The Very Real Cult of Woke
What a heady time in your life being a college freshman can be. For most of those freshmen, it means being on your own for the very first time in your life. Sure, you can do what you want, but you also must learn the discipline of getting yourself out of bed and off to class, studying when you need to instead of partying. It might mean getting to a job and managing money for the first time. It is basically, Adulthood 101. But it is also a time when you are forming your own beliefs and thoughts on things for yourself. You might base those beliefs on personal experience, or the way you grew up, or learning as much as you can about a certain topic. It is a time when you come to your mindset and worldview on your own.
Not anymore. Colleges and universities used to be where you engaged in critical thinking, debating, and discussing ideas, and perhaps clashing with those who held different beliefs and opinions. But the idea was to get it all out there, bat it around and see what others thought about it. Annabella Rockwell might not have been the average college freshmen. She grew up the heiress to a pharmaceutical fortune on New York City’s tony Upper East Side. Very well to do, very liberal. But she was like all other college freshmen in her excitement to be leaving home and finding her way through college life at Mount Holyoke, an all-female institution in Massachusetts. But Annabella’s mother Melinda Rockwell, said that the daughter she sent off to Mount Holyoke, and the one who returned, were two different people. And in a scene right out of one of those 70’s era documentaries on religious cults, Melinda Rockwell hired a deprogrammer for her daughter.
Annabella says her indoctrination, not education, began almost immediately after starting her freshman year at the school. She said that she went from being someone who saw all people equally, to being as she described, “anxious, nervous, depressed, and sad.” Rockwell also says that she was barely familiar with the word “feminism,” much less versed in the principles of it. All the better for woke liberal professors, and older students who convinced her that “the patriarchy” had been oppressing her her whole life, she just didn’t know it. Annabella also describes an initiation rite of sorts that first year students, not “freshmen,” took part in called the “MoHo chop.” The chop part involved cutting one’s hair in order to “shrug off gender roles.” Annabella said that by her junior year, she began to feel a change within herself. Her relationship with her mother also began to change. Annabella says that she felt the need to “teach” her mother how she was wrong and to think “correctly.”
And in true religious cult fashion, alienation of the students from their families was encouraged. Students coming to stay with faculty members for holiday breaks and not families was encouraged. Annabella also described being ostracized if students did not adhere to the prescribed thinking. She said, “I left school looking for injustice wherever I could and automatically assuming that all white men were sexist. My thoughts were no longer my own.” It was during an intense argument that Melinda said she knew she needed help. She truly believed that her daughter had been brainwashed. She hired a $300 a day “deprogrammer,” and enlisted the help of Annabella’s former tennis coach, who warned Melinda that it might take years for Annabella to return to her old self. Melinda said it was a delicate balance of not pushing too hard and not letting go to getting her daughter back. She described what goes on at America’s colleges and universities. “[Professors and older students] tell the students they are special – it’s like they are anointed – then they tell them how oppressed they are and what victims they are and how they have to go out in the world and be activists to stop the oppression.”
It seems to be a story that is being told by parents more and more. They send little Johnny off to State U. and think they have instilled strong conservative values in him. What parents are finding out, is that they are no match for the indoctrination system America’s colleges and universities have become. They are also paying a pretty penny for little Johnny’s indoctrination. Mount Holyoke carries a $60,000 a year price tag. Other universities can be just as pricey.
Annabella may have been a late bloomer to indoctrination through school. Because of COVID, parents are learning just how young the indoctrination of children begins. We know now that kids as young as kindergarten are being taught critical race theory and radical gender ideology. Now 29, and working as a fundraiser for Prager U, a conservative advocacy outlet, Annabella credits her mother’s “relentlessness” for not giving up on her. It is a dilemma that more and more parents may have to face when their college students come home for breaks, parents who can’t afford a deprogrammer. Prevention will be different for every family. The American education system is rapidly becoming, like the mainstream media, an enemy of the people. And more and more liberals are not afraid to come out and say that parents should have no voice in their children’s education, because they know, at least for now, there are no consequences for their views.
During a Fox News interview, Annabella had some words of advice for students, “stay true to your convictions.” She also said of current students, “if you hear something you know to be untrue, vocalize it. I know it’s scary but if you do, there will be others who stand up with you.”
There may be hope for the next generation yet.
