During my recent vacation, my wife and I went on the road to visit family and friends in Minnesota, a trip that takes roughly 15 hours in each direction ... or longer, if local law enforcement is in sight. When we take these trips, we pass the time by listening to audio books. Normally we steer toward lighter fare; in the past, we have enjoyed humorous memoirs from Tim Conway and Garry Marshall, Cary Elwes' As You Wish (a look at his experiences making The Princess Bride), and especially Danny Trejo's inspirational memoir Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood, which isn't 'light' reading at all but is instead a gripping tale of crime, redemption, service, and the grace of God. 

If you're looking for some escapism, I'd highly recommend all of these titles, although Trejo's memoir doesn't quite fit that category. On this trip, however, I wanted to get more insight into the social panics and malevolent currents of Wokeism Inc. The three books listed at the top provided plenty, and readers may need to genuinely engage these books more than they need escapism at the moment. 

We read these books in the same order as their listing, and that also seems propitious. These authors represent the Right, the Left, and what seems to be closest to old-style reporting these days, respectively. All three authors see a crisis coming with the rapid spread of wokery, while they differ on scope, context, and solutions. Put together, readers will get an impressive education on perhaps the most potent threat to democracy and self-governance.

I'll offer some brief thoughts on each book:

Mao's America: Xi Van Fleet

People may remember Van Fleet as one of the most noted of the Loudoun County parents rebelling against the local school board and its DEI/CRT-drenched pedagogy. She turned that experience into a compelling memoir, thanks in large part to her experiences as an adolescent in Mao's Cultural Revolution. Van Fleet delivers an argument that others have made with less personal insight, myself and Adam Baldwin included -- that the Marxist Left has begun to impose an Americanized Cultural Revolution here, and that cancel culture is only a small part of it.

The book is well-written and voiced expertly by Ava Wong; the author performs her own introduction, and James Lindsay delivers a foreword. The book cuts back and forth a bit between Van Fleet's oppressive early years, her hopeful passage to America, and her dismay at seeing the same tactics and strategies of her youth deployed in her adoptive home. This works well, as Van Fleet focuses on the similarities between both Cultural Revolutions, using her experiences in both countries to draw parallels and point out some key differences.

Van Fleet draws the strongest ties of the three to Marxism, although Murray surprisingly comes close toward the end of his book. The issue isn't cancel culture per se, Van Fleet's memoir argues, but the ideology behind it and its escape from Academia into the popular culture. The Left is already imposing an American-Lite version of Mao's "struggle sessions," especially on campuses but also in the media and in corporate America, and -- of course -- in K-12 education in Loudoun County and elsewhere. 

What's most impressive about Mao's America is Van Fleet's unabashed patriotism and devotion to America and its small-R republican institutions. Because of her past experiences, Van Fleet's voice rings loudest in warning Americans about the Left's Cultural Revolution. If you only read one book on this list, make in Mao's America.

Woke Antisemitism: David L. Bernstein

To start off, I must admit an error: when I chose this book on Audible, I thought it had been written by Professor David Bernstein, a contributor to Reason and Instapundit. A few months earlier, I had interviewed Prof. Bernstein about his book criticizing the racial/ethnic categories used by the EEOC and others. Rather than the conservo-libertarian David Bernstein, however, the book was written by the very public liberal David L. Bernstein.

And that makes the book even more valuable. (It also amused my wife.)

The Right has certainly fulminated for years about the rise of wokery and its corrosive impact on public debate, dissent, and national cohesion. Conservatives have even taken up the fight against anti-Semitism as the Left has exploded with Jew-hatred since the Hamas atrocities of October 7. Having a voice like Bernstein, who has spent decades in public activism for progressive social justice agendas, tackle wokery speaks volumes about its radical nature. 

Bernstein offers some key insights into how the DEI/Woke activists operate within their liberal-progressive coalitions. Adam and I have often talked about how these radical Leftists make their long march through the institutions, basically skinning them and wearing their previous identities in the way a virus might invade a cell to spread its infection. Bernstein discusses this process in detail -- although perhaps slightly less colorfully than my virus analogy -- and shares the devastating results from his first-hand experience. Identity politics became so toxic in the post-George Floyd period that Bernstein felt compelled to leave his organization and found another to preserve the small-L liberal values of free speech and open debate for all.

I only have one quibble about Bernstein's conclusions: he pulls back at the prospect that group focus itself is the problem. Bernstein understandably wants to return to liberal social-justice agendas without the radical Left's obsession with race, sex, and all of the other ways they attempt to redefine humanity. But group-focused 'justice' policies create those incentives, an issue which Bernstein does not explore. Bernstein is also necessarily focused on the impact that DEI/Wokery has on anti-Semitism, so some of the broader implications are outside the scope of his approach -- which is why that's only a quibble. 

Woke Antisemitism is a must-read for those who seek a comprehensive view of wokery, as well as better insight as to how it operates on the Left as well as the Right. Bernstein shows remarkable courage in standing up against it, and against some of his former allies in doing so.

The Madness of Crowds: Douglas Murray

While we experienced all three books through Audible, this book might be the only one that I'd strongly recommend to readers in that format. Both of the others are well performed and enjoyable, but I imagine that reading them in text form would be just as enjoyable. The Madness of Crowds, on the other hand, benefits greatly from Murray's performance of his own material. I may not have enjoyed any audio book performance more since John Cleese's recording of The Screwtape Letters, some of which can be found on YouTube. Murray's line reads are almost as delicious and expert as Cleese's, and that is high praise indeed.

Written in 2019, this is the least recent of the books we read, but it still felt up-to-date and trenchant. Murray walks through the major topic areas in which mob rule has overtaken rational speech and debate: race, sex, LGBTQ, transgenderism, with interludes in between on related and lesser topics. In each arena, Murray consistently warns about mob rule and heckler's vetoes, even in cases where he clearly doesn't sympathize with those being shouted down. 

This underscores Murray's best quality in his work, here and elsewhere: he works in facts, not emotions. For the last several months, Murray has been castigated by the Left for reporting honestly about the facts in the Gaza war and about Hamas, which has led many to assume that Murray is conservative in approach. This book gives a more nuanced and complex look at his work and analytical processes. Murray doesn't argue for one side or the other as much as he argues for honest argument, debate, and an end to the tribalism that steamrollers over all of them. 

However, Murray has a clear vision about the Marxism that is driving these changes in America's body politic. He mainly saves that for his conclusion, although it comes up in earlier passages as well. He doesn't infuse the book with that argument, as Van Fleet does in hers, but Murray clearly sees this as a threat to Western liberal values ... because it is.

In 2019, Murray offered an optimistic vision that the tribalism might be fading away. The Audible version adds a July 2020 epilogue that briefly addresses the George Floyd riots. One has to wonder whether Murray is as optimistic these days. Perhaps I will have an opportunity to ask him directly in an interview.

Addendum: We also started another book that seems promising -- Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy by Batya Ungar-Sargon. This is also a view of Wokeism from the Left, as Ungar-Sargon makes clear in the opening to the book. Unfortunately, we didn't get very far into this book before arriving back home, but the first couple of chapters about the history of New York City media in the 19th century was very entertaining. We hope to pick that up again and finish it soon. 

Update: David L. Bernstein offered a gracious response to my admission of error:

@ProfDBernstein and I are confused with each other on weekly basis. I've even been cancelled because thought I was him. Thanks for the nice review. I'm working on an article on the broader category of identity that delves precisely where you quibble with me.

— David Bernstein (@DavidLBernstein) June 26, 2024

Glad to know I'm not alone, and I will read both David Bernsteins in the future!