Pardon My French

When I see certain social science theories imported from the US, I say we must re-invest in the field of social science.

— Emmanuel Macron

Merde alors!

Something stinks. 

The French, believe it or not, are complaining about the "American" export they call wokisme.

 

President Macron complained last year that wokisme is undermining the whole nation. 

And now French grammarians are complaining that wokisme is corrupting the French language.

Putain!

The French rather conveniently forget that wokisme originated in—of all places—France!

French philosopher Michel Foucault concocted it. 

In the late 1970s, Foucault's radical beliefs vent viral, spreading in less than a decade from the cafes of Paris to the classrooms of America—doubtless making Foucault the single-most influential French export since Coco Chanel.

A disciple of the German Nihilist Friedrich Nietzsche and the French Marxist Louis Althusser, Foucault saw the world in the starkest of terms: as a endless warfare between the powerful and the powerless; between oppressors and the oppressed. 

Foucault interpreted culture—in the broadest sense of the word—to be the club the powerful wield to assure their power. 

And culture surrounds us. Turn over any rock, you'll find the same thing: the people in power subjugating everyone else.

Foucault's idea informs almost every aspect of the "American" woke movement.

And now the chickens have come home to roost.

Or, as we used to say in grammar school, he who smelt it, dealt it.