Sigmund Freud was a lifelong conservative, but American conservatives tend to misunderstand that.  This misunderstanding robs us of a big weapon in the culture wars. If Freud were alive today, he would be an anti-woke warrior.

Woke ideology is Marxism applied to sexual "identity groups," often imaginary ones. The old Marxism stirred up workers against owners, although Marxists themselves were usually children of the middle class and the rich. Today billionaires and their offspring stoke up woke war.

Without the workers, the Left needed new victim groups: That's what LGBQT is about. The key is for radicals to act in the name of victim groups. But radicals are not victims, they ride to power on the backs of their favorite victims.

Sigmund Freud believed that sexuality was a force, not a hobby, and like other psychological forces, sexuality could be dangerous. Today we are seeing sexual "liberation" used as a force to destroy the healthy norms of society, especially the way children are treated.

The idea of sex-obsessed adults interfering with normal child development is obscene and dangerous. Adults should let children grow in their own ways. They don't belong to Joe Biden or "Rachel" Levine.

Freud would have hated woke, because he believed that raw sexuality was selfish, primitive, and often destructive. He saw clients of all kinds, because Vienna was a refuge for sexual adventurism, often by powerful aristocrats able to prey on the poor. Freud never believed in "sexual liberation." He believed in self-control.

Freud was also familiar with mob violence in Russia and Poland, and more generally in times of war and social chaos. That's what he meant by "primitive emotions." In America at that time, the KKK persecuted Southern Blacks with the same kinds of raw, primitive hatred and violence.

Today, the Democrats are back to race-baiting. Ordinary voters who think their party is still "liberal" are deceived. Their party left them years ago.

When you want to tribalize society you have to set groups against each other. Blacks are told to hate whites, because of slavery in 1619; gays are supposed to hate "breeders," and sexual predators prey on children "for love" -- with the help of the teachers unions.

Our daily news shows how sexual predation can lead to murder and child abuse. Freud understood that. He knew a lot about mobs in Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine. In Russia the Tsarist secret police made a specialty of whipping up anti-Jewish riots, to keep the peasants in line. Freud knew about mobs.

Freud's believed that we start life as little savages, and the job of parents and teachers is to restrain and channel our primitive impulses into civilized behavior. 

When Nazi street gangs came to Vienna in the 1930s, Freud saw them as another explosion of primitive savagery. Hitler was a mob agitator and so was Lenin. 

Today's Left has recruited sexual preferences to create new "group identities" -- new flags of group mobilization and warfare.

The wokies inflict harm by confusing young children about things they don't understand, by propagandizing weak and vulnerable victims, and by turning college campuses into mob scenes.

Freud's therapy is about civilized life. 

Woke is about barbarism.

Image: Public Domain