Whenever I see some moronic term like “Stop Woke” it just translates in my mind to “Stop Education”.

Not so fun fact:

It is popularly known in Nigerian and Western media as “Boko Haram,” which means “Western education is forbidden” (the word boko is a holdover from the colonial English word for book).

Too many similarities between these guys and republicans these days.

Are they genuinely trying to stifle education, or is it all just racist bullshit?

That's the fun part: stifling education is the racist bullshit.

They've been anti-education since desegregation. Back in the '60s the Religious Right, particularly Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, and the people in that orbit, tried really hard to go through the courts and use their freedom of religion under the First Amendment to keep black people out of their church-based schools. Obviously they lost, but they have never forgotten how the mean ol' federal government defiled their perfect little angels by forcing them sit next to some filthy negro while they learn their multiplication tables or whatever. Ever since then they've made it their mission to destroy public education.

By the 1980s that Evangelical movement had become fully ingrained into the Republican party, and that drive to destroy public education came with it. It's what's behind the push for charter schools. It's what's behind the push for private school vouchers. It's what's behind Evangelicals astroturfing school board meetings, and sometimes taking over the school board itself. It's a big part of why public schools (inner city public schools in particular) have been chronically underfunded for longer than I've been alive. It was racism the whole time.

But yeah, whenever I hear a conservative use the word "woke," I've found you can pretty much always mentally transpose "woke" with "ni--er stuff" (or "fa--ot stuff," depending on the context) and whatever they're trying to say suddenly makes a lot more sense.

It definitely, directly benefits them to choke out education for American citizens. They do not want critical thought. That is bad for bottom lines.

It isn't just affecting education, unfortunately. There's a number of topics (e.g. human rights, equality, etc) that society has become more enlightened about and that they'd like to revert.

Are they genuinely trying to stifle education, or is it all just racist bullshit?

Could be a bit of both.

Attacks on "woke" are attacks on civil rights. It's a way to undermine anyone who might stand up for "others."

I used to hear this joke "the first thing we do is kill all the lawyers." Like, haha, lawyers suck. But it's really a playbook for fascism: get rid of the people who might defend the othrrs. Not funny at all.

I know these guys are trying to morph “woke” into some negative term, usually with some racially charged undertones, but it will always be synonymous with “englightened” to me.

Because that's pretty much what it means, social enlightenment. They hate enlightenment.

it will always be synonymous with "englightened" to me.

I love it. Personally, I change 'woke' to 'being a decent human being', and it really highlights how batshit crazy and awful the speaker really is.