The Tribulations of the Anti-Woke
Anti-woke kind of won, but are they becoming just like those they criticized?
The vibe has shifted, the Orange Man runs the White House yet again, and the Democrats are lost in the wilderness. The MAGA movement appears anything but truly conservative and, like all politicians, unconcerned with things like the deficit or healthcare. Meanwhile the DEMs can’t quite admit Biden had dementia as president or that they flew too close to the wokeness sun. We’re in a historic period of political realignment and seeing the ongoing fracturing of political movements in real time.
Among these are the broad group that have been called anti-woke. I’ve seen a lot of criticisms of anti-wokeness and, as someone who generally had a lot of sympathy for what seemed like a movement rooted in liberal values, I think some of those criticisms are worth a look. Are we seeing the end of anti-woke?
I think it’s worth acknowledging that if anti-woke seemed like a consistent set of ideas in 2020, it no longer does today. The anti-woke movement of 2020 felt united in opposition to cancel culture, DEI programs that didn’t work, and an illiberal anti-science “woke” culture obsessed with oppressor/victim groups and identitarianism. Woke was definitely bad, and opposition to it was good. But a movement founded on being anti- something inevitably brings together those with differing worldviews and I suspect the disenchantment with anti-woke in 2025 is the inevitably consequence of this.
I suspect the anti-woke generally fall into three main groups. Yes, upfront I’ll say that inevitably categorical systems paper over real nuances and not every anti-woke person falls neatly into one of these categories. But I think they’re still largely illustrative.
First, there is the group of individuals who once seems to be liberal/centrist, but whom have now gone over fairly reliably to the MAGA-right movement. Elon Musk is perhaps most emblematic of this group, though there are many others. To one degree or another, many of these individuals have become Trump apologists, covid19 vaccine conspiracy theorists or have embraced other kook ideas. I think in her essay around the time of the Nov 2024 election, Cathy Young addressed this group succinctly and Helen Pluckrose has also covered this movement nicely. So I won’t say much more about them.
On the other side are the science grognards. Mainly these folks are suspicious of free speech restrictions both in public and on college campus specifically. They tend to be data-driven, perhaps a bit curmudgeonly, and I think are the most consistent at sticking largely to true liberal values. I’m going to resist naming names to avoid my own “hero worship” (which I’ll come back to in a moment). But they’re not too hard to find. They’re the ones offering support to people with whom they disagree on free speech issues, and remaining committed to reassessing their own assumptions when new data arises.
It’s really a kind of middle group I’m most interested. I’d say this middle group is overrepresented among journalists, podcasters and online influencers, although that’s not entirely fair. Certainly, some scholars fall into this group and some excellent journalists and podcasters fall into the former group. I’m going to resist naming names, once again, as I don’t think that’s constructive and I think simply brings things into the realm of the personal. These are also mostly people I like and think mean well. My main criticism is not that they’re “bad” but that, surprisingly often, they’ve fallen into at least some of the same traps they used to criticize among the woke. I guess my criticism ultimately is that this “anti-woke” movement behaves in many of the same flawed ways as most human social groups do. I suppose that’s a weak criticism, but it’s something I’ve gradually come to look upon with disappointment. I’ll call this the anti-woke influencers, for lack of a better term for the moment.
What seems to centrally animate this group perhaps more than anything is the trans debate. My own view is that this is an interesting an important debate, one with serious ramifications. I suspect as well, probably consistent with most people in this group, that the strange social experiment in largely unrestricted youth gender medicine will ultimately be looked upon as a horrible mistake1. Other concerns around, say DEI and cancel culture are certainly common among this group, albeit the trans debate seems to be of more central animation (where it is perhaps less centrally animating among the scholarly grognards, for instance). So what am I worried about here?
Issue Conflation
One of the criticisms of wokeness involved the litmus-testy, issue conflation that tended to make their stances on issues incoherent. To be a good “woke” you were expected to have a particular view on, say, abortion and by knowing what a woke person’s view on abortion you could almost with 100% accuracy predict their opinion on, say, climate change or trans rights, or Palestine or dozens of other issues. Thus you’d see placards like “Queers for Palestine” or “Climate Change is a Gender Equity Issue” or whatever. The “good” woke believe the “right” thing on all these issues and saw it as a weave of interconnected issues.
Although perhaps not with quite the same level of dramatic incoherence, I see some of the same among this influencer group of “anti-woke” such that, just as we can predict interlocking opinions among the woke, we can also predict them among the anti-woke. So, if we believe that youth gender medicine is not clearly evidence based (almost certainly true), that also must mean that youth who identify as trans are always wrong (ehhhh….) and that one of the main reasons youth identify as trans is because of social contagion via social media (for which there is literally no evidence.) That slippery transition from a reasonable data-based position to outright woo I’ve seen more than once. It’s not great.
Hero-Worship
The woke had Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. The anti-woke influencer set inevitably developed their own heroes. The lesson one should have learned from the woke is that the blind following of heroes leads to tears, but alas. It seems difficult for some to recognize that a given individual may be capable of saying all the right things about free speech when it costs them very little, but either fail to live up to those values when they’ve got skin in the game, or simply be horribly, horribly, tragically wrong on issues related to “fact” rather than the general issue of free speech.
This has at times, I believe, led the anti-woke influencer set to rigidity and anti-science positions on multiple issues. Yes, that includes the social media moral panic, but I think also has crept into some of their positions on the trans debate. More than once I’ve seen people take positions that gender identity is like a ghost in the machine and that people’s internal sense of who they are has no relevance whatsoever. Granted, there’s a larger consciousness debate here at play as well, but I personally believe there’s enough evidence related to brain function and gender identity to concede that, even if some trans identifying individuals are really mentally ill or simply grifting, some trans individuals are probably on the level and deserve something other than scorn.
Smugness
This brings me to my next concern. One of the most grating aspects of wokeness was the smug moral superiority of that crowd. So, I’m dismayed to see it creep in among some anti-woke influencers. I really don’t think we need the anti-woke John Stewart. Granted, we’re all human, and I’m sure I’ve had my own smug moments of which I’d likely not be proud looking back. But it bears looking at within ourselves from time to time. We don’t want to make it part of our culture.
Insularity
It’s probably inevitable that most social groups will become insular. Still, I’m struck by how a comparatively small group of anti-woke influences all seem to know each other, constantly refer to each other, show up repeatedly on each other’s podcasts or videos, etc. Naturally, like tends to hang out with like, but this also creates issues of groupthink, social conformity and an absence of critical thinking. Like most of these issues, this is hardly unique to anti-woke influencers, but still seems evident.
Stupid Fighting
Back in 2020 virtue signaling became a buzzword thrown at the woke and with good reason. Of course, the MAGA right do their own version of this and so, I’d say, do anti-woke influencers. This helps in signaling group allegiance, but it’s important to recognize it is often counterproductive to seeking the truth.
I’ve also been saddened to see how much time seems to be spent online fighting stupid fights. Some folks seem obsessed (either for positive or negative) with Trump’s every policy. Ultimately, I find myself often thinking the anti-woke influencer set could really use with touching some grass, as the kids sometimes say.
To be fair, I’ve seen stupid critiques of anti-woke influencers as well. The silliest one of late is that they helped elect Trump. I don’t see that as a valid critique. Some anti-woke influencers are magnets for true obsessive craziness online, and I imagine it must be difficult to retain objectivity when subjected to pure hateful insanity on a daily basis.
Again, ultimately my critique is that anti-woke influencers fall into the same traps as most human groups do. So, my point is not that they are uniquely bad, nor that I myself am immune to many of these same flaws. But we really could use a movement that tries harder to recognize its own foibles particularly when it spends so much time pointing out those flaws in others.