By Olivier Klein \u2013 July 18, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ren\u00e9 Girard\u2019s thought provides a penetrating lens through which to view the ideological excesses of wokism and the deep dangers they entail. Wokism\u2014understood not as simple ethical vigilance but as an ideological system aimed at erasing all perceived differences\u2014can be seen as an advanced episode in the mimetic dynamic. What this movement claims to fight\u2014exclusionary violence\u2014it reactivates, in reversed form. And in doing so, it maintains a sacrificial logic that has marked the history of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mimetic theory is based on a fundamental discovery: human desire is never autonomous or free from others. It does not preexist the socialization process of the individual. We are not born with our desires or with fixed preference curves, as some individualist anthropologies or economic schools propose. We desire what others desire, precisely because they desire it. The other is envied and imitated because we believe they are complete, lacking nothing\u2014unlike ourselves, who feel an inner void. This drives us to desire what the other desires: to define ourselves, to be, by mimicking their desires in the hope of filling our own emptiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This structurally mimetic nature of desire breeds rivalries, since we desire what others desire. This can unleash violence that is itself contagious. It can spread throughout the entire group and, in its extreme phase, lead to the group\u2019s self-destruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This rivalry over possession intensifies when differences between group members fade, as the mimetic logic then spirals more easily and dangerously. Everyone develops a desire to possess what others covet\u2014others doing the same. When two individuals resemble each other too closely, each becomes both a model and a rival to the other\u2014especially dangerous because the other is nearly identical. This is Girard\u2019s archetype (frequently found in myths) of the mimetic double, inherently charged with violent potential. Undifferentiation accelerates the mimetic process and its violent outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Differences\u2014sexual, symbolic, cultural\u2014are thus not obstacles to peace. They do not hinder the prevention of violence. Quite the contrary: differences are conditions for preventing it. This is the heart of the paradox: the forced equalization of human conditions, far from abolishing conflict, exacerbates it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How can the \u201cmimetic crisis\u201d that spreads among all members of a community avoid leading to the group\u2019s self-destruction? A catastrophic outcome can be avoided if the crisis is resolved by designating a scapegoat. The scapegoat channels the violence of all-against-all into a unified violence of all-against-one. The scapegoat is chosen through a mimetic, quasi-random process and becomes the focus of a sudden consensus about their guilt\u2014even though it has no real basis. The expiatory victim absorbs and takes away the contagious violence that had erupted within the group and become focused on them. In primitive societies, once the group is re-united, the victim is often sanctified as the figure who saved the community. Myth arises from this process, concealing the real mechanism while still allowing it to be deciphered for those who look closely enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Human groups, societies, establish strategies to avoid the repetition of the destructive logic of the mimetic crisis. In Violence and the Sacred, Girard shows that archaic societies managed to contain this violence by instituting differences, rituals, and taboos that constrain mimetic desire and limit its catastrophic escalation. This stands in opposition to the modern idea of \u201cliberated\u201d desire, assumed to emancipate individuals by freeing them from social constraints. It opposes the will to deconstruct taboos. But this so-called free, autonomous, unbounded desire is an illusion: it denies the mimetic structure of our desires, and therefore their destructive potential. On the contrary, it is civilization\u2014with its mediations, rules, and norms\u2014that can contain this endemic violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Differences\u2014sexual, hierarchical, ritual, symbolic\u2014are not archaic remnants. According to Girard, they are cultural tools for peace. In modern societies, this role is taken up by the law, the State (which has monopolized violence), and social norms. Differences remain, particularly economic or status-based. But rather than being sources of oppression, in today\u2019s world these differences are fortunately mobile, evolving, not fixed\u2014and thus become engines of economic dynamism and growth. At the same time, they subtly help restrain mimetic violence. Furthermore, rituals and moral taboos, though weakened in modern society, still play a useful complementary role in containing violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Herein lies the clear paradox of wokism. By aiming to erase all differences\u2014perceived as discriminatory\u2014wokism seeks to deconstruct the existing order in order to rebuild society on the basis of absolute egalitarianism. But this constructivism, rooted in the pursuit of undifferentiation, does not pacify\u2014it intensifies mimeticism. It stirs up envy, jealousy, and ultimately hatred. Everyone competes to defend\u2014or even embody\u2014the purest victim, and to sanctify it. This is the contemporary logic of victimhood competition, analyzed by Ren\u00e9 Girard in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning: \u201cThe victim has become the absolute foundation of moral judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But if everyone is a victim in this artificially constructed world of undifferentiation, the barriers that once contained violence are destroyed. New scapegoats must then be found to absorb the violence this generates. The oppressor\u2014vaguely defined but necessary to the ideological framework\u2014becomes the new scapegoat. The man, the white person, the Westerner, or even the former and long-standing expiatory victim\u2014now, through a historical reversal, recast as the quintessential oppressor\u2014are singled out. The symbolic dominant is targeted for condemnation. The logic of sacrifice returns, but inverted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From this perspective, wokism becomes a form of mimetic compassionism unaware of its own dynamics. It designates victims en masse, sanctifies them, and traps them in that status by assigning them to a fixed identity. It builds inverted hierarchies where guilt crushes responsibility, where identity replaces action, where absolute determinism denies the capacity to evolve or change status. Having dismantled the civilizational barriers to mimetic violence, the need for a scapegoat returns. But now the aim is not to sacrifice the victim to save the community; it is to sacrifice the supposed dominant\u2014designated by new inquisitors\u2014to redeem a presumed collective guilt. The barriers collapse, and the sacrificial logic endures. In Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Girard wrote that \u201cthe modern world is increasingly mimetic.\u201d Wokism illustrates this. Beneath a posture of moral purity, it reproduces what it denounces: judgment, exclusion, violence, sacrifice. The victim is not abolished\u2014only replaced. And the more this is done in the name of Good, the more dangerous the mechanism becomes. Evil\u2014the principle of the scapegoat\u2014thus takes on the appearance of virtue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Should we then return to old hierarchies? No more than Girard, I believe we should. We must recognize the dynamics of mimetic desire, help disarm scandal, and break the cycle of vengeance. This requires rehabilitating symbolic mediations, legitimate structuring differences, and institutions that prevent the generalization of rivalry\u2014without ever legitimizing injustice. This is what distinguishes equality of opportunity from egalitarianism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Without differences, there are only rivals. And a society of rivals, without mediation and without cultural boundaries, is a society ready to ignite\u2014and at risk of exploding. Integral egalitarianism, leading to generalized undifferentiation, becomes a breeding ground for distrust, amplified mimetic envy, and ultimately destructive violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Olivier Klein
Professor of economics at HEC<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2e3b<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note [1]: From a Girardian perspective, consider the rivalrous battle and striking mimetic behavior in the U.S. between proponents of wokism and religious ultra-conservatism. Both hurl anathemas at each other and claim victimhood at the hands of the other. Mimetic violence leads both sides to ban each other\u2019s books and rewrite educational programs by erasing what contradicts their worldview\u2014often with anti-scientific approaches. Both camps become polarized in a mimetic refusal of dialogue or exchange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Olivier Klein \u2013 July 18, 2025 Ren\u00e9 Girard\u2019s thought provides a penetrating lens through which to view the ideological excesses of wokism and the deep dangers they entail. Wokism\u2014understood not as simple ethical vigilance but as an ideological system aimed at erasing all perceived differences\u2014can be seen as an advanced episode in the mimetic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economical-policy","category-global-economy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n