Wokism and Peter Boghossian’s Method of «Street Epistemology»

The article explores the ideology of wokism and analyzes the contribution of the American philosopher Peter Boghossian to countering it. The concept of Boghossian’s “street epistemology” is considered in detail — a tool for conducting a conflict-free dialogue, which is designed to encourage a person to think about the reliability of the methods they use to form beliefs, especially religious ones. Boghossian advocates the use of the Socratic method to dissuade believers, and recommends focusing on criticizing faith as a way of knowing (he calls it “unreliable epistemology”) instead of highlighting the external aspects of religion. He characterizes faith and wokism as “mind viruses” and suggests a common method to combat them. The article highlights the similarities between wokism and religious fundamentalism identified by Boghossian and other scientists, and also describes in detail the conflict of some new atheists, including Boghossian, with the woke movement. The article shows that wokism has features of religion, including irrefutable dogmas (widespread racism), an analogue of original sin (whiteness), moral arrogance of adherents (disagreement is considered a vice), magical thinking (gender identity), Puritanism, rituals, martyrs. The concept of the “substitution hypothesis” and the role of new atheism in the formation of wokist atheism, called Atheism Plus, are considered. It is concluded that secularism practices can be applied to counter non-religious irrational ideologies such as wokism.