Senate Hopeful Mike Gibbons Blasts 'Woke' Culture, Says Women Not Oppressed

An Ohio GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate expressed his fear Saturday that young Americans are being indoctrinated against conservative values by "wokeism."

Mike Gibbons, a longtime Ohio businessman and Republican Senate hopeful, told WCMH-TV that the Black Lives Matter movement is a "false narrative."

"'Wokeism' is a re-boiling of Marxist theory, where the players have changed. Instead of attacking the upper classes, as Marx did for the benefit of the working class, right now it's been divided by race or by identity group. If you're gay, if you're a woman, anybody that is not a white male" is persecuted, Gibbons said.

After Gibbons ridiculed "woke" supporters as inane and biased against white men in America, interviewer Colleen Marshall replied, "Are you saying that Blacks, other minorities, women don't have an argument that they have historically haven't been oppressed?"

"I don't think women have been oppressed," Gibbons said. "I think they were just subject to the lack of technology and their place in the world, because physical labor was so important to making a living, 100 years ago we lived on $2-a-day, so people had roles."

Gibbons rejected the suggestion by Marshall that "both sides" of the political spectrum have become radicalized, replying "nothing on the right even compares" to what far-left liberals in America are saying today.

Gibbons, who placed second in the 2018 GOP Senate primaries in Ohio, will face off against several Republican challengers looking to replace current Republican Senator Rob Portman in the 2022 general elections.

"I'm very troubled by what I see in the United States. I believe we live in the greatest country in the history of the world and there are just far too many people that don't see it that way," Gibbons told the Columbus, Ohio-based WCMH-TV. "There are very dangerous philosophies which came out of [academia] and now they've entered into the corporate world...part of their philosophy is that you cannot debate them."

"Unless we defeat this, this really is a Marxist takeover," Gibbons added, prompting Marshall to push back on what many Americans view as the "dangerous conspiracy theories" coming out of the country's political right-wing.

Newsweek reached out to representatives for Gibbons' campaign Sunday afternoon for additional remarks.