
We Have Never Been Woke
The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
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Narrated by:
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Musa al-Gharbi
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By:
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Musa al-Gharbi
About this listen
How a new “woke” elite uses the language of social justice to gain more power and status—without helping the marginalized and disadvantaged
Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists. In education, media, nonprofits, and beyond, members of this elite work primarily with words, ideas, images, and data, and are very likely to identify as allies of antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive causes. Their dominant ideology is “wokeness” and, while their commitment to equality is sincere, they actively benefit from and perpetuate the inequalities they decry. Indeed, their egalitarian credentials help them gain more power and status, often at the expense of the marginalized and disadvantaged.
We Have Never Been Woke details how the language of social justice is increasingly used to justify this elite—and to portray the losers in the knowledge economy as deserving their lot because they think or say the “wrong” things about race, gender, and sexuality. Al-Gharbi’s point is not to accuse symbolic capitalists of hypocrisy or cynicism. Rather, he examines how their genuine beliefs prevent them from recognizing how they contribute to social problems—or how their actions regularly provoke backlash against the social justice causes they champion.
A powerful critique, We Have Never Been Woke reveals that only by challenging this elite’s self-serving narratives can we hope to address social and economic inequality effectively.
“In this important and timely book, Musa al-Gharbi describes the rise of the ‘symbolic capitalists,’ and how an ideology has evolved to cement their power and restrict entry from outsiders. We Have Never Been Woke effectively addresses a wide readership on this contentious issue.”—Tyler Cowen, George Mason University
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By: Patrick Ruffini
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The Flag and the Cross
- White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy
- By: Samuel L. Perry, Philip S. Gorski, Jemar Tisby - foreword
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Most Americans were shocked by the violence they witnessed at the nation's Capital on January 6th, 2021. And many were bewildered by the images displayed by the insurrectionists: a wooden cross and wooden gallows; "Jesus saves" and "Don't Tread on Me;" Christian flags and Confederate Flags; even a prayer in Jesus's name after storming the Senate chamber. Where some saw a confusing jumble, Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry saw a familiar ideology: white Christian nationalism.
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could use an accompanying pdf
- By A W on 08-08-22
By: Samuel L. Perry, and others
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Why Nothing Works
- Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back
- By: Marc J. Dunkelman
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more. But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle. Why?
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Contents don't match the label
- By Conor on 06-03-25
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Tyranny, Inc.
- How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It
- By: Sohrab Ahmari
- Narrated by: Sohrab Ahmari
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the past two generations, U.S. leaders deregulated big business on the faith that it would yield a better economy and a freer society. But the opposite happened. Americans lost stable, well-paying jobs, Wall Street dominated industry to the detriment of the middle class and local communities, and corporations began to subject us to total surveillance, even dictating what we are, and aren’t, allowed to think. The corporate titans and mega-donors who aligned themselves with this vision knew exactly what they were getting: perfect conditions for what Sohrab Ahmari calls “private tyranny”.
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Doesn't address the whole picture
- By Penelope M on 09-18-23
By: Sohrab Ahmari
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American Covenant
- How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again
- By: Yuval Levin
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Common ground is hard to find in today’s politics. In a society teeming with irreconcilable political perspectives, many people have grown frustrated under a system of government that constantly demands compromise. More and more on both the right and the left have come to blame the Constitution for the resulting discord. But the Constitution is not the problem we face; it is the solution. Blending engaging history with lucid analysis, conservative scholar Yuval Levin’s American Covenant recovers the Constitution’s true genius and reveals how it charts a path to repairing America’s fault lines.
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Profound.
- By Jim Tucker on 09-25-24
By: Yuval Levin
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The Canceling of the American Mind
- Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All—but There Is a Solution
- By: Greg Lukianoff, Rikki Schlott
- Narrated by: Rikki Schlott, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Cancel culture is a new phenomenon, and The Canceling of the American Mind is the first book to codify it and survey its effects, including hard data and research on what cancel culture is and how it works, along with hundreds of new examples showing the left and right both working to silence their enemies.
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Good book, Important information, poorly read
- By pj on 12-08-23
By: Greg Lukianoff, and others
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Elite Capture
- How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (and Everything Else)
- By: Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
- Narrated by: Jaime Lincoln Smth
- Length: 3 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom. But the “identity politics” so compulsively referenced bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, “identity politics” is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.
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An Essential Read
- By TheFrozenBiscuit on 04-22-23
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Morning After the Revolution
- Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History
- By: Nellie Bowles
- Narrated by: Nellie Bowles
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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As a Hillary voter, a New York Times reporter, and frequent attendee at her local gay bars, Nellie Bowles fit right in with her San Francisco neighbors and friends—until she started questioning whether the progressive movement she knew and loved was actually helping people. When her colleagues suggested that asking such questions meant she was “on the wrong side of history,” Bowles did what any reporter worth her salt would do: she started investigating for herself. The answers she found were stranger—and funnier—than she expected.
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Brilliant skewering of both sides of the culture war over the past 8 years
- By RB on 05-28-24
By: Nellie Bowles
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Lawless
- The Miseducation of America’s Elites
- By: Ilya Shapiro
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Law schools used to teach students how to think critically, advance logical arguments, and respect opponents. Now, those students cannot tolerate disagreement and reject the validity of the law itself. And yet, rioting Ivy Leaguers are the same people who will hold important government positions, fight constitutional lawsuits, and advise Fortune 500 companies. In Lawless, Ilya Shapiro explains how we got here and what we can do about it. The problem is bigger than radical students and biased faculty—it’s institutional weakness.
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Exceptional!
- By Amazon Customer on 04-06-25
By: Ilya Shapiro
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Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic
- By: Ilan Pappe
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 21 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1896, a Jewish state was a pipe dream. Today the overwhelming majority of Jews identify as Zionists. How did this happen? Ilan Pappe unveils how a lobby changed the map of the Middle East. Zionists exerted pressure on the Congress, cracked down on dissent in the Labour Party, and relentlessly smeared critics.
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Everything you need to know about the Israel Lobby
- By Paul Christopher Giacobbe on 06-06-25
By: Ilan Pappe
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Woke Racism
- How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America
- By: John McWhorter
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed linguist and award-winning writer John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the American social fabric.
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Thank You
- By Withacy on 10-26-21
By: John McWhorter
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The Unprotected Class
- How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart
- By: Jeremy Carl
- Narrated by: Chris Reilly
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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While political and media elites hysterically condemn an imaginary epidemic of “white supremacy,” in the real world, white Americans are often openly discriminated against. Indeed, anti-white policies have become so interwoven in the fabric of American life that we often fail to recognize them.
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Brave and Important Book!
- By Daniel on 05-31-24
By: Jeremy Carl
Musa gives shape to an obvious yet obscured truth about elite culture
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The professor doesn’t prescribe changes to help bring actions into alignment with speech; instead, he simply rips the scales from the eyes of symbolic and totemic capitalists to reveal how they have been gaslighting themselves and their allies for decades with rhetoric that doesn’t match their actions, and how that alienates the very classes of people they most fervently claim they want to help.
Clear-eyed reasoning backed by rigorous research
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Fascinating Perspective
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Best nonfiction book ever
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Title is rough, the book isn’t!
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First class
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Smart and well developed thesis.
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Wish the author had a professional narrator
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Food for thought - not food for action
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compelling and groundbreaking
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