Vivek Ramaswamy, the 'antiwoke' billionaire who is facing Trump for the White House | International

Vivek Ramaswamy, billionaire entrepreneur, successful biotech investor and scourge of ideology wokeHe wants to be president of the United States. On Tuesday night he announced in a video his candidacy for the 2024 election for the Republican Party. She accompanied that announcement with an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, published simultaneously, in which he explains that he is moved by the certainty that the country is plunged into a "national identity crisis." “Faith, patriotism and hard work are on the decline,” he writes. "We embrace secular religions like the climatismhe covidism and gender ideology to satisfy our search for meaning, but we cannot answer what it means to be an American. “We have become so obsessed with our diversity and our difference that we forget everything that makes us the same,” she says in the video.

Ramaswamy, 37, is the author of a book of, like the rest of his professional endeavors, success: Woke Inc. it is his denunciation of the consequences of large companies embracing "justice to make money." “[La responsabilidad corporativa] It is quietly wreaking havoc on American democracy. It involves a small group of investors and CEOs determining what is good for society instead of the usual democratic mechanisms. This new trend has created a great cultural change (...). It is polarizing our politics. It is dividing our country to breaking point,” Ramaswamy writes of the term. wokewhich was born to designate those who are aware (literally, are “awake”) of inequality, racism and other forms of social injustice.

One never knows for sure with American politics, but his bet does not seem to have much of a future (nor did that of a certain Donald Trump in 2016). For now, he has served to encourage the race in the Republican Party, while nothing moves in the Democratic ranks, who await the announcement (or not) of Joe Biden to run for re-election.

They await Ramaswamy at the starting line to the White House, Trump, who launched his third candidacy for the position last November, and Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina and former ambassador with Trump to the United Nations. In the conservative formation, all eyes have been on the governor of Florida for months, Ron DeSantis, who, at 44, is defoliating the daisy on whether it is too soon or the exact moment to test whether his ultra-conservative experiment works for him at the polls. in the same spectacular way that he has done in his own state in the last elections. Other possible candidates are former vice president (2017-2021) Mike Pence, or the governors of Virginia (Glenn Younggkin) and New Hampshire (Chris Sununu).

And this week there is speculation in American political circles about the possible bet of Tim Scott, senator from South Carolina, an African-American politician who bases his aspirations on a somewhat more traditional vision of American conservatism, more in the optimistic wake of Ronald Reagan than in Trump's angry worldview. Whether Scott, Ramaswamy or Haley, both sons of Indian immigrants, make it through the Republican primary, they will make history by becoming the first non-white candidate in the party's history.

Something that unites all the possible candidates and many American conservative politicians, white men or not, is the argument antiwokeof which DeSantis has made an effective emblem in Florida, "the place where he woke come to die." For the governor, woke it can be many things: from the books that it prohibits in schools to the protection of LGTBI rights or the inclusion of the study of racism in academic curricula.

In his book, Ramaswamy gives his version of what is meant by the fashionable insult in the United States, which was born as something positive, to designate those who are "awake" to the injustices that have been hidden for too long. "Basically," writes the businessman, "to be woke it means obsessing over race, gender, and sexual orientation. With climate change too. (...) Today, more and more people are waking up, despite the fact that generations of civil rights leaders have taught us not to focus on race or gender. And now capitalism is also trying to stay awake. Once the corporations discovered the awakening, the inevitable happened: they used it to make money.

In the article of journalRamaswamy argues that “to put America first [Make America First, eslogan prestado de Trump]”, it is convenient before “rediscovering what the United States is”, and affirms that the launch of his campaign hides “a cultural movement to create a new American Dream”, that pursues “the search for excellence without apologies”.

And as a credential, he provides his family history: “My parents entered the country legally, worked hard and raised two children who later created businesses that improved the lives of thousands of Americans. We need more immigrants like them, instead of the ones who break the law when they come to the United States. That means securing the border without apology and eliminating lottery-based immigration in favor of meritocratic admission.”

In the text, Ramaswamy also pledges to strip federal officials of their benefits and to work to eliminate affirmative action (positive discrimination) "in the American economy," which takes into account ethnic issues to promote equal opportunity. In addition, he will require the Department of Justice to prosecute "illegal preferences based on race."

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