Russell Bell has posted The Weaponization of Presentism and Anti-Woke Discourse: A Critical Framework for Understanding Contemporary Structural Erasure on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This study employs critical race theory, institutional analysis, and counter-hegemonic frameworks to examine how contemporary anti-woke discourse weaponizes presentist interpretations of history to facilitate structural erasure through epistemological warfare. Using a novel collaborative methodology that combines traditional critical scholarship with AI-assisted research verification, this analysis demonstrates that the systematic dismantling of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives represents a coordinated institutional response to challenges against white supremacist structures. This analysis argues that anti-woke discourse operates as a state-driven epistemological warfare campaign—a strategic manipulation of knowledge systems and belief structures designed to make structural racism epistemologically invisible while leaving its material structures intact. The analysis reveals a cyclical pattern showing how structural racism adapts to maintain its position in American institutions through controlling narratives, destroying knowledge structures, and excluding alternative epistemologies. The paper documents how this administration’s activism aims not merely at policy change but at the permanent destruction of the cognitive infrastructure necessary for multiracial democracy.