Wokeism takes a hit as Malala and Greta Thunberg weigh in on Gaza conflict

Girls' education champion Malala Yousafzai was criticized for not speaking up on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and when she did, for not making a strong enough statement. (File photo via X)

After years of taking the attack to institutions, states and politicians, wokeism suddenly finds itself in the eye of a storm, its principal proponents facing criticism for flitting from cause to cause. First, Swedish environmental champion Greta Thunberg faced the backlash when she posted a photo of herself and three others holding up signs stating: "Free Palestine", "This Jew stands with Palestine" and "Stand with Gaza". In the caption, she explained her position better, calling for an immediate cease-fire to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Then, Malala Yousufzai, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and activist leader, copped criticism in her own country for not explicitly condemning Israel, and when she did, it was deemed “not enough” and “too weak”.

That’s the nature of the beast. Yesterday's heroines quickly turn to today's villains and heroes to clowns. Ask Anna Hazare, once the symbol of moral and social uprightness and the man whose fast at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan in 2011 kicked off a revolution that eventually brought the Aam Aadmi Party into the political firmament. Today, Hazare is the butt of derision, his many causes looked upon as merely attention-seeking efforts.

No one can take away the good that Hazare, like Thunberg and Malala, has done in the past. Thunberg's environmental activism and her constant challenging of world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation is laudable and crucial to the future of humanity. Similarly, Malala's cause, education for all girls, is unimpeachable and has received deserving support.

The problem is that both the young leaders have got themselves embroiled in way too many things, thus spreading themselves thin and testing their social capital. Of course, they have the right to do so and perhaps even the duty to. After all, you can't be woke one day and unwoke the next. Wokeism, described by the online dictionary as the “promotion of liberal progressive ideology and policy as an expression of sensitivity to systemic injustices and prejudices”, demands a lifelong commitment. Which is great. But when it collides with politics, it runs the danger of being hijacked by the latest instance of public outrage expressed on social media.

Thus, Thunberg was criticized for what detractors called her lack of solidarity with Israel when it was hit by attacks from Hamas leading to the death of 1,400 Israelis. Malala too was silent on the issue, even as she urged Israeli officials to let humanitarian aid into Gaza. With public opinion on the issue almost evenly divided (check the conflicted attitude of Indians to the cause of the Palestinians), expressing support for one side was always fraught with risk of angering the other.

It has been a charge that liberals across the world have faced in the course of the Middle-East crisis. Why is it okay for Hamas to kill innocent civilians, often in the most inhuman of ways, but not so if Israel retaliates by going after who it believes are the perpetrators of these crimes. For critics, Hamas is conflated with ordinary Palestinians who are facing the barrage of Israeli bombing, because the objective for both is the same, a separate homeland. In the haze of the brutal war, the nuances of the issue are lost on all but the most careful. And that’s where the champions of wokeism are running into a problem. By rushing to declare their support for one side or the other, they are walking into the trap of placing populism over perspective.

Wouldn't the two young champions have been better off sticking to their original causes, climate change and the treatment of young girls? Unfortunately they got sucked into the fantasy of changing the world, one cause at a time or even simultaneously.

Even before the current wave of sentiment against wokeism, the movement was being panned, its cancel culture seen as punishment without trial. In a Bloomberg column in February last year, Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, wrote “I’m calling it: Wokeism has peaked. Yes, it will remain a highly influential movement, and it will probably continue to spread globally. But in the U.S. at least, wokeism and the woke will ebb.”

If that is happening in the birthplace of the movement, wokes elsewhere in the world have been put on notice.