Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotechnology entrepreneur who turned into an advocate against critical race theory, is speaking out about the dangers of "wokeness" as a modern day religion that has consumed American institutions.
In August, he released a book titled "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam," which argues that politics must have no place in business and defines a new vision for the future of American capitalism. Called "a traitor to his class," the founder of multi billion-dollar enterprises and former biotech CEO has now turned a new leaf and is warning against a "secular religion" called "wokeness."
"Wokeness is a secular religion. It isn't a religion based on God. It isn't a religion that offers a path to redemption, but it is a secular religion nonetheless," Ramaswamy told CBN News. "When you have a moral vacuum that runs that deep, that's when secular dark religions like wokeness start to fill the void as we have seen the things that used to fill that void: patriotism, faith, hard work on the decline or nearly disappearing - that's what allows 'woke-ism' to effectively become opium for the American soul."
The 36 year old former businessman is a son of immigrants who graduated from Ivy League schools and founded the biotech company Roivant Sciences, which develops an FDA-approved drug for prostate cancer. Ramaswamy left his post as CEO to advocate against a "cultural cancer" that he believes is threatening the American dream that helped him achieve great heights. Ramaswamy lamented, "In the name of diversity, we have actually sentenced true diversity of thought to execution."
The former tech CEO argued that political speech and belief should be added to protected classes to fight discrimination. In fact, Ramaswamy sounded the alarm on how U.S. adversaries such as China are benefiting at the expense of the country while American companies such as Coke, Disney, and Nike impose "wokeness" as a "secular religion."
Ramaswamy called out the blatant hypocrisy of how American associations and figures are criticizing the U.S. but refrain from saying anything negative against China because the Chinese market is at stake. He added that Big Tech is also using "wokeness" to their advantage because it has the power to "censor political speech and alleged hate speech and misinformation that it did not like to see online."
In a conversation with Fox News, Ramaswamy blasted Facebook for pretending that the Big Tech giant is in fact treating all of its users equally when there is an existing collection of "whitelisted" users who are able to bypass the social media's censorship rules. The ex-tech CEO argued that Facebook's monitoring processes are just a "smokescreen to deflect accountability for what is actually a nefarious, coordinated censorship in the classical sense."
Ramaswamy argued that Facebook is "preaching all the while, how their products actually help make the world a better place. So I think that's hypocrisy."