Chris Rock Rips ‘Woke’ Culture

Chris Rock used an appearance on “The Daily” podcast to attack what he called the “woke 1.0” era and to compare institutionalized outrage to the Salem witch hunts.

The interview, with host David Marchese, came as Rock promoted “Misty Green,” a film he wrote, directed and starred in. Marchese asked whether anything redeeming came out of the post-George Floyd period. Rock said Democratic politicians now seem to be moving away from that moment.

He did not reject the original impulse. Advocating for people on the margins and giving them a voice is “great,” he said, but it has to include forgiveness. “The problem with wokeness is we’re in the Old Testament right now. And the Old Testament has no forgiveness. The Old Testament didn’t work. So they had to write a remix called the New Testament.”

The failure, in his telling, starts “when you institutionalize it.” Helping people who need help is one thing. Building an office around the hunt is another.

He reached for Salem to make the point. “The Salem witch hunts. I’m sure the first three witches they caught were actually f***ing witches. But then you open up a witch office and now you’ve got to start lying. Now you’ve gotta f***ing make s*** up because you’ve got overhead. You’ve got to justify the witch hunters f***ing pensions and s***.”

Rock said calling for forgiveness is not the same as excusing abuse. Friends can still be corrected. “If you’re only friends with your friends when they’re good, they’re not your friends.”

He also said he is “glad that all of this stuff happened,” because some voices were heard that otherwise would not have been. The objection was to a system that, once staffed and funded, had to keep producing targets.