The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
I'm No Fan of "Woke" Ideology, but This Is Going a Bit Far
How do you know she is a witch?
From Judge Kari Dooley's opinion last week in Indelicato v. Shipman & Goodwin LLP:
Pro se Plaintiff Joseph Indelicato [III] [a Georgetown-trained lawyer] filed this employment discrimination complaint against Defendant Shipman & Goodwin LLP ("Shipman"), in which he claims both religious and race-based discrimination in connection with the termination of his employment as an attorney at the Shipman law firm. Plaintiff, who is a white Christian, alleges that he was terminated as a result of a manufactured harassment complaint by a co-worker of South Asian national origin.
Plaintiff named as additional defendants the United States of America, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher Wray (Director of the FBI), Georgetown University, Feng K. An, District Judge Sarala Nagala, Tanya Hughes, Jason Thody, Frank Blando, 30 Arbor Street LLC, Matthew Berger, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. These defendants are alleged to be co-conspirators with Shipman in a multi-year, overarching conspiracy to destroy Plaintiff's life and the lives of other white Christian people.
The opinion goes on in some detail, but closes thus:
[T]he Court concludes that the SAC [Second Amended Complaint] is subject to dismissal in its entirety because the allegations are, simply put, fantastical and delusional and therefore beyond this Court's ability to adjudicate…. As detailed above, the SAC is replete with such fantastical allegations. In support of his purported gender and religion discrimination claims, Plaintiff invokes numerous antisemitic writings and falsehoods (including by citation to Mein Kampf), to allege that there is a vast, primarily Jewish conspiracy involving federal and state government agencies, the judiciary, private law firms, private universities, national political parties, and various foreign nations, which culminated in his termination.
Multiple times, Plaintiff invokes the use of the supernatural by the coconspirators: For example, he claims that "witchcraft" has been used to affect [defendant coworker] Parikh's account of her interactions with Plaintiff. See also SAC ¶ 69 ("The Woke religion 'empowers' its believers through the use of witchcraft …. Modern technology is ripe with witchcraft; for example, a 'deep fake' video, the use of social media bots, and the selective 'upvoting' of posts that promote preferred narratives …."). Plaintiff states that, by using "the Woke religion and its witchcraft, Parikh has achieved the God-like power of life or death over Plaintiff …. If she decides that Plaintiff's career is permitted to continue, it will be so." Id. ¶ 186. He also claims that Satan is directly controlling and dictating the actions of the alleged members of the conspiracy. See id. ¶¶ 7, 29–30, 72; see also id. ¶ 168 ("Shipman fully intended to destroy Plaintiff's career in ritualistic, occult-like fashion from the get-go, and didn't want to scare Plaintiff away from walking into the trap."). Plaintiff alleges that the "Wokeness" conspiracy has created the antichrist. Id. ¶ 17 ("Wokeness is, in biblical terms, the antichrist.").
The SAC alleges that dozens of actors have conspired to deprive Plaintiff of his employment, his housing, and his life. He alleges that members of the conspiracy have used witchcraft, Satanism, covert assassination attempts, and espionage techniques, to discredit him and turn him into a "slave." These allegations, along with countless others in the SAC, are "precisely the sort of conspiracy theories that the Court is powerless to entertain." Although Plaintiff objects to the use of the term, see id. ¶ 430, there is no better word to describe the SAC other than as a manifesto regarding the Plaintiff's world view. And the Court simply does not have the power to adjudicate such claims….
At the end of the day, it is Plaintiff's own summary argument that makes clear this Court's inability to adjudicate the claims he purports to bring. He writes:
Simply put, Plaintiff's analysis of Woke ideology, and how his disagreement with it triggered the series of events described in the SAC, is in no way fanciful or delusional. There really and truly is a global conspiracy unfolding to destroy the Christian faith using Woke ideology, which Plaintiff has really found himself swept into in a way he could have never envisioned in his worst nightmare. It really is the case that anyone who (like Plaintiff) disagrees with Woke ideology is promptly attacked from all sides and removed from society (to the extent possible), defamed, harassed and (if they have any influence) persecuted by American intelligence agencies, and denied basic constitutional and human rights (the same ones Plaintiff complains of, except likely to the exclusion of the Second Amendment, which could only happen in Connecticut).
It really is the case that a series of global catastrophes (disease, economic calamity, famine and thermonuclear world war) are being manufactured to hasten the death or otherwise force the compliance (enslavement) of those people who, like Plaintiff, have been cruelly cast out of the system. Those people are and will continue to be overwhelmingly white, European Christians, who are the only people who have any reason to reject Woke ideology, not because they are racists and extremists, but because many of them try to believe in God. Lastly, uncomfortable as it may be, it really is the case that the Jews are the masterminds and primary responsible actors, as has been the case in every single one of these civilization-wide attacks in the last 200 years.
Well, at least we are the masterminds, so that's nice.
