How to Reverse the Anti-Woke to Reactionary Pipeline

It's really about who has 'the cards', as Trump himself put it.

Photo by 愚木混株 Yumu on Unsplash

In the 2010s, a new brand of 'progressive' coded politics inspired by certain misguided theories rooted in the academic philosophies of postmodernism and critical theory, commonly called 'woke', went mainstream. What made this brand of politics different was its illiberalism, as seen in its strategies of de-platforming, cancel culture and top-down language policing. Prior to the mid-2010s, it was generally assumed that 'progressive' and 'liberal' were basically synonymous, and that 'progressives' were anti-censorship while the right was pro-censorship, at least in the English-speaking West. Hence the arrival of woke politics led to at least some cognitive dissonance for many people. Gradually, genuine (pro-freedom) liberals developed the language to argue against woke illiberalism. Thus began the 'anti-woke' movement, for better or worse.

However, something else happened along the way. Well-funded reactionary forces began entering the anti-woke discourse, and later on came to dominate it, through their well-funded media networks. While the original liberal anti-woke movement was about intellectually criticizing wokeness and the postmodern critical theories that drove it, in order to restore freedom, these reactionaries intended to foment an anti-intellectual culture war, in order to support the election of certain authoritarian politicians, and push through their authoritarian agenda. Thus while the original anti-wokeism was pro-freedom, this imposter anti-wokeism was/is actively anti-freedom. In particular, the reactionaries seized on the widespread frustration with wokeness to promote support for authoritarian reactionaries like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis in America, and other similar politicians like Nigel Farage in Britain, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Marie Le Pen in France, the AfD party in Germany, and so on. Judging by the behavior of Trump, DeSantis and Bolsonaro in office, it is clear that this new form of reactionary politics poses a major threat to free speech and other fundamental liberties. Given that state-driven restrictions on free speech have long been justifiably seen as a bigger authoritarian threat than cultural-driven restrictions on free speech, this means that this reactionary right political movement has become an even bigger threat to freedom than wokeness itself.

So how did a movement for freedom get so successfully hijacked, and turned into its opposite? Several factors, to be honest. But most importantly, the fact that the reactionary right has long been much more powerful and well-organized than classical liberals, libertarians and even moderate conservatives combined. The fact that they have a lot more money than us too. Once they were in the picture, it was never going to be a fair fight anymore. Just witness what the well-funded reactionaries have been able to do to the US Libertarian Party, if not the libertarian movement as a whole.

And how, exactly, do we fight back against such a powerful and uncompromising machine? To answer this question, we should first look at who, among those who have spoken out against wokeness at some point in the 2010s, has been able to resist the 'anti-woke to reactionary' pipeline. It is largely those who have been able to maintain their independence. Those who have resisted every form of tribalism. Those who have strong philosophical beliefs, and have stayed true to their values, whether the implications of such values are popular or not. Those who have stayed loyal to the cause of pursuing the objective truth, even at the expense of burning bridges within the tribe. Those who really want more freedom for all of us, rather than wanting to join a team. Those who weren't sucked into consuming 'anti-woke' media as their almost sole source of news. Those who have remained open-minded through all this, and have remained open to arguments from various perspectives, including those who appear to disagree with their own. And so on. Which means all this is what we need to keep doing, going forward.

The problem is, those of us who actually practice all of the above often find ourselves even more isolated and more powerless as a result. Speaking for myself, I can say that my honesty has come at a cost. I can imagine why many influencers and journalists who actually depend on it for a living wouldn't be able to afford to be so honest. Hence why the more 'popular' figures of the anti-woke movement have had the highest rates of falling into the pipeline. This means that it is not enough to just maintain our own moral conscience on this matter. If we leave it as a matter solely for the moral conscience on a personal level, we would be complicit in tolerating the current unfair playing field. The reactionary authoritarians would still be winning in the real world, even if our own consciences are seemingly not tainted by 'staying above the fray'. Freedom would still suffer as a result. Which is why we need to actively try to change the situation.

The reactionary right is certainly not shy about feeling justified regarding obtaining and holding onto the necessary power to enact their authoritarian agendas, even if unfair and controversial means are to be used towards that end. (This, in part, is why they can never be trusted with free speech.) This is manifested clearly on the issue of gerrymandering in American politics. Most Republican-led states allow almost unrestricted gerrymandering, while many Democratic-led states have some kind of independent districting mechanism. Recently, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, encouraged by Trump, has taken this openness to gerrymander for the sake of power to whole new levels. I think all this just shows that the reactionary right is all about power, even if it is to be obtained unfairly. No amount of rational debate and righteous argumentation is going to change this, because they simply don't care. I think that, going forward, this must inform our approach towards them. Make no mistake: they are doing the cultural equivalent of gerrymandering to us classical liberals, libertarians and even moderate conservatives. In both cases, it is about obtaining power over others unfairly. And we must not unilaterally disarm ourselves like the Democrats did.

As Trump famously told the world earlier this year, when 'you don't have the cards', you really don't have too many options, when you're dealing with people like himself, who operate on the basis of power over truth and fairness. Recent events in Texas have many Democrats regretting their choice to unilaterally disarm themselves on the issue of gerrymandering, but it might just be too little too late at this point, because they simply don't have a 'mutually assured destruction' type 'card' they could feasibly pull out in time to give Trump and Abbott pause. The lesson here is that we have to be able to recognize and differentiate between those who are committed to honesty and fairness, versus those who are essentially power players. When faced with power players, we need to ensure that we have enough cards to play, period. Nothing is more important than this. It is a lesson we need to learn if we want to defend freedom itself. At the very least, we should learn not to empower the reactionary right while compromising our own independent voices and our own independent agency, like some people in the anti-woke movement (I won't name names) actually did, out of sheer blind frustration towards wokeness, and blind faith in the 'anti-woke tribe' to make things right.

As for the actual answer as to when do we classical liberals and libertarians actually 'have the cards', when dealing with the political right's powerplay? Based on the empirical evidence of the past two decades, it seems it is whenever the right is relatively weak, either politically or culturally. During the Obama era, the right was both out of power (at least in America) and internally divided (having finally come to their senses that the 'War on Terror' was actually a bad thing), and they allowed plenty of libertarian voices and influences in their circles. Ron Paul became a respected voice, and both the Bush-era religious right and the up-and-coming populist culture warriorism were relatively muted. Similarly, during the first Trump administration, although the right was in power politically, their cultural position was still weak, as they were still reeling from the aftereffects of the Millennials' rejection of Bush-era politics, as well as their recent defeat on gay marriage. The result was that they continued to uphold their own freedoms above all else, and briefly tried to make common ground with classical liberals and libertarians on the free speech threat coming from the woke left. On the other hand, in periods where the right was/is strong politically, like the middle of the Bush-43/War on Terror era, or right now, or where the right was at least strong culturally, like during the post-COVID era, they often have no problem with trampling on the freedom of others, and silencing those who disagree with them one way or another. Therefore, it is clear that classical liberals and libertarians 'have the cards' against the right when the right is weak culturally and/or politically.

When the right is weak (relatively speaking), they would be forced to align with us, if only to protect their own freedoms out of defensiveness. On the other hand, when the right is strong, they would be in a position to be dismissive of guarantees of freedom, and they would also be more able to hijack our causes and drown out our voices, like they have been doing these past few years. This is what I mean by us 'having the cards' or not. Therefore classical liberals and libertarians have good reason to fear the right (at least in its current form) getting too strong, to put it mildly. This is especially true given the inherently unequal relationship between the reactionary right and classical liberals, backed by established power networks, media infrastructure and deep pockets alike, and given the right's long-standing entanglement with and effect on large parts of the classical liberal and libertarian landscape. (I'm actually going to go further and argue that this actually applies to moderate conservatives too, given that they are just as uncomfortable about the Trumpian moment we find ourselves in, while they are clearly unable to defeat or even weaken MAGA or right-wing populism in general.) It is true that during times when the right is weaker, we might have a stronger left to deal with, and we need to be prepared to counter leftist overreach like wokeness with sound arguments of our own. But at least this is an argument that could be won using facts, logic and rational debate, as our recent experience in dealing with wokeness has shown. The same can't be said about a reactionary right that is hellbent on gaining power by any means, and using that power to enact their agenda without compromise.

TLDR: The way for classical liberals and libertarians to 'have the cards' to play against the reactionary right, and hence prevent them from hijacking our movements and turning them into anti-freedom political forces, is simply to consciously refrain from lending our strength and support to them, and to stop them (as much as possible) from growing into a dominant position, where they can and will use that dominant position to crush freedom.

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TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Progressive Conservative Manifesto, the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series. She is also the author of her autobiography The TaraElla Story.