No, It’s Not The “Woke Right”

Back in January, I wrote an article criticizing James Lindsay and his strange idea of the “woke right.” Specifically, I made it clear that — although I do think one can make connections between what is called the “Woke Left” and the “MAGA Right,” they’re all rather superficial and similar points can be made between essentially any two ideologies. One of the reasons why the Nazis took power in Germany, for example, was because they were successfully able to take the rhetoric of Germany’s then-popular left-wing parties to promote their ideology, but that does not mean the Nazis were the same as those other parties. Even ignoring the argument on if fascism is left-wing or right-wing, obviously some difference between the Nazi Party and, say, the German Communist Party had to exist, or else all of the Nazis would have simply become members of the German Communist Party. (The Nazi Party was always framing itself as essentially a right-wing alternative to the Communist and Socialist parities Germany had, even before Hitler took control.)

I mention this because, as the Donald Trump Administration continues on, it has become increasingly tempting for commentators to claim him as a member of what he and his followers hate the most: The Woke. Of course, what it means to be “woke” is often nebulous and difficult to define, see Bethany Mandel being unable to define what it means to be “woke” back in 2023…