Asian-American conservative Kangmin Lee said on Sunday that “wokeism” is becoming a new secular religion that gives people a sense of purpose in the absence of traditional religious belief.
“Wokeism is the next or the new secular religion.” Kangmin Lee told Jan Jekielek, host of The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” at CPAC 2021 on Feb. 28.
“Most people worship something whether they are religious or not. And so this wokeness is this way for a lot of people who do not have a sense of purpose.
“I think deep inside the human spirit, a lot of us are longing to fight for something and find meaning and purpose in life. ... If you strip away religion from those people, and they don’t have anything to fight for, they’re going to look for something to fight for” which is many times causes that have been “fabricated ... from the left and the narrative that’s been crafted by the media,” Lee added.
Lee, a recent college graduate who experienced the ideological climate there, said that the “fabricated” causes driving wokeness, such as the United States being systemically racist, are completely “debunked” by the success of Asian Americans, and the narrative being crafted around dark skin-targeted police brutality is simply not true.
“If you look at the data, there are so many more white people who die than black people by police every single year,” Lee said.
Growing up in a Democrat-dominated state, Lee said he’s been surrounded by very left-leaning individuals. He'd been told constantly that “President Trump was a racist” and conservatives were terrible, and as an Asian, he must vote Democrat.
But Lee said he found it conflicting since as a devout Christian his values should align with conservatism because it “stems from Judeo-Christian values.”
Lee said he was really quiet after he first experienced a change in his ideology. But felt he needed to speak up when the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement came up after George Floyd’s death. As a result, he was denounced by all his college friends when he tried to offer them some facts on the issue.
“All my friends who I shared food with, ate with, hung out, grabbed tacos, had late-night study sessions with, all said the nastiest things to me ... and these are Christians.”
“The nastiest people to me were these woke Christians who thought they were an ally to BLM and those who are oppressed and they were saying the nastiest things to me, saying: I shouldn’t even call myself a Christian. I shouldn’t even call myself a human being. I’m a race traitor,” Lee said.
But Lee urged others not to be afraid, because even if people cancel you, others will accept you.
“I’ve been able to share, as an Asian, as a non-white person who’s young and in his early 20s, that you don’t need to conform to the left. And conservatism is the way to go. And we must go back to the values, the American values that made this country so great to begin with, if you want to see progress and a better future for this country,” Lee said.
