America: Exporting Radical Social Ideologies to the World

America is the world’s biggest billboard and an unparalleled cultural hyperpower. The export of American culture through entertainment, business, communications and social networks means that nothing that happens in America stays in America. This unprecedented soft power has global ripples, and other nations are impacted by the tide of American trends.

“America’s traditions,” according to an Oct. 27, 2022, Wall Street Journal editorial, “made our culture the envy of the world. They also helped the U.S. build alliances and, when necessary, win wars.”

But, the commentary states, rather than using this soft power to affirm traditional Western values and U.S. interests, the current American foreign policy is “proselytizing for woke ideology. The foreign-policy implications could be catastrophic.”

What is woke?

“Wokeness” or “being woke” originated as vernacular for being alert to and actively fighting against perceived racial injustice and social discrimination. Adopted first in American universities, it initially focused on white privilege and slavery compensations before morphing into a broader ideology as part of a culture war.

Wokeness has since broadened to include many diverse issues, ranging from race to gender identity to sexual morality to immigration. These are all commonly framed through the lens of bias and oppressor-oppressed groups.

People from different parts of the political spectrum use “woke” as a rallying cry against ideas they disagree with, but the term is commonly understood to represent radical social progressive ideology.

Originally a faddish campus philosophy, it has become increasingly intolerant as it’s become the dominant ideology in government institutions, medical associations, the media and even the military.

One consistent feature of social progressivism is that it rejects virtually every tenet of Christianity and replaces religion with a radical moral absolutism that categorizes all people as either victims or oppressors.

In The Atlantic, Brookings Institution fellow Shadi Hamid comments, “No wonder the newly ascendant American ideologies, having to fill the vacuum where religion once was, are so divisive. They are meant to be divisive” (“America Without God,” April 2021).

“Adherents,” continues Hamid, “take religious notions . . . and repurpose them for secular ends.”

U.S. State Department promoting progressive ideas?

The foreign policy of the U.S. State Department has long championed religious freedom, human rights and equal opportunities. Over time, these foundations of cultural diplomacy have become universal values and assumed great importance.

But today, even as it faces looming challenges, such as international economic competition and the global danger of increasing Chinese and Russian aggression, the current administration is prioritizing the export of “critical” theories to foreign audiences at the expense of those fundamental and enduring principles.

It seems foreign policy is becoming an extension of domestic politics. The U.S. State Department is putting a rigid and divisive social agenda at the forefront of its overseas diplomatic outreach, to the confusion, consternation and even derision of U.S. allies and enemies.

“LGBTQ+ rights are,” according to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, “a core part of our foreign policy.” The extreme nature of this agenda became clear with a $2.6 billion request for the 2023 budget that, according to a USAID press release, would fund “foreign assistance programs that promote gender equity and equality worldwide.” (This is despite America’s record high national debt.)

A newly created post of Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice was given the task of advancing the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex persons. It was given broad authority to direct State Department work on foreign assistance, foreign policy strategy, budgets and public messaging.

Cultural colonialism

New U.S. foreign policy initiatives now advocate sex and gender doctrines that are still highly controversial at home.

Here are just a few of the contentious initiatives that have been taken abroad:

• U.S. embassies hosted or participated in numerous celebrations for the post-modern dogma of gender fluidity with special events for the monthlong “pride” festivities. The State Department website highlighted how it “celebrated Coming Out Day, Spirit Day, International Pronouns Day, Intersex Awareness Day, Intersex Day of Solidarity, and Ace week (celebrating those with asexual-spectrum identities), with many of these commemorative days highlighted for the first time in the Department’s history.” The virtue signaling continued with Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeting about the “International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia.”
• Pride rainbow banners and Black Lives Matter flags have been authorized to fly alongside the American flag at U.S. embassies.
• U.S. citizens can now be issued passports that allow identification to whichever gender they prefer, including an X gender marker for nonbinary, intersex and gender nonconforming persons.
• In an effort to “promote diversity and inclusion,” the State Department has provided cultural grants to “support the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives, advance national interests, and enhance national security.” These grants have funded everything from drag theater performances in Ecuador to a film festival in Portugal that featured films about drag culture, incest and sex between adults and minors. Lebanon, a nation hovering just above economic disaster, received a grant for a “gender and sexuality library,” and Hyderabad and Chennai, India, received funds for workshops on the rights of the LGBTQI+ community.

A global backlash

The majority of countries outside the Western sphere adhere to more traditional values. They do not want the U.S. State Department lecturing them about modern values. This hostile cultural colonialism, as some consider it, is increasingly leading to contention. African nations and Islamic countries in the Middle East are rejecting socially progressive ideas on marriage, family and gender. Majority-Catholic countries object to abortion. European nations find the push on migration, identity and post-colonialism divisive.

The fight against woke theories has European heads of state looking for a leader. According to author and foreign policy expert Walter Russell Mead, “Many values dear to the hearts of Western cultural leaders (LGBTQ rights, abortion on demand, freedom of speech understood as allowing unchecked Internet pornography) puzzle and offend billions of people around the world who haven’t kept up with the latest hot trends on American campuses . . . Moreover, the liberal West’s new, post-Judeo-Christian values agenda divides the West. Culture wars at home don’t promote unity overseas.”

Changing perception of America

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled “Woke Imperialism Harms U.S. Interests,” noted geopolitical expert Jakub Grygiel explains that the U.S. is “pushing an avant-garde concept of ‘rights’” that is isolating America.

“Instead of being admired and emulated,” Grygiel predicts, “the U.S. is becoming for other countries, including some allies, a power to be at best ignored and at worst avoided . . . As a result, the U.S. becomes less appealing to many of our friends and less fearsome to our enemies.”

The war against progressive ideas

An increasing emphasis on le wokisme—the French adaptation of the American term woke—took hold in France starting in 2021. Now resistance to progressive American hysteria is spreading through French higher education and society. French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive ideas from identity-obsessed Americans—specifically on race, gender and post-colonialism—are undermining their society.

Le wokisme is said to be fueling secessionism, gnawing at national unity, encouraging Islamism and wounding France’s proud intellectual and cultural heritage.

Former French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, speaking to France’s Le Monde newspaper, said wokeism is an ideology that “fragments and divides, and has conquered certain political, media and academic circles.”

French President Emmanuel Macron went even further, stating that “certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,” are “racializing” France, creating divisions between minorities, and are “an existential threat” to his nation. 

Nations that were once behind the Iron Curtain—Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic—are calculating their best national interests and view wokeness as a risk to European security and social cohesion. The backlash to American-exported woke ideas is swaying elections, with a handful of nationalist and populist parties across Europe making major advances. Common themes, which are successfully being used in election after election, rail against mass immigration, cultural Marxism and the hollowing out of traditional family values.

In Germany, the right-wing AfD has achieved an unprecedented surge. Far-right parties, championing anti-woke agendas, are propping up coalitions in Finland, Sweden and Slovakia. Voters in Spain and Italy have in recent elections shown increasing animosity toward the new woke ideals of climate science, immigration and pro-LGTBQ+ laws.

Italy’s first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, in office since October 2022, has loudly criticized gender extremism, praised traditional family values and said “no to the LGBT lobby.”

The fight against woke theories has European heads of state looking for a leader. As Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign-affairs correspondent at The Wall Street Journal, notes: “If you looked at statements from far-right leaders across Europe, they always said that we need a strong leader like Putin who defends our values, our civilization against the decadence of the West.”

Russia and China attack the West’s promotion of progressive ideas

“The moral and political confusion of the contemporary West,” states Walter Russell Mead, “is the secret weapon that the leaders of Russia and China believe will bring the American world order to its knees.”

Even as America sends billions of dollars in armaments to Ukraine, the promotion of pride events in Kiev puts the U.S. at odds with the culture of an overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian country. This gives Russia the opportunity to present itself as the protector of family, tradition and religion.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is attempting to weaken Western resolve and undermine Western unity by proclaiming Russia to be the bastion of traditional values.

A successor ideology

The Bible clearly defines a godly standard of conduct applicable to mankind since the dawn of creation. The law given to Israel provided specific instructions on subjects ranging from sex to the proper respect and treatment of foreigners. Sin is defined as breaking these immutable laws (1 John 3:4).

The life that Christians are called to transcends getting swept up in societal pressures and trends. We are to follow the Creator God, who states, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).

Unfortunately, the astounding number of Americans and Europeans who now treat God’s Word with utter contempt has climbed so high that it brings to mind the observation of G.K. Chesterton. He said, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

The “anything” that has spread throughout the West today includes extremist views that twist history, justice and sex to promote sin, confusion and endless discontent.

The secular theories and societal debates that have been thundering through the British and American public spheres—centered around race, abortion, transgender rights and the legacy of colonialism—are likely to further separate Europe from America.

Biblical prophecy describes a confederation of 10 core nations in a future European superstate (Revelation 17:12; see “Is the EU a Superpower?”). These nations today are under an increasing threat of fragmentation and are only loosely held together by kinship, culture and traditions (Matthew 24:7-9).

In response to greater social pressures and external threats, this geopolitical behemoth will soon reawaken to astound the entire world (Revelation 13:1-7). Despite the awe-inspiring power of this political and military colossus, it is described as a mixture of iron and clay—partly strong and partly weak (Daniel 2:31-45; 11:40). This may describe the combustible mix of divisive ideologies that are present in a more tradition-oriented Eastern bloc and a liberal or progressive Western group.

Despite these troubling trends, the future is guaranteed to bring another completely different—and lasting—belief system with the much-anticipated return of Jesus Christ. To be sure that you understand what will happen prior to His second coming, read our free booklet The Book of Revelation: The Storm Before the Calm.