantative means to backup his points. Sources he mentions include newspapers and Google searches of certain key words, like ‘racism’. He essentially echoes my point about the Reagan Era in the US being ‘three steps forward, one step back’ for the cultural left, describing it as a ‘levelling-off effect’, and which risks happening again if we are overly complacent and prematurely declare Woke as ‘on the way out’.
This data is not aimed at the already converted, but people who think that ‘the backlash is finally here’. He provides depressing evidence for his commonly repeated claims of ‘Gen Z are Woke’, and ‘Wokeness is going mainstream’.
Kaufmann’s Solutions
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Despite presenting some gut-wrenching data, Kaufmann is not a black-piller because he provide detailed solutions. Not all of them land, but I highly respect him for providing a positive call to arms at the end and at least ‘trying’ to think of solutions, something I felt was deeply lacking in
’s book ‘The Total State’.This is the perfect balance, the understanding of how damning the situation is, and also what we can do about it. This list of solutions was also on his YouTube lecture, and I have been hugely inspired by many of them, that I will discuss when I list the strengths of the book.
The solutions are:
Legal free speech, including preventing the firing of people for their political views.
Neutral Institutions, with issues that have less than 40% of the public agreeing, or where there is a partisan divide, not uncritically endorsed.
Equivalent action to protect ‘viewpoint discrimination’ compared to racial discrimination.
Open public bodies up to political appointments.
A Federalist Society for the bureaucracy
NRA for the culture war.
Christian Coalition for Secular Culture, he proposes that the secular anti-Woke movement needs to be as organised and as united as the Christian Right.
Austrian School for Culture
Contextualisation of Past and Present - Schools need to teach that there are crimes against humanity on the far-left as well as the far-right.
Retain and Explain - Would give context to statues that are ‘problematic’.
Vivid Political Communications - Effective meme-like talking points.
From Taboos to Jurisprudence: ‘graduated penalties’ based on frequency and severity of the offence.
Before I do a deeper analysis, I will say that I love the ideas of 4, 5, 6, and 11. The others have some good points but fall short on a variety of grounds, of which I will explain.
Strengths of the Book
This book has a great amount of strengths.
Accessible to a Broad Range of Readers
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One of the best things about Kaufmann is that he is accessible to both Intellectual Dark Web/classical liberal types AND more radical people. In many ways, he serves as a bridge from the former to the latter, able to articulate some really quite based ideas to an audience that wouldn’t usually be receptive to them due to his humility and good vibes.
Eric Kaufmann gives a little bit of something to each of his demographics. He uses some fairly strong language to describe Wokeism, rightfully describing it as a ‘virus’, and praises Project 2025. Many of his positions on replacing bureaucracies and opening up the courts to political appointments are quite radical.
But he does also cover his flank by saying ‘the Civil Rights Movement was justified’ and talking about how minority rights (in moderation) are a virtue. Kaufmann is a bridge between different groups, his language mutually intelligible to both the IDW and the more radical anti-Woke tendencies.
This is a rhetorical skill. Whilst sometimes I get a little frustrated at the fact Kaufmann needs to constantly signal that he’s not a ‘bigot’ by parroting out regime-approved talking points about the importance of a basic level of minoritarian-liberalism and the Civil Rights Regime, I understand that for many people, not including those counter-signals would mean they aren’t willing to give him a hearing. As I said, as somebody who was less red-pilled about demographics until reading his book Whiteshift, this analytical balance and presentation of moderation can be useful at persuading people.
Therefore, with a recognition that he is that ‘bridge’, I am quite forgiving about his ‘rhetorical flowers’ in emphasising that a certain amount of minority rights are good, and condemning Jim Crow and open racism. Even the word ‘cultural socialism’, whilst many people have mocked it, is good at getting the ear of boomer conservatives still in a Cold War-mindset to understand the nature of the Woke threat in a language they understand.
Doesn’t Sugarcoat or Black-Pill
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Again, knowing his audience, he feels it’s necessary to give them a jolt to the severity of the situation we find ourselves in.
Contrary to the endless black-pilling of the Zoomer Right that is terminally online, the spaces which Kaufmann inhabits, classical liberal, primarily Gen X, cultural libertarians who bemoan ‘the new puritans’, genuinely think that the puritanism of the Woke will put enough people off and the ‘pendulum will swing’.
People like Andrew Doyle are very popular in the British ‘anti-Woke’ space. Doyle and people like him really annoy me because they are so out of touch with the severity of the situation, thinking calling the Woke ‘the new puritans’ and creating a caricature of a Woke person (Titania McGrath) is going to do anything.
Unfortunately, persuasion and mockery will not work. The anti-SJW movement failed, Wokeness was far more powerful at the end of the 2010s than it was at the start despite the mockery and ridicule. As Kaufmann notes throughout the book, political correctness was mocked since the 1990s, and as early as the 1990s it was said to be ‘on it’s way out’, and yet it grew ever stronger. Andrew Doyle is not funny, because the things he’s laughing about simply aren’t funny anymore, and elements of his worldview allowed it to happen.
Kaufmann points to the mistake people make of one successful boycott, a slight toning down of Pride Month, and the lack of intensity of BLM compared to the Summer of Floyd, to give some examples, allowing them the ‘cope’ to seem like the ‘tide is turning’. But it isn’t, those previous Woke victories are simply solidified, as fewer people question them.
But we can’t begin to fight back until we understand ‘where we are’, and whilst us online may be awash with doom-mongering, in spaces like Spiked Online, Battle of Ideas, Triggernometry, and various Conservative Inc. institutions, that subscribe to an Intellectual Dark Web worldview of ‘puritanism’ always promoting backlash, the sense of dread isn’t there, they genuinely think that if they just mock Wokeness enough, it will go away. Whilst again, I didn’t enjoy being reminded of this, some people still need to hear it.
Unlike people like
, , and to a lesser extent Auron MacIntyre however, and like Chris Rufo, Eric Kaufmann DOES provide a positive vision of what we can do about it. He paints a dire picture, but then provides a roadmap.It’s very important to provide a mixture of negativity and sense of urgency, but also hope and a call to arms. I used to think of Eric Kaufmann as frustratingly black-pilled, so I was highly anticipating this book for his solutions. And unlike people such as Auron MacIntyre, he does not disappoint.
Rich Historical Ideological Analysis
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Kaufmann is also very good at presenting a narrative. He carefully traces how the race taboo ended up consuming society, analysing the various trends and schools of thought. In his narrative, it came from early 20th century Protestant Radicals adhering to the ‘Social Gospel’, and a gravitation towards the Avant-Garde, a combination he calls ‘left-modernism’.
Looking at the ‘holy trinity’ of characteristics, race, sex, and gender, he presents a nuanced perspective of which characteristics the Woke view as sacred. It’s cultural socialism, (belief in equal group outcomes) does not (yet) cover beauty or intelligence, it is instead the matrix of the holy trinity that subordinates everything else. For instance, sex and gender can be interchanged with transgenderism, but race never can be, hence ‘transracialism’ has not been accepted by Wokeism.
The ‘modernism’ part of left-modernism became subordinated to the ‘cultural left’ egalitarian aspect of it. Kaufmann theorises that this was because it allowed those same intellectuals to present their hatred for conformity as a moral crusade.
It wasn’t ‘Cultural Marxism’ that created Wokeism, but rather predominantly the anti-communist left. Kaufmann sees Herbert Marcuse as the only Frankfurt School figure that could plausibly be associated with Wokeism. Instead of coming from Marxism, it was instead promoted as an ‘alternative’ to complete economic egalitarianism, with Lyndon B. Johnson making his Howard University speech in 1965 endorsing racial quotas, and Susan Sontag’s writing her eerily contemporary sounding tirade against Whiteness in Partisan Review, something echoed by some (small and dwindling in number) anti-Woke Marxists.
He points out that it was exposure with the national liberation movements of the post-war period that allowed a diffusion of culturally left-wing (cultural socialist) ideas with the Old Marxist Left. The former had not fetishized minorities, being a majoritarian rather than minoritarian creed (working many vs privileged few) vs (Minorities Good, Majorities Bad.) The reason why the post-war left intelligentsia looked to these national liberation movements was that due to the post-war economic boom, the working-class had become less revolutionary, creating a deep disappointment and pessimism in left-wing intellectuals about the revolutionary potential of the White working-class. And after the focus on national liberation and African-American Civil Rights had paid such dividends, other groups wanted to exploit the ‘identitarian magic’ to get the same sympathetic ear.
This is a very interesting, and much needed, perspective. The ‘Cultural Marxism’ angle is idiotic, as Wokeism has become so deeply embedded into the capitalist establishment, and never could have gotten as far as it got through an organised conspiracy alone. Kaufmann is good at emphasising that the reason why Wokeism was so successful was because it played into sentiments, the care/harm principle, that mainstream liberals already agreed with.
Quantitative Evidence
The evidence that Kaufmann provides is very impressive, with the book, like Whiteshift, filled to the brim with survey data. If you already are sold on the message, this isn’t particularly interesting, but for policymakers and people on the fence, Kaufmann always provides strong evidence to back up his points, using a variety of metrics to measure the spread of Wokeism.
If Hanania’s ‘The Origins of Woke’ was masterful at analysing legislation, Kaufmann’s book is masterful at polling, statistical, and survey data. He truly is a ‘political scientist’ in the sense of actually number-crunching and doing quantiative studies.
In my university course we had to do a statistics module and I hated it, but people like Kaufmann are proof of just how important it is and how valuable it can be. Bad news is unfortunately still necessary to hear.
I don’t have a mindless optimism, I do appreciate well-researched analysis even if it’s not what I want to hear. Understanding the situation right now is the first step to changing it. It was Sam Francis who remarked that only by acknowledging how much we lost, can we start to win.
Counter-Elite Institutions and Elite Replacement
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We’ll now get onto some of the solutions that Kaufmann offers at the end of the book, some of which are absolutely terrific and I want to devote my life to try and make happen. Point 6 (open up political appointments) and Point 7 (a Federalist Society for the bureaucracy) are excellent and I have advocated for on numerous occasions.
Unlike the Yarvinite doomers who talk about Elite Theory to say ‘politics is pointless’, Kaufmann points to where the conservative movement has been successful in the past. In his view and many other’s, the most successful conservative ‘counter-elite’ institution is the Federalist Society. Conservatives knew from the very beginning they were outnumbered in the legal profession, but they were able to form a vanguard of likeminded people who became the go-to personnel for conservative politicians. The Federalist Society shows that being a minority does not have to be a disadvantage, a conservative lawyer has a huge amount of opportunities because they are both rare and there is a conservative legal movement set up.
Kaufmann both promotes the equivalent of the Federalist Society for Britain, advocating the opening up of the legal profession to more political appointments (that he is uncomfortable with but concedes is the only way to break Woke control), and a ‘Federalist Society for the Bureaucracy’ across the Anglosphere. He praises Project 2025 as a move in that direction, but there is still nowhere near enough trained professions to hold all these posts. Project 2025 would only be able to touch the tip of the iceberg, with very little influence on what will be middle-management who are deeply indoctrinated into Woke ideology. In Britain, we have no counter-elite personnel organisation of any kind, which would be vital if we are to replace Woke Civil servants.
I started advocating for this, partially inspired by some of Kaufmann’s points in his lecture, in this article. The British Right definitely needs to create it’s own personnel organisation in the hopes of replicating it’s American counterpart, and the American scene needs to keep doing what they’re doing and expand, ensuring that all employees are vetted to oppose Wokeism (no more Neocons or ‘Log Cabin Republicans’).
Since I wrote my article, there has been talk of the New Culture Forum co-ordinating various Tufton Street think-tanks to create this ‘Federalist Society for the bureaucracy’ in Britain, which one hopes will amount to something. Of course, the situation in Britain is different from in the United States, with the permanent Civil Service serving as a bedrock of institutional Wokeism (as both Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch saw firsthand), so Civil Service Reform is something which needs to be advocated.
Kaufmann absolutely hits the nail on the head here. In order for Wokeism to be institutionally attacked, it is vital that a ‘counter-elite’ in various government functions of the government is able to take hold. I feel I expand on Kaufmann’s points here with my article on Türkiye and the ‘Gulen Movement’, which should serve as a model.
Political Advocacy Groups
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Another fantastic idea from Kaufmann, one that Hanania also talks about in ‘The Origins of Woke’, is to create an anti-Woke equivalent of single-issue groups like the National Rifle Association or the pro-life movement. This would be a scorecard system, where individual politicians would be evaluated based on how they’ve voted.
The way that the GOP was able to become a purely pro-life and pro-gun party was a result of these lobbies, where GOP candidates that did not adhere to their line lost their seats. Whilst in Britain this will be harder as we don’t have primaries, de-selection attempts and ‘selective spoilage’ could be with the correct organisation.
I am glad that Kaufmann has repeated Hanania’s points on this, as Kaufmann is a far more likable and presentable figure. I think the time for pitching this idea has passed, and it’s time to really try and make it happen. Eric Kaufmann has a unique opportunity to help co-ordinate this, or at least help secure funding. I would be very happy to take the plunge and actually start building the ‘anti-Woke NRA’ he suggests. He also informed me of 1792 Exchange, a measure of corporate Wokeness, which is worth looking into.
Weaknesses of the Book
Lack of Focus on WW2 and Holocaust
So, the book’s central thesis is that race was the original Woke taboo, with the other Woke causes around gender and sexuality being an evolution of the original taboo of race. It analyses historical movements and social trends to make a convincing case that a narrative of ‘Minorities Good, Majorities Bad’ led to a bottom-up cultural diffusion, playing on the care/harm principle that came to supersede all others.
But WHY was race such a taboo in the immediate post-war period? Mention of the narrative of WWII and the Holocaust is lacking in this book, particularly as it is the ideological narrative that underpins so many others. It is only mentioned around 3 times, when it should be a core theme exploring why minority rights came to be seen as so sacred.
He does talk about bringing historical balance in education by wanting communist atrocities to also be talked about, but here he contradicts himself. Earlier in the book, he says that whilst the West had a ‘resistance’ to economically left-wing ideas due to the horrors of communism, it had no such resistance to cultural leftism.
I am therefore not sure if still teaching WWII the same way, but providing more teaching around communist authoritarianism, would do much good. As Kaufmann says, most of Woke is not a communist movement, and it is perfectly possible to be an anti-Marxist and be Woke, the liberals of Eastern Europe are very much of this persuasion. Whilst economic leftism and cultural leftism share the egalitarianism aspect, they differ both in their approach to majorities vs minorities and their attitudes towards individualism. The economic left champions the working majority against a minority of capitalists, whereas the cultural left champions the persecuted minority. The economic left is broadly anti-individualist, whereas the cultural left is thoroughly individualist (except when it contradicts the ‘holy trinity’), particularly on transgenderism.
Therefore, as Kaufmann spends a great deal of the book correctly pointing out how Wokeism isn’t Marxism, and came from often explicitly anti-communist left-wingers like Lyndon B. Johnson, simply teaching ‘balance’ between Nazism and communism I do not believe will be effective.
Boomer Narrative of History
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The above point is a demonstration of how Kaufmann is very much tied into a ‘Boomer Narrative of History’. The Nazis are seen as the ultimate evil and the Holocaust the ultimate crime. Occasionally there is a discourse around ‘totalitarianism’, but a lot of ‘Boomer Conservatives’ rationalise their opposition to communism by comparing it to Nazism, and being adamant to convince people Hitler was a National SOCIALIST’.
Particularly for Britain, if the ‘National Myth’ consists of our ‘finest hour’ standing alone against Hitler, it will drift towards a Woke worldview. In terms of the British national interest, WWII was a disaster. We lost the Empire, became an effective colony of the United States, fell behind the rest of the developed world, and permitted mass replacement immigration as Eric Kaufmann so well talks about in ‘Whiteshift’.
More than simply teaching ‘balance’ by ALSO talking about communism, I would say that WWII and the Holocaust need to be de-emphasised. The Holocaust plays a particular role in the story, as the ultimate symbol of minority victimhood.
Is it so necessary to continue to have such emphasis on the Holocaust? It was hardly the only genocide to occur throughout history, as terrible as it was, and this is absolutely not me being a ‘Holocaust Denier’. But what about the Armenian Genocide? What about the ‘retaliatory genocide’ of Germans post-WWII, that ethnically cleansed them from their historic lands, that we don’t call a genocide despite reshaping a large portion of Europe in a historically unprecedented way?
The spectre of Hitler defines the ‘Boomer Truth Regime’, which in turn produces Wokeness. We can only stop this if we change the way we teach WWII, emphasising the German expulsions as well as the Holocaust, and the disproportionate attraction that Jews had towards communism, understanding though not sympathising or justifying why the Nazis were engulfed by paranoia. Ernst Nolte and Pat Buchanan’s readings should become the dominant interpretations.
Kaufmann’s idea to talk about non-Western slavery and atrocities is also good, but then why focus on it at all? Talking about the good things the British Empire did would be a start, though we have to be careful about not reinforcing a liberal view of history, as
has explained.A huge oversight on Kaufmann’s part is his uncritical parroting of the ‘Civil Rights Mythology’. If we accept the idea that the Civil Rights Movement was an unadulterated good, UNTIL 1965 when it suddenly went too far, the Woke will (and have) call us up on it. Because the things we take issue with now, they will always refer back to as ‘you would have opposed Civil Rights’, because many parts of the Civil Rights Movement go against the logic that we preach today.
It’s true that Brown vs Board was a work of judicial activism that had no basis in constitutional history, even amongst the Radical Republican drafters of the 14th Amendment, with even liberal academics like Herbert Weschler and Raoul Berger making this point. Therefore the fact even Originalists are deferential towards Brown is something the ‘Living Constitutionalists’ can always point to, in order to shame those who insist on following the constitution as written.
Rosa Parks wasn’t some brave lone wolf who decided to take a stand, but part of a carefully orchestrated publicity stunt by the NAACP to gain sympathy.
Martin Luther King was a serial adulterer, plagiariser, communist, and didn’t actually believe in his ‘Dream’, using it as a smokescreen to guilt-trip Whites into supporting racial quotas and affirmative action.
These points should be brought up whenever Civil Rights is taught. There’s no need to completely ignore the injustice of Jim Crow, but one must put it in perspective, talking about how it was rooted in the humiliation of the White South after the Civil War, justified concern about Black majority rule morphing into paranoia, and how Blacks were not completely disenfranchised. It should also emphasise that not all Black people even supported integration, it destroying many Black serving businesses and independent institutions.
Kaufmann talks about restoring balance by also talking about communist crimes, even though that contradicts his thesis that Wokeism is distinct from communism. Some ACTUAL balance which might do some good is not demonising anybody who did not support the most extreme version of Civil Rights. This would include the principled positions of Barry Goldwater, and attempts by White Southerners to make ‘separate but equal’ work. George Wallace should be presented fairly, and issues like forced busing should provide appropriate empathy towards White southerners.
However, Kaufmann fully joins in the mainstream narrative of Wallace being a caricature of an aggressive racist who simply loathed Blacks, when this simply isn’t the case.
It is the Civil Rights Narrative that needs real neutrality restored, not the crimes of communism as well as fascism, which already informs Boomer Conservatism.
Effectively, Mr. Kaufmann’s history curriculum is Cold War Neoconservatism. All I’ll say is that it failed the first time. If you genuinely believe in the promises of liberalism, and ‘minority rights good’, Wokeness will simply stretch that out, as Kaufmann correctly talks about throughout the rest of the book.
Appeasing Minoritarian Instincts
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So far I have been quite sympathetic at Kaufmann’s need to cover his flank in order to not completely alienate more moderate readers, and to convince them to give him a hearing.
However, I don’t believe this is purely a procedural ‘going through the motions’, I do believe that Kaufmann genuinely believes in many of the things he says.
He goes above and beyond to talk about the ‘collapse of the Black family’ and the ‘bigotry of low expectations’, always centring minorities to make his case. It’s the classic deferring to minorities that conservatives have done for half a century, where it’s apparently not sufficiently bad that it’s undemocratic, and it discriminates against WHITES. No, according to people like Kaufmann, the problem with Critical Race Theory, racial quotas, and affirmative action are all about how they don’t properly help Blacks.
But of course most Black people and most ‘above average IQ’ people can see right through this. By accepting the taboo on White identity, you have already lost. Despite being understanding towards him on some of his rhetoric in this book, I do believe that these are Kaufmann’s genuine views. He remains at his core fundamentally sympathetic to the idea that minorities should have special privileges and their well-being should be, whilst less than today, still disproportionately considered.
Kaufmann reiterates throughout that all of the Civil Rights Law he agrees with, including the expansions, with such flatly unconstitutional measures justified to him because ‘White supremacy was a problem’. He agrees with the end to free association that took place with Title II and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, emphasising that
To be fair to the progressive reformers, they were often dealing with entrenched networks of racial discrimination, whether in the South or in Northern blue-collar sectors like construction or policing, where ‘White ethnics’ networks favoured jobs for the connected’ (pp. 128 - 129)
So, are Whites not allowed to have ethnic interests, and favour their own group over businesses they founded and operate? Why SHOULD businesses be forced to hire minorities? Ethnic minorities are free to start their own businesses, and should not be denied the right to vote like they were in parts of the Jim Crow South, but can Title VII (dealing with ‘equal employment opportunity’), which created effectively a police state weaponised against White American’s, ever be justified?
On this issue in particular Kaufmann is very weak. He claims to not support disparate impact and affirmative action, but still talks about the importance of ‘reducing barriers’ and ‘promoting minority upliftment’, and does not take issue with the existence of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (and all subsequent expansions).
In order for Wokeness to end, at the very least, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and then all court rulings and legislative expansions of Civil Rights past 1965, must be abolished (and their British equivalents). It is true that it is not JUST fear of getting sued, as the way companies lobbied Reagan for diversity training when the requirements were temporarily loosened, show a cultural diffusion in society towards ‘Minorities Good, Majorities Bad’.
Can Kaufmann Explain and Stomach Unequal Group Outcomes?
As Christopher Caldwell (3) and
talk about, this is behind the reluctance to dismantle affirmative action and racial quotas. Cofnas in particular talks about how, if you accept the idea that all groups of humans have exactly equal capabilities in all areas, and are presented with evidence of unequal group outcomes, those of ‘above average intelligence’ will not be persuaded by the ‘bigotry of low expectations’ that just seem like a cop out.The fact of the matter is that without the race taboo, HBD and Race Realism would be considered settled science. Indeed, James Watson admits it’s true, yet even the person who discovered DNA was not safe from cancellation. That is what explains unequal group outcomes. White racism has nothing to do with it, and only is a cudgel to beat Whites, and make them self-loathing.
So long as HBD is not accepted despite its scientific validity, presence of unequal group outcomes will continue to push policymakers frantically towards the Woke worldview. Kaufmann’s talk of ‘expanding opportunity’, ‘reducing barriers’, and ‘sometimes raising diversity can be good so long as they are equally qualified’ shows that he is not comfortable with accepting unequal group outcomes. Blacks underperform on average not because of average genetic racial differences, but because of something to do with society, and if all humans are equal, what could possibly be the answer other than racism, especially when Blacks still underperform their White peers in stable families?
We need to be prepared to see virtually no Blacks in elite positions other than music and sports, how it was prior to the Civil Rights Movement in the non-Jim Crow states. Of course, they should not be BARRED from certain jobs, any company that dares say ‘Whites Only’ today is guaranteeing a boycott even if there was no law in place, as Kaufmann acknowledges the extreme taboo around racism, which will never recede to the point when something akin to that is ever permissible.
Cultural Liberalism vs Cultural Socialism
I have understood why Kaufmann uses the word ‘cultural socialism’. His explanation of it makes sense, and appeals to boomer conservative instincts, though I would prefer simply ‘cultural leftism’ to refer to the egalitarian values of the left, not wanting to get Wokeism mixed up with an economic system.
I also think his separation of ‘cultural liberalism’ and ‘cultural socialism/leftism’ is quite good, as his separation of ‘religious right issue’ and ‘anti-Woke issue’.
By Kaufmann’s definition ‘cultural liberalism’ is simply the belief that the state shouldn’t interfere in matters of personal morality. It would mean supporting legalised homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, drug use, prostitution, etcetera. ‘Cultural socialism’ is the belief that society should intervene to ensure equal group outcomes and protect the value of ‘equality’.
However, it get’s confused when Kaufmann praises both non-Jim Crow related Civil Rights Law and gay marriage. Those two things, if he was using a consistent definition, would be classed as ‘cultural socialism’. Title II and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act ended free association and replaced it with a government mandate for equity, a textbook example of ‘cultural socialism’, unlike the rest of the act just focusing on legal segregation in the South that can be seen as ‘cultural liberalism’. Whilst perhaps privatising marriage can be seen as ‘cultural liberalism’, the formalisation of gay marriage as a gesture of ‘equality’, towards something that is fundamentally unequal, definitely seems to me more akin to ‘cultural socialism’.
But yet Kaufmann says that gay marriage is an example of cultural liberalism which once again shows how he is a product of the current Overton Window even if he tries to overcome it. The LGBT movement has succeeded at making the restoration of traditional marriage literally unthinkable from even a ‘right-wing’ quite ‘based’ figure.
This shows the distinction to be bankrupt, with culturally left-wing measures Kaufmann likes him calling ‘cultural liberalism’, and those he dislikes him calling ‘cultural socialism’. This is a shame because I DO think that there are distinctions between these two phenomenon. Partly why I criticise the religious right is that they focus far too much on opposing cultural libertarianism and not enough on cultural egalitarianism.
There was a major missed opportunity to distance oneself from the religious right and the issues they care about (abortion, creationism, euthanasia, etcetera) and separate anti-Woke issues from them. But by endorsing curbs on free association and supporting gay marriage, Kaufmann’s definition is very inconsistent.
Focus on ‘Cancel Culture’ and ‘Free Speech’
Another issue is that Kaufmann spends far too much time talking about ‘cancel culture’, which is a very IDW/anti-SJW talking point that doesn’t understand what we’re up against.
The fact of the matter is that all societies, and all groups of people, have an Overton Window and negative repercussions if you veer too far outside of it, something that could be called ‘cancel culture’.
The problem today is firstly that it is our enemies doing the cancelling, and secondly, with the increase in the centralisation of power and end of free association, it is impossible for people to form their own spaces of likeminded people.
Cancel culture is inevitable, but one can create ‘pluralism’ by having many different institutions with many different worldviews associating with who they please.
Legal free speech is something that absolutely should be restored in Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. But America has legal free speech, yet still a lot of Woke cancel culture.
Kaufmann seems to want to ban private companies from engaging in ‘viewpoint discrimination’. I agree with him on the issue of social media platforms and other common carriers (though Substack and X do work fine in a free-market, the others are sticking to aggressive Woke policing) and financial services which are monopolies. Denying ‘service’ generally I’m more favourable to banning.
But when it comes to employment, there are numerous challenges. The problem with preventing the firing of employees based on ‘viewpoint discrimination’, is where does it end? Does openly saying the Holocaust was a hoax and being fired for it count as viewpoint discrimination? All organisations have a window of discourse outside of which you are shunned, it has always been this way, it will always be this way, and society needs to acknowledge that when trying to create a pluralistic society.
Richard Hanania has persuaded me on the merits of this, in fact he dissuaded Vivek Ramaswamy from adding a ‘viewpoint discrimination’ clause to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, nudging him towards dismantlement of all curbs on free association. However, Hanania’s advocacy against anti-censorship laws on social media on the basis of ‘the bureaucracy will not be on your side’ is irrelevant so long as the agency is politically appointed, a classic example of him using anti-Wokeness to promote free-market fundamentalism.
It also won’t do much because as Kaufmann talks about throughout the book, much of cancel culture is a quiet shunning rather than formal termination of employment. Likely, if one cannot be fired formally for their viewpoints, the managers would find another reason to fire them.
This is why I think a better idea is to make online anonymity protected, and criminalise doxing.
Writing under pseudonyms far predates the internet. The American constitution debates were written in pseudonyms. It’s always been a good way to separate the spheres of your life and to minimise social repercussions.
When smug ‘anti-fascists’ ‘dox’ (reveal someone’s true identity) with the hopes of destroying their reputation and livelihood, something they’ve openly gloated about doing, that is an attack on the doxed person’s rights. So long as they are law abiding (all ‘hate speech’ laws should be abolished, with legal free speech maximalism), online anonymity should be protected, and it being the person doing the doxing that is punished.
When it comes to university campuses, there is a point when discourse becomes corrosive. Once you have given an idea a platform, an equal place at the debating table, you have accepted their legitimacy. The Woke did no-platformings and cancel culture, and it worked for them, with them suffering no backlash.
This leads to another problem with Kaufmann’s vision. If he really did have the power to reassert ‘neutrality’ and ‘free speech’, one might as well use that power to ensure that our values are promoted and ours of our enemies shunned.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe that people who openly advocate for the mutilation of children and denial of biological sex should be given any kind of respect or status within society. They should never be recognised as legitimate actors. It was allowing such poisonous, corrosive ideas a seat at the table in the first place which greatly contributed to ‘The Great Awokening’, and them proving to be a threat to a truly free society (by our normative definition).
I’m pro-pluralism to a degree, I don’t support a North Korea-style system, but I have an Overton Window like everyone does. The most ‘free speech’ period in Western history, the late 20th century, allowed hostile actors to come to power. Karl Popper’s ‘Paradox of Tolerance’, far from justifying ‘anti-racism’, justified repressing Woke activists who’s ideas of ‘no debate’ are a threat to pluralism.
Impossibility of Neutral Institutions
Neutral institutions are impossible. Kaufmann to some degree recognises this, but uses the word ‘neutrality’ in rather a strange way. Complimenting this book was his earlier essay ‘Why I’m a Liberal National Conservative’, where he states that he doesn’t believe ‘neutral institutions have ever been tried’.
But who’s definition of ‘neutral’ does Kaufmann advocate for? Certainly not the Woke left who’d believe it to be right-wing indoctrination. What I think he means is MORE pluralism and balance than institutions have currently, but again, that is not neutral, and it is dangerous to have an illusion in ‘neutrality’.
I actually agree with Kaufmann’s distrust of school vouchers and desire to reform the public/state school system. But this is with a recognition that such schools can never be neutral. Whilst they are indoctrinated into our enemies views today, they should be indoctrinated into our views tomorrow. Eric Kaufmann’s survey data prove that ‘censorship’ and ‘indoctrination’ do work, and so therefore there are no consequences for us using the exact same powers for promoting anti-Woke values as they promote Woke values.
Chris Rufo is quite similar to Eric Kaufmann in this regard, but a difference is that he doesn’t pretend to be neutral. Rufo clearly states the positive vision he wants in education, which is a colorblind, Harry V. Jaffa, Claremont-adjacent Neoconservative view of America. I have grave issues with that, but he isn’t ‘wet’ and just waning wanting ‘free speech’, he is unapologetic about his vision.
It is concerning how Eric Kaufmann frequently cites Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). FIRE is a useless organisation that opposed Chris Rufo’s educational reforms on the basis of ‘equal standards’ and ‘fair play’. But this is the problem with the classical liberal vision; you must come down on a side, between Western civilisation or the child mutilators. Curriculums in social studies will always be biased in a certain direction in determining which thinkers get taught, which ideas get a seat at the table. So FIRE’s opposition to Rufo’s reforms, show that they are stooges of Wokeism.
Even TERFs are more reliable allies then the ‘classical liberal’ groups like FIRE because they have conviction, that being a woman means being an adult human female with XX chromosomes. I therefore prefer to work with them because they do have an uncompromising conviction on the one issue we agree on.
We should stop with this endless obsession with being ‘fair’. Our enemies are not playing to be fair, they play to win, and the backlash has never come as Kaufmann knows. They believe their moral vision is more important than ‘free speech’. We need to have our own comprehensive vision that we unapologetically promote.
But what should that vision be?
Can Anti-Woke Be United?
A massive problem with the book is that it does not provide much of a normative vision other than a plea to return to ‘classical liberalism’. Kaufmann stumbles on this. Whilst he isn’t like IDW people, who fruitlessly try to persuade their enemies to the merits of free speech, and does advocate strong government action and some quite good suggestions on how to bring a vision into being, the vision he promotes is one that is empty. He seems to be comfortable acknowledging transgenderism is nonsense (though he is a bit too nice regarding ‘alternative conceptions of gender’, he just doesn’t think they should get to push others around and run the show), but other than on that one issue, just appeals to ‘balance’ and ‘neutrality’.
This will not resist the drift of Wokeism, even if it was top-down implemented, and even if you banned some of the most egregious ‘no platforming’ and ‘no debate’ under the ‘Paradox of Tolerance’ paradigm that Chris Rufo has used. Campuses would still be dominated by Woke fanatics who would be permitted a seat at the table to ‘debate’, and throw their weight around with manipulative appeals and shunning those who don’t agree, even if they don’t directly engage in no-platforming or civil disobedience. They have a moral absolutist vision, which is no match for ‘neutrality’ and ‘free speech’ even when there is an attempt to enshrine those things legally and accept to a degree that ‘neutrality’ is a normative vision.
Kaufmann wants an ‘alliance between conservatives, classical liberals, and all opponents of Wokeism’. The problem is that ‘classical liberals’ are notoriously unreliable allies, having no conception of the Schmittian ‘friend/enemy’ distinction, and will leave the vacuum open through their lack of firm ideological commitment other than to neutrality and free speech themselves.
Kaufmann’s 7th point about developing a ‘Christian Coalition for Secular Culture’ is also misplaced, because what secular culture? What are we defending? What are we advocating for? Are we on the same side as
because she occasionally mildly pushes back on gender ideology, but really only wants ‘free speech’ and when she does have firm moral convictions other than just the abdication of conviction, always punches right, towards those who are insufficiently deferential to the Civil Rights Consensus’?This is why it’s very crucial that a positive vision is developed. ‘Anti-Woke’ is not enough, we need to be FOR something. It should unite as many factions as possible, but at the end of the day, it must be normative and say ‘this is what we believe and what we think is right, you are either with us or against us.’
I mentioned in a previous article that a variant of ‘National Democracy’ may be the best bet for Britain, which still has an ethno-cultural majority. I think nationalism is the uniting force that can be the most pluralistic so long as it is ethno-cultural and not civic (based on VALUES). But this isn’t what Kaufmann’s ‘Anti-Woke Coalition’ looks like, with him separating questions of national identity as ‘Second Awokening’ issues. But I think by drawing Wokeness to the destruction of Whites, mutilating young women, and their self-loathing self-debasement leading to mass replacement immigration, ties together an anti-immigration programme with anti-Wokeness. Anti-Wokeness suddenly makes sense when you think about the preservation of your nation in Social Darwinist terms. Indeed, this is what ‘Anglofuturism’ aims to be for Britain, a positive anti-Woke vision that believes in its cause as strongly as the Woke do, and hopefully stronger.
So I don’t think a ‘Coalition for Secular Culture’ would work because nothing unites these various groups other than vaguely what they’re against. One can make a vague list of points of what they’re against, but I find the ‘classical liberals’ within the coalition, James Lindsay, Brendan O’Neil, Helen Pluckrose, and Andrew Doyle, notoriously unreliable and so I would not want very much to do with them.
Will Gen Z Be Woke Forever?
One final disagreement I have with the book is that I feel Kaufmann is overly black-pilled on the prospects of youth being persuaded away from Wokeism. Of course, we shouldn’t ignore the currently dire situation and pretend that the pendulum will naturally just swing, but minds can be changed through a variety of means. The populist right doing well amongst young voters in continental Europe shows that Wokeism’s grasp on the youth is not unshakable.
If the situation really was as bleak as Kaufmann suggests, why were Woke activists so adamant that social media be censored and opponents banned in the mid 2010s? Because they knew that the anti-SJW movement posed an enormous threat to them.
The pendulum will not naturally swing, but we can push it if we are painstaking about the righteousness of our cause.
The way to persuade these people is through an ‘Alt-Right Pipeline’ approach. Start off with exposing them to IDW-adjacent ideas about free speech and the marketplace of ideas, and then expose them to ever more radical ideas once they have built up an immunity. This was behind the 2010s Alt-Right, and it was working to a degree that mainstream liberals abandoned their belief in a ‘free and open internet’ that had defined their approach in the early 2010s in order to crack down upon it. They’re just as terrified about the appeal of Andrew Tate, who despite the ban hammer, is still popular amongst teenage boys.
I would have liked Kaufmann to show a bit more optimism in the possibility of minds being changed. Of course, there are huge institutional barriers that we face, and in the initial stages of persuading people we would have to present a soft image. But our enemies already call these talking points a gateway to more radical beliefs, there is no point not genuinely using them as a smokescreen, able to keep plausible deniability for our views and insist, initially, that it really is only single-sex spaces and free speech that we’re worried about.
Indoctrination does only go so far. In Kaufmann’s home country of Canada, young people are less Woke than previous generations as a result of the revulsion at Trudeau. Pendulums do swing, which is why ‘fake conservatives’ like David Cameron are needed to co-opt countercultural energy and enshrine the left’s previous culture war victories. The ‘levelling off’ that Kaufmann describes in his graphics potentially could have been a much more rapid reversal, had the right not been co-opted and had formed an elite vanguard, which he himself suggests in his proposals for a ‘Federalist Society for the Bureaucracy’.
Conclusion
Overall, ‘Taboo’ is a great edition to the proliferation of books on the subject of Wokeism. This book is tied with Hanania’s ‘The Origins of Woke’ when it comes to the ‘solutions front’, with some of the ideas better than what Hanania proposes and some of them worse, with some synthesis likely ideal.
Civil Rights law should still be abolished, though probably only after it has been weaponised against anti-straight White male discrimination to inflict maximum punishment on Woke corporations. ‘School choice’ is a bit of a distraction, and we should instead focus on re-shaping the state/public school system, which is different from Hanania and Rufo’s approaches, who have a more ‘in-between’ position of using ‘neoliberal means for anti-Woke ends’.
Kaufmann’s book is excellent at explaining the intellectual origins of Wokeism, providing data to back up his points, and at least discussing solutions. Where the book falls flat is the leaving out of what I consider to be very crucial points for his narrative. I don’t think you can discuss the phenomenon of ‘Minorities Good, Majorities Bad’ without talking about the mythology around WWII and the Holocaust which underpin it, and Kaufmann seeming to uncritically parrot the mythology of the Civil Rights Movement shows his approach has limitations. His talk of ‘neutrality’ is impossible, and his ‘balance’ is only between twin totalitarianisms and showing how the West promoted liberal values and wasn’t all bad. He does not talk about ‘neutrality’ and ‘balance’ when it comes to WWII, the Holocaust, or Civil Rights, which are absolute bedrocks of the ‘Minorities Good, Majorities Bad’ paradigm.
I highly recommend you buy (don’t pirate because he’s a lovely guy) this new book. A review naturally won’t cover everything, so definitely read it for yourself, and I guarantee you will learn something new.
Bibliography
Hanania, R. (2023) The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics. Harper Books,
Rufo, C. F. (2023). America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything. HarperCollins.
Caldwell, C. (2021). The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties. Simon & Schuster.
excellent review
"We need to be prepared to see virtually no Black’s in elite positions other than music and sports, how it was prior to the Civil Rights Movement in the non-Jim Crow states. Of course, they should not be BARRED from certain jobs, any company that dares say ‘Whites Only’ today is guaranteeing a boycott even if there was no law in place, as Kaufmann acknowledges the extreme taboo around racism, which will never recede to the point when something akin to that is ever permissible."
I loved your review, but why not? I feel like the right lacks imagination. The left has an overabundance of it; they can convince themselves that sex isn't a binary, or that scanning anomalies caused by tree roots are mass graves of Amerindian children or that there is an ongoing "trans genocide" in America. Hanania can't even imagine rightwing bureaucrats.
We are so buried in a loser mentality that we treat our own loss as though it were some sort of natural law, akin to gravity. We tell ourselves that 'Cthulhu swims left' and remember 'Conquest's law.' Then the left comes up with some new excess and we are left shocked and flabbergasted again, and we run away and cope about a backlash that never comes.
In the fifty years after the American Civil War the country went from reconstruction to segregation. By the 1920s race scientists like Grant were among the most prominent public intellectuals in America. Continental Europe has even more dramatic examples. Remember that Robespierre himself in 1791 wanted only a constitutional monarchy akin to England.