Why Right-wing Influencers Moving Away from Anti-Woke Talk is Sinister
It's part of the right's shameless move towards adopting woke-style authoritarianism
In recent weeks, there appears to be a concerted effort by influencers identifying with the political right to move away from 'anti-woke' messaging. The story they all appear to be telling is that woke is effectively over, because the left itself has decided to pack away the wokeness, in light of Donald Trump's victory over Kamala Harris last year. Hence, Trump has had the final triumph over woke, and there's no need for anti-woke talk anymore.
Firstly, the story being told reeks of historical revisionism. Overtly woke activism, particularly in the form of de-platformings, cancellations, promotion of ideas rooted in various postmodern critical theories, and justifying illiberal actions through the lens of identity, has been in decline for several years now. Personally, I first noticed this happening during mid-late 2021, and more and more people noticed this development during 2022 and 2023. By 2024, when the US Presidential election campaign was in full swing, peak wokeness was firmly in the rearview mirror. Kamala Harris, who embraced several woke talking points back in 2019-20, clearly distanced herself from such views in 2024, while multiple opinion pieces declared the 'progressive moment' to be over during the course of 2024, well before Trump was re-elected. Even many of the examples these influencers used to illustrate the decline of wokeness actually happened under Biden! To say that Trump 2.0 killed woke simply flies in the face of a history that is on the public record. It is simply a historical fact that the 2010s woke moment ended under Biden.
Of course, many MAGA-aligned influencers pretended that woke was still going strong, that cancel culture was still a big thing, and that the illiberal left was still holding sway everywhere, right up until last year's election, in a bid to tarnish the Democrats by association, and rally support for Trump. Thus, one could argue that their belated declaration of victory over woke was simply a way to wrap up a talking point that is both no longer needed politically and no longer very relevant, while also giving Trump some undeserved credit. However, I actually think there could be more to this. After all, concerted messaging from right-wing influencers generally signal a deliberate change of course for the movement they represent. A good example is how, back in 2021, they all suddenly turned from identifying with classical liberalism to blaming wokeness on liberalism itself. What happened next was the implementation of illiberal policies by various Republican state governments to wage the culture war on behalf of the reactionary right, including the bullying of 'woke corporations' like Disney and Target, and the silencing of 'woke' teachers with 'Don't Say Gay' laws, all of which represented a major flex of illiberal state power that the classical liberal tradition would certainly condemn. All this, in turn, set the stage for the even more illiberal actions of Trump 2.0.
Given that anti-woke talk has long been a large part of right-aligned influencer culture, its deliberate abandonment in a concerted manner is almost certain to represent yet another significant turning point in the development of the populist right. To understand what this turning is about, we have to look at where the populist right is right now. Under Trump 2.0, the vanguard of the populist right has abandoned all pretenses to respecting free speech. Winning the culture wars trumps free speech now, as seen in right-identified influencers' enthusiastic embrace of the Trump administration, even as it tramples on free speech in a way not seen since 1950s McCarthyism. This is basically the same attitude that drove the woke left to embrace de-platforming and cancel culture. Except the new, populist right version is even worse, because it actually leverages the power of the government to trample on free speech, in clear defiance of both the classical liberal and conservative traditions. Given all this, the anti-woke rhetoric that used to be directed at the worst excesses of the woke left can clearly be directed at Trump and the populist right nowadays. Unsurprisingly, the more liberal-inclined members of the right are calling out the more illiberal vanguard of their movement as the 'woke right', in an attempt to halt their illiberal advance. Thus anti-wokeism is now effectively being used by more moderate members of the right to stall the populist right vanguard's attempt to break free of the constraints imposed by the need to respect free speech. This development is unsurprising, given that the roots of the original classical liberal version of anti-wokeness were in concern for free speech.
For the populist right vanguard, liberation of their movement from the constraints of free speech is crucial for their project of remaking society (see e.g. Project 2025), just as it was for the woke left. (Generally speaking, free speech makes top-down radical change of any kind basically impossible to execute.) Thus, anti-woke talk has to be expunged from the right-wing conscience, once and for all. The only way to do this would be by historicizing the whole anti-woke episode. By declaring a final victory over wokeness, the anti-woke state of mind, including its insistence on free speech, can be packed away once and for all, as a strategy suited to another time. Moreover, by attributing the victory over wokeness to Trump, Trump the person (and what he represents) replaces the need for the anti-woke movement once and for all, in an almost religious sense, thus from now on, the populist right movement only needs to follow Trump wherever he goes, no matter how illiberal or authoritarian that destination is. This is why I suspect the populist right is about to get even more authoritarian, even more open about their attempts to radically change society, and even bolder in their trampling over free speech, within the next year.
For classical liberals, the defense of free speech, from threats on both the 'left' and the 'right', is a never-ending task that must also adapt to the constantly evolving circumstances we find ourselves in. On one hand, while the illiberal left seems to have receded from much of its overtly illiberal forms of activism, the mindset that drove that activism is still clearly alive and well in many areas of society. This is why we must not pack away our criticisms of postmodernism and critical theory. We must continue our quest to win progressives back over to old school liberalism. On the other hand, the illiberal right is clearly attempting to shake off the constraints imposed on it by the rules of free speech, which is why they are attempting to historicize the anti-woke movement. Expect them to completely adopt the worst excesses that characterized the woke left in the 2010s, and perhaps even worse things, because they also have the power of the state on their side, something the woke left never had.
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.
Sadly, pure examples of opportunism and tribalism