John Zmirak was taken ill suddenly with acute but treatable Schadenfreude. So he could not write his column today. In its stead The Stream presents this unusual piece which was somehow spirited over our transom. Its author claims to be an entity named “Wokethug.” We hope you find his distinctive perspective of interest.

What You Do Know Won’t Help You

Some of you got hold of my godfather Screwtape’s correspondence with his late nephew Wormwood. Perhaps you gloated over the latter’s petty failure. But you will be disappointed reading this. It is not a letter from me to another tempter. Nor will I fail.

In fact, my success is ongoing and my victory assured. I publish this purely to taunt you. Whatever you learn from what I write here will prove as useless to you as the seer Cassandra’s warnings were to the hapless royals of Troy. When the time comes you will welcome the Horse, no matter what I say here. And your cities will burn. And I will use their embers to light myself a Cohiba.

Our side grows stronger daily. So our past efforts at camouflage seem needless. We might as well trot out what we have in mind and rub your sweaty little faces in it, for all the good that will do you. You had Moses and the prophets, Orwell and Solzhenitsyn, Muggeridge and Buchanan. If you didn’t believe them, why should you believe an immortal spirit if it spoke to you from your smart phone? Tee-hee. Isn’t scripture fun?  

Chief Minister for Racism and Anti-Racism

Regarding this piece’s title, the answer is Yes. I am indeed the spiritual advisor who works with white nationalist “leader” Richard Spencer. You might sneer at the name of this chief who apparently has no Indians. You might think that because he is widely scorned, only trotted out by CNN to tar conservative Christians with guilt by association, that my hard work went unrewarded. And of course, you’d be dead wrong.

Our personnel wouldn’t permit, or our policy prefer, assigning one timeless advisor to just one trousered ape at a time. Instead each one of us manages whole movements. Rather than mere souls, each of us is assigned a theme. A dark and glorious Cause, which we must champion in your tepid hearts and gullible minds “by any means necessary.” (To quote an old client of mine.) So yes, I toil in the small and sterile vineyard that is Herr Spencer’s brain. But that is only one, and one of the least productive, of the fields which I manure.

My Theme is “Racism,” of course. And its converse, its shadow, which proves equally useful. I mean, of course, Anti-Racism. I shine both sides of that coin, and flip it as seems expedient. You might remember my work amongst the bible-thumping, black-baiting demagogues of the segregated South. It was great fun goading fools from one Baptist church to sick vicious police dogs on fools from another, solely because of their skins’ melanin content.

The Woke Post-Christian Cult

Much more profoundly productive, of course, was the aftermath. With the race laws in ruins, I gently guided many of those who’d crusaded against the idiot cause of racial segregation to sign up for the jihads which I had in mind. The next windmill they’d bulldoze would be “outdated” abortion laws. And “repressive” mores about sex. Then “fascist” sentiments like patriotism and honor. “Arbitrary” differences between men and women.

Somehow (remember how easily led you primates are) I managed to link all these substantive causes which the Enemy held dear with the old and actually primitive suspicions based on race. So the same dewy-eyed idealists who’d fought to get blacks seated at lunch counters now strove to see them cut up and sucked apart in clinics.

The key to accomplishing this, of course, was to wave around bright shiny objects and make loud distracting noises, to stop you fools from thinking. If you abandoned the very ground on which “equality” was built — your common resemblance, however faint, to the Enemy — on what would people base it? How can anyone build the ethics of Martin Luther King on the metaphysics of Darwin and Hitler?

The answer, of course, was … tribalism! Instead of the “white” tribe or black one, you fools will build your worldviews on belonging to the “Woke” one. Then you’ll just as energetically enforce a whole new kind of Apartheid. But you’ll base it on class scorn and educational snobbery, instead of skin pallor and nostril size. That makes no difference to the Enemy. Or, as you’ll learn to your horror in your last moments of life, to me.  

The Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of Racist Cliches 

But now I’ve outdone myself. I have managed to convince some white elites to embrace both the self-righteous ferocity of witch hunters and the occult rites of witches. At the very same time.

One of America’s most prestigious institutions, the Smithsonian Institution, leads the way here. (Though it’s not alone, as I’m making sure.) That institution’s National Museum of African-American History, with my careful guidance, is now advancing the very same stereotypes of non-whites which I taught Richard Spencer. And which I whispered in the ears of George Wallace, Ben Tillman, and Margaret Sanger before him. But even I didn’t expect to succeed at convincing professional Anti-Racists to echo those exquisitely cankered bigots. I was obviously too modest.

Don’t “Act White,” You Fools

Take a glance at the helpful, idiot-simple graphics provided here. I managed to sell the Museum staff on the clear message that only white people are really capable of the following character virtues, pro-social attitudes, or economically productive habits.

• Respecting authority.
• Delaying gratification.
• Planning for the future.
• Coming to work on time.
• Meeting deadlines.
• Valuing tangible assets.
• Hoping for the future.
• Mastering wild nature.
• Making decisions.
• Being polite.
• Valuing personal privacy.
• Working hard.
• Thinking in a “rational” or “objective” manner.

All these things and more, these professional, highly credentialed Anti-Racists now say, are the exclusive preserve of white people. Blacks or other non-whites who display such traits are traitors, cowardly collaborators who are selling out their ancestors. (Instead of, as a sane man might think, sacrificing for their children.)

What other than sheer government coercion would induce anyone of any color to hire anyone but whites if all this were true? Especially since the anti-discrimination laws (which I helped to write) make straight, white males the only workers one can fire? At least without the glowering threat of costly litigation….

I and I alone, by my efforts on many fronts, have made hiring any member of any “protected class” more solemn, binding, and serious than the “covenant” of marriage.

I do insist, therefore, on stepping forward to take a bow.

I will see you all, I hope, in Hell.

Sincerely,

Wokethug

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism.