{"id":819207,"date":"2025-12-02T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T08:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=819207"},"modified":"2025-12-02T11:33:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T08:33:00","slug":"woke-is-back-or-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=819207","title":{"rendered":"Woke is back \u2013 or is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article-body wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"raw-html\">\n<p><span>Winds in the east, mist comin\u2019 in. Like somethin\u2019 is brewin\u2019 and \u2018bout to begin. Can\u2019t put me finger on what lies in store. But I feel what\u2019s to happen all happened before. By which I mean \u2013 is woke back?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>It certainly feels like it. In the past few weeks Sydney Sweeney, of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/08\/01\/nx-s1-5487286\/sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-explained-why-controversy-racist-eugenics-trump-bathwater-ad-klein-statement\"><span>eugenicist jean ad controversy fame,<\/span><\/a><span> had the dubious honour of being the star of one of the biggest film flops of recent history, maybe ever (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/paultassi\/2025\/11\/10\/sydney-sweeneys-new-movie-has-one-of-the-worst-openings-in-box-office-history\/\"><span>her boxing biopic <\/span><em><span>Christy<\/span><\/em><span> made just $1.3m in its first weekend<\/span><\/a><span>). Around the same time Dasha Nekrosova, of middle-aged podcaster fame, found herself <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/movies\/movie-features\/dasha-nekrasovas-red-scare-gersh-1236429001\/\"><span>dropped by her agency Gersh<\/span><\/a><span> and cut from an upcoming film role after she hosted right-wing basement talking head Nick Fuentes on her podcast. And just last week Zohran Mamdani, incumbent mayor of New York, visited the White House where President Trump grinned up at him like a blushing schoolgirl, seemingly totally won over after months of smearing Mamdani as a \u201ccommunist\u201d and \u201cjihadist\u201d. At one point when Mamdani was asked by reporters if he still thought the President was a fascist, he <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cvgqd42gl0qo\"><span>encouraged the mayor to go on and just say yes<\/span><\/a><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>When Mamdani won the mayoral election at the beginning of November with 50.4 per cent of the vote, social media was full of posts heralding, cautiously but optimistically, the return of a more progressive era. Or to put it more succinctly: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hausofdai\/status\/1985908745239416974\"><span>woke back?<\/span><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/thetolerantweft\/status\/1895125026472337597\"><span>Woke back.<\/span><\/a><span> And the posts celebrating Mamdani\u2019s win were not only celebrating a single progressive candidate\u2019s success, but also celebrating the supposed downfall of the right: put the pronouns back in your email signature <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/i\/status\/1985919438856835528\"><span>or else<\/span><\/a><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"raw-html-embed\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">woke is back <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/r6M2UHDZma\">pic.twitter.com\/r6M2UHDZma<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ebolaman (@ebolaman131) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ebolaman131\/status\/1985919438856835528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 5, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script> <\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"raw-html\">\n<p><span>In real terms, though, it\u2019s hard to argue that the return to woke is happening yet. After all, Trump is in the White House. JD Vance is in the White House. RFK is somehow a politician. ICE exists. The \u2018Department of War\u2019 exists. <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2025\/nov\/18\/mar-a-lago-face-plastic-surgery\"><span>Mar A Lago face exists<\/span><\/a><span>. The current administration in the USA were elected on a social media and real life campaign that waged a war on woke. Trump won as much because he was the \u201canti-woke\u201d candidate as for his actual policies: his supporters have been apparently shocked to find that voting this way hasn\u2019t lowered their grocery bills, and that their neighbours and relatives are suddenly being kidnapped and deported.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>When Trump was re-elected, the result was not only seen as his triumph alone, but also as a victory for an entire generation of MAGA right-wingers. When a <\/span><em><span>New Yorker <\/span><\/em><span>magazine cover featured a sea of young, white, tanned teenagers in For Love and Lemons bias cut midi dresses, and called them <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/article\/inauguration-trump-supporters-conservative-movement-post-maga.html\"><span>\u201cThe Cruel Kids Table\u201d<\/span><\/a><span>, the irony was lost on most people. The unwoke Zoomer right was ascendant, jubilant, and, most importantly, for the first time in their lives: cool. It must have hit like crack. This was a reversal of fortunes, after the era of \u2018woke\u2019 that had peaked around the time of the pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But as with all reversals of fortunes, the same problems plagued MAGA as plagued the supposed \u2018woke left\u2019 the first time around. Observed as the apex predators, they suddenly felt attacked, picked upon by internet meanies. The language once associated with the \u201csnowflake\u201d left was suddenly being weaponised by the right. Jokes on the internet at the expense of the right were justification to message someone\u2019s boss and have them sacked. Cancel culture, once used as a derogatory shorthand for left-wing politics, suddenly had a new right-wing base. When a transgender professor at the University of Oklahoma failed a student for a badly written essay about baby Jesus, Turning Point USA seized upon the issue as a free speech and victimisation controversy. The professor has now <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/11\/30\/us-news\/university-of-oklahoma-student-files-discrimination-report-after-flunking-gender-essay-for-psych-class-with-trans-instructor\/\"><span>been put on administrative leave<\/span><\/a><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThe Cruel Kids Table\u201d cover <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DRtWUJ7Dpy9\/?img_index=2\"><span>was only released ten months ago<\/span><\/a><span>, but it\u2019s impossible to imagine it being read the same way today. The midi dresses are crinkled, the rented tuxes have been returned. We can admit that everyone was wearing a crazy amount of bronzer, in retrospect. The blink and you\u2019ll miss it moment when these \u2018anti-woke\u2019 kids seemed, or at least felt they were, countercultural, and so could see themselves as cool, as the next big thing, has passed. What happened?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"raw-html\">\n<blockquote>\n<p><span>If anti-woke was everywhere \u2013 if it was literally in the Oval Office \u2013 then it had nowhere else to go<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"raw-html\">\n<p><span>The same thing that happens with all cultural shifts: the dominant culture overplayed its hand. If anti-woke was everywhere \u2013 if it was literally in the Oval Office \u2013 then it had nowhere else to go. Or to put it another way, to understand why woke might return, you have to understand why there was a backlash to it in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In 2020, the idea of \u2018woke\u2019 was in the ascendant (or at least, how the internet, conservative media and political establishment understood woke at that exact moment in time). But sensing that a sheen of progressive ideals could be useful and profitable, political and corporate wokewashing quickly took over the actual progressive values behind the mentality. A neoliberal adoption of left-wing politics meant that the word, which has its origins in African-American Vernacular English, gradually lost its meaning. It became a memetic shorthand \u2013 a way for companies like Microsoft and Apple and Levi\u2019s to try to be your friend if you bought their products. Virtue-signalling replaced real virtue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Five years on from the peak of \u2018woke\u2019, the companies and conglomerates most closely associated with it went on to reject it when it stopped being profitable for them (<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/jan\/10\/meta-ending-dei-program\"><span>Meta sacked its entire DEI team<\/span><\/a><span> just ahead of Trump\u2019s inauguration). In appointing single figures or performing symbolic \u2018woke\u2019 gestures, these companies seldom offered any real benefits to the communities they were ostensibly uplifting. Like its predecessor \u2018political correctness\u2019, \u2018wokeness\u2019 quickly became a term of abuse, wrote Susan Neiman last week in a NYRB essay, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/2025\/12\/04\/where-wokeness-went-wrong-desire-and-fate-rieff\/\"><span>\u2018Where Wokeness Went Wrong\u2019<\/span><\/a><span>. She argues that wokeness went wrong when it stopped being subversive and became completely compatible with capitalism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The problem now is that although the culture might be slowly moving on from the anti-woke era that followed the woke heights of 2020 \u2013 although everyone might cringe when they see JD Vance tweet like an incel millennial from a government account \u2013 the real life politics of that era continues. And it continues to make everyone\u2019s lives worse from the top down. Figures like Mamdani are the exception to the US\u2019s political landscape, but not the rule. Not <\/span><em><span>yet<\/span><\/em><span>, at least: it seems like those within MAGA are beginning to have had enough of the post-woke era, as it trickles down to affect their own personal lives. Indiana Republican Senator Mike Bohacek, whose daughter has Down Syndrome, recently criticised the President for using derogatory slurs towards disabled people, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/2026-election\/donald-trump-indiana-state-senator-bohacek-redistricting-vote-no-slur-rcna246451\"><span>and refused to redistrict as a result<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"media-tiktok\" data-id=\"7569311165478718734\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"embed-content\" data-embed-type=\"raw-html\">\n<p><span>And in the UK it\u2019s far harder to say \u201cwoke back\u201d, so far at least. Although the government is nominally left-wing, in reality, Labour has spent their first year in office continually pursuing policies and arguments meant to ingratiate themselves with what could be generously called the centre-right. But in recent weeks and months, a more viable left-wing alternative has emerged in the figure of Green leader Zack Polanski (the less said about the disastrous, aborted launch of the socialist Your Party the better, frankly). Polanski, like Mamdani, is nonplussed by attacks on him specifically linked to his perceived wokeness. Where other politicians have floundered on stunt questions like \u201ccan a woman have a penis\u201d, he remains unflustered and resolutely anti-TERF. It\u2019s interesting that Polanski himself seems to attribute \u2018woke\u2019 fragility politics to the right now, too \u2013 the Green Party Christmas fundraiser ad includes a throwaway line criticising the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=_zeznj_av6E\"><span>\u201cwoke\u201d argument about Christmas being cancelled<\/span><\/a><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>There always has to be a counterculture. Now, if woke returns as counterculture, it will be \u2013 has to be \u2013 in a twist on what it existed as before. For better or worse, it will end up matching the dominant culture in the US and UK today: spikier, angrier and more based. For now, the neoliberal fragility politics of woke remains in the hands of conservatives, convinced everyone should be sacked for making jokes online about Charlie Kirk or daring to write \u201cXmas\u201d instead of \u201cChristmas\u201d. But I\u2019m optimistic progressive underpinnings of what it used to mean to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/culture\/21437879\/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy\"><span>\u2018stay woke\u2019<\/span><\/a><span> could well return with the advent of some legitimately left-wing political leaders.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p> Source URL: https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/life-culture\/article\/69189\/1\/woke-is-back-or-is-it-zohran-mamdani-zack-polanski-left-wing-politics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Winds in the east, mist comin\u2019 in. Like somethin\u2019 is brewin\u2019 and \u2018bout to begin. Can\u2019t put me finger on what lies in store. But I feel what\u2019s to happen all happened before. By which I mean \u2013 is woke back?\u00a0 It certainly feels like it. In the past few weeks Sydney Sweeney, of eugenicist [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":819208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-819207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-dazeddigital-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=819207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/819208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=819207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=819207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=819207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}