The war on woke: how conservatives killed an idea by killing the word

“In war, truth is the first casualty” is an adage with a long lineage. And in the far-right assault on democracy and reason that has embroiled the US recently, it is apt.

Talking heads assert “alternative facts” to push views and seek advantage. “Fake news” is hollered by those lacking legitimate arguments. Words and slogans are plucked and weaponised into expressions of denigration and abuse.

Political correctness! Illegals! Groomers! Cancel culture! Snowflakes! Social justice warriors! Woke!

The search for common ground stands no chance against this blizzard of bullshit. That’s the point. These antagonists don’t want unity. They want dominance. They aim to degrade and destroy reality in service of their own power.

However, there is one refuge where straight talk still matters and lies remain verboten. The courts. If you want candid answers in America today, look to the courts. This is not to suggest that all judges are impartial and worthy of their robes. We’ve witnessed enough egregious conduct and decisions to know this isn’t so. But attorneys sworn to uphold the law, and witnesses testifying under threat of perjury, show a marked reluctance to repeat baseless claims within the confines of a courtroom. Judges don’t take kindly to fabulists.

This juxtaposition was on full display in a Florida trial last week, when a lawyer defending Governor Ron DeSantis was asked to define what woke means. He replied: “The belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

And there it was. One sentence punctured the symphony of slander that DeSantis has bestowed on his foes. Acknowledge the oppression of Black and Indigenous Americans? Woke! Support LGBTIQA+ rights? Woke! Defend women’s access to reproductive healthcare? Woke! Demand free and fair elections? Woke!” Require masks and vaccines to mitigate a pandemic? Woke! Cast a Black mermaid in a Disney movie? Woke!

DeSantis has made “Woke!” his incessant battle cry to attack his critics, going so far as to impose the Stop WOKE Act that prohibits any instruction or training intended to address systemic injustice. “Florida is where woke goes to die,” he bellowed.

He’s no Robinson Crusoe in embracing “woke” as an all-purpose pejorative. Google any prominent conservative official or commentator, and you will find woke in their rhetorical arsenal. Donald Trump has ranted about woke generals, woke footballers, and woke companies. Mike Pence claims “wokeism is running amok in our public schools and universities” and derides woke capitalism. Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Glenn Youngkin, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Marjorie Taylor Greene — the list goes on and on — all sing from the same woke hymnbook.

Fox News prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have variously whined about the woke military, CIA, NPR, CEOs, Prince Harry, colleges, professors and writers. “Wokeism” and “woke cult” are generic insults flung at anyone or anything they dislike.

Woke has been warped into a cudgel to bludgeon and crush any notion that threatens the status quo, that gives voice to the powerless. As Crikey’s Christopher Warren wrote, woke has been appropriated by enemies of equality to obliterate its original meaning. Instead, it has become:

A coward’s word — a sneaky shiv of abuse from the right or, rendered cautiously down to ‘not woke’, a shield of defence for the centre-left. It’s a punch pulled. A blow ducked. A hard truth evaded. A claim of defamation avoided.

As intended, the adulteration of woke has migrated beyond right-wing culture warriors to taint its connotations more broadly. Now genuine criticisms and complaints that might merit closer attention are often reflexively dismissed across the political spectrum as further excesses of wokeism.

Centrists, moderates, and independents have been all too willing to pump the brakes on social progress, so they play along. When your political opponents adopt your framing, you’ve won the fight before it begins.

As Martin Luther King Jr wrote 60 years ago in his letter from Birmingham Jail:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season’. Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Six decades later, it’s likely King would draw the same conclusion. The war on woke is merely the latest incarnation of his lament.

Remember, woke was originally a Black term coined to denote awareness of discrimination and prejudice. Its premeditated poisoning is laced with racism and sexism, and designed to preserve white men’s power. Pause and reflect on this next time you reach for it.