On “Woke Right”
Contra the political philosopher Yoram Hazony, “woke right” is not an op. It is instead an apt descriptor for a sizable segment of the New Right.
If one term defined the past decade or so of left-wing political activism, it was the word “woke.” It was used as a positive identity marker, a pejorative, and neutral descriptor, all at the same time. It was embraced by activists, political pundits, random internet commentators, and even the former Vice President of the United States. Alongside “equity,” it was the buzzword de jour for several years, especially around 2020’s so-called “racial reckoning” – really a series of violent anti-American riots hypercharged by the pandemic experience and social media, including the Chinese-run TikTok. It is a well-established term that normally refers to a radical progressive ethos on largely cultural issues, including race, gender, sexuality, and rhetoric. Opposition to it was a major factor in the 2024 presidential victory for Donald Trump.
Recently, however, the term has been expanded to go after some on the political right, with critics of the New Right using it to describe their ideological opponents. To the targets of the “woke right” pejorative, this is an unfair attack against real conservatism and nationalism by a bunch of globalist liberals who are trying to destroy the successful anti-woke coalition that helped power Trump’s triumph and the general ‘vibe shift’ in American culture after that election. Israeli political philosopher and NatCon darling Yoram Hazony is the most mainstream and well-known proponent of this argument, stating his case in a recent essay that calls “woke right” an op.[1]
But it isn’t an op, nor is it an inapt descriptor of a very real intellectual and rhetorical trend on the online right. Because woke was never purely about policies, but an overarching ethos and worldview. And segments of the New Right fit it to a T.
Hazony describes woke as follows:
“The “woke” neo-Marxists said the U.S. was “systematically racist,” and that it had to “abolish whiteness” through revised hiring educational and hiring practices that would eliminate whites, Jews, and conservatives from positions of influence. The “woke” claimed that America was a sexist “patriarchy,” and worked to overthrow male dominance by “ending heteronormativity” and transitioning children to a world in which gender and sexuality would be infinitely “fluid.” Mass immigration, defunding the police, men in women’s sports, mixed gender bathrooms, trans-gender surgeries, naming your preferred pronouns, trigger warnings on books and college courses, safe spaces where whites and Jews weren’t allowed in, “sensitivity training,” censorship, land acknowledgments, taking the knee—all of these were the familiar characteristics of the “woke” cultural revolution. And through it all, we were also treated to street violence, burning cities, shooting cops, looting stores and Maoist-style persecutions of anyone who objected.
These things were “woke”. That’s what the word “woke” meant.”
These are descriptors of the actions and policies that characterized the woke movement, but not a description of what the movement, at its heart, is. As a term, “woke” dates back to at least the 1930s and has been a staple of the American black community ever since. In its initial versions, it was meant to signal that one was conscious of the reality of anti-black discrimination and violence and understood what the world was really like. In the modern era, this has morphed and metastasized into a whole worldview and approach to reality.
The woke worldview posits that only it knows the truth of reality and presents this as secret knowledge that one can only access through becoming part of the movement and buying into its tenets – a form of Gnosticism that would not be out of place in early Christendom. In their own view, the woke have awakened themselves to the underlying verities of the world, namely that humanity is delineated entirely by the oppressor-oppressed dynamic and that group identity is the most important facet of society. This secret knowledge forms the very basis of the whole woke movement on the left, but the dynamic is similar on the woke right. The specifics are different, of course, but the Gnosticism remains.
The woke right often presents certain forms of ‘forbidden knowledge’ as the actual truth of the human universe; these range from the idea that the left is bolstered exclusively by a grand cabal of NGOs, politicians, billionaires, and Third World immigrants to the blatantly antisemitic claim that Israel and the Jews control world affairs and destroy everyone who criticizes them. Not all on the New Right believe the latter claim, but most fervently believe the former. Such ideas and the jargon that goes along with them – for instance, the term ‘longhouse’ to describe what they see as men’s subservient role in a feminized society – are defining features of the New Right, aping the woke left’s underlying conceptions of the hidden truths of reality.
Another shared aspect of the woke right and the woke left is the focus on conspiratorialism. This intersects heavily with the Gnosticism factor, but is worth understanding separately. Wokeness is inherently conspiratorial, as the idea of a hidden reality necessarily posits an antagonistic force that is conspiring to hide said reality and dupe the masses. The villains of the story vary depending on political valence – although both sides seem to share a distaste for Jews – but the overall way of interpreting events is the same. Conspiracy thinkers see random events as carefully planned parts of a broader strategy, almost always against their personal or group interests, and directed by their enemies. For the woke left, white supremacy is omnipresent and behind every event; for the woke right, it is the elite globalist cabal pulling the strings. But for both, these evil groups are the cause for their own failures and the fact that society is not the perfect utopia they dream of.
Following on from the conspiratorialism is the pervasive victimhood mentality. The woke, whether right or left, see themselves as misbegotten victims of their powerful enemies and unfairly treated by society as a whole. This speaks to an external locus of control – a psychological term describing those who see their own lives as more influenced by external factors than internal ones – that builds on itself in a malignant feedback loop. Seeing oneself as unfairly discriminated against or attacked by The System has become a powerful tactic for gaining adherents, while taking responsibility for failings has gone the way of the dodo – just look at the ideological shift of Vice President JD Vance for a perfect example of this change. The woke left truly inaugurated this mode of politics, but it was embraced by the right starting during the first Trump campaign back in 2015/16. One’s own less-than-ideal station in life is because of immigration/globalization/progressives/the RINO establishment, never because of random circumstances or personal choices. Personal responsibility was one of the key tenets of conservative thought throughout American history, but this has been discarded by the woke right in favor of popular victimhood politics.
Another similarity between the two woke instantiations is in their vision of everything as a culture war and their concomitant linkage of disparate issues together as one. Issues of politics that deserve to be fought out in the legislative arena are made into cultural battles, while arguments over culture are transmogrified into political ones. This is destructive to the overall civil compact and makes politics and culture more polarized and fraught. The motto ‘the personal is political’ has long been a standard on the woke left, but it is now just as popular on the woke right. The decisions of private businesses are fodder for political attacks far more regularly than they used to be. Political messages about race, sex, and class have been foisted onto private individuals and businesses, bringing everyday life into the political arena in a way that it had not been for decades. This is alienating for regular Americans who don’t obsess over politics and care more about products than the messages associated with them, but the loudest voices tend to drive political and cultural behavior far more than the silent majority does. This overpoliticization of American life is a shared value of both woke groups.
Woke is not a term that has ever been siloed to one particular set of policies or ideas. It is far greater and broader than that, encompassing a totalizing worldview that impacts everything in a person’s life. The woke left clearly fits this bill, but so does the increasingly prevalent woke right. Both embrace Gnostic ideas of secret knowledge, dive headlong into conspiratorialism, promote a victimhood mentality, and make politics into the defining issue of their lives. The woke right may not participate in BLM marches or Pride Month, but that does not mean they are not woke at their core. Contra Yoram Hazony and his New Right ilk, the shoe certainly fits.
[1] New Right folks are obsessed with the term “op,” meant to signal that something is a conspiratorial attack or intelligence operation against the New Right viewpoint.