The pushback against wokeness – and what it’s cost us

When Donald Trump launched his 2024 presidential campaign, he centred his platform on a promise to end “wokeness”. In his campaign video, “Agenda47: President Trump’s Ten Principles for Great Schools Leading to Great Jobs”, the now president-elect declared schools a key battleground to be reclaimed from the left, pledging to ban lessons on gender identity and structural racism in classrooms. Before his election victory, Trump also announced plans to eliminate DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives on his first day in office. Furthermore, when asked at a woman-only town hall in Cumming, Georgia, about allowing transgender women to participate in women’s sports, he responded firmly: “We’re not going to let it happen.”

As we know, Trump won the election, defeating Kamala Harris in what he and his supporters have branded a historic landslide (it wasn’t). Nevertheless, his supporters have declared his victory a decisive blow to “wokeness”, if not its outright demise. Speaking on the TRIGGERnometry podcast with conservative commentators Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, conspiracy theorist James Lindsay argued that Trump’s election signalled a rejection of “woke” politics: “Woke has taken a big arrow with this election. The movement that rose up around Trump very resoundingly said, ‘No, we don’t want to do this. We don’t want identity politics. We don’t want manipulation.’” He continued: “We don’t want everything on earth to be boiled down to white supremacy or transphobia. There are other explanations for things that don’t go right in the world.”

For both Lindsay and Trump, the term “woke” is wielded loosely, used as both a noun and an adjective with no clear definition. Instead, it is framed largely through a disdain for “identity politics” (a similarly distorted concept now used to mask racist sentiments) and disparaging comments about transgender people. This strange fixation on “wokeness” is also present in UK politics and media. During both of their campaigns for Conservative Party leader, Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch promised to rid the UK of “woke nonsense”, with the press lauding Badenoch, in particular, as an “anti-woke warrior” for her opposition to multiculturalism, “identity politics”, critical race theory and transgender rights.

None of this is surprising. The backlash against what the right calls “woke ideology” was inevitable – a reaction to the political reckoning of the early-to-mid 2010s, often referred to as “The Great Awokening,” sparked by the relentless killings of Black people by police in the US. I was 12 years old when 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered by neighbourhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman in 2012; 14 when 12-year-old Tamir Rice and 18-year-old Michael Brown were shot and killed by police in 2014; 15 when Sandra Bland was pulled over for a traffic violation and later found dead in her cell from an apparent “suicide” in 2015; and 16 when Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were killed by police in 2016. I could literally go on, marking each year of my teenagehood with the murder of a Black person at the hands of law enforcement. For many in Gen Z, these injustices defined our adolescence. Brown’s death spurred the Ferguson protests, led by the Black Lives Matter Movement, which popularised the term “woke.” Black activists used it as a rallying cry to stay aware of systemic racism, particularly police brutality and broader social injustices.

The term “woke” has an even longer (but similarly connected) history. One of its earliest recorded usage dates back to 1938 in Huddie Ledbetter’s (Lead Belly) song “Scottsboro Boys”, which is about nine Black teenagers wrongly accused of rape and sentenced to death. The song warns against white supremacy and concludes with the advice that Black people should “stay woke”. Later, the term appeared in works by Black artists, from Erykah Badu’s 2008 song “Hidden Messages” to Childish Gambino’s “Redbone” in 2016. The 2010s also saw the rise of the feminist and MeToo movements and increased representation of marginalised groups in mainstream media. As a teenager, I was enthralled. Beyoncé called herself a feminist, Emma Watson founded HeForShe, the US legalised gay marriage, and everyone seemed to believe Gen Z would change the world. At the time, it felt true. Online spaces became hubs for education, introducing terms like white supremacy, intersectionality and white feminism. When Gambino sang “stay woke” in “Redbone”, it felt like a rallying cry – a call to remain vigilant against systemic injustices, to question and learn, and to ensure we never succumb to ignorance again.

As Susan Faludi observed in her 1991 feminist classic, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, societal backlash often follows periods of progress. Just as Faludi’s Backlash critiqued the media-driven resistance to feminist gains in the 1970s, today’s backlash against “wokeness” reflects resistance to the progressivism of the 2010s. This backlash is evident in the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022, Walmart scaling back DEI initiatives and the end of affirmative action in higher education in the US. Notably, however, this backlash is not confined to conservatives. As the right continues to distort the meaning of “woke”, parts of the left have internalised this rhetoric, seeing the term as a pejorative rather than a term encouraging awareness. This shift is exemplified by the viral meme “not to be the woke friend”, where people tip-toe around questioning problematic thoughts and behaviours in fear of being labelled “woke”. 

How did we get here? How did a term that once symbolised enlightenment and education become so thoroughly butchered by the right and disavowed by the left? And can the left reclaim a space where standing up for our convictions and values is a source of pride rather than embarrassment?

“I think part of the reason I have felt let down by ‘wokeness’ is that it was quite quickly appropriated by the liberal establishment and turned into representation politics stripped of its radicalism,” explains 25-year-old feminist, historian and artisan Kate Bugos. “A brand is ‘woke’ now because it has a female CEO and an interracial gay couple in its advertising.” This critique is widely shared by many on the left. While the US was in its second term with its first-ever Black president, whose administration oversaw the legalisation of gay marriage, Barack Obama was also one of the most bloodthirsty presidents the US had ever seen. In his first year in office, Obama authorised more drone strikes than President Bush conducted during his entire administration following 9/11. In the final year of his presidency, Obama dropped 26,171 bombs on countries including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. There was hope that the Obama presidency would be a pivotal moment for anti-racist politics and solidarity among people of colour. Instead, we learned that the race and gender of the president don’t matter because they’ll all still call for the same drone strikes, leaving the lives of those most in need materially unchanged.

Mainstream feminism faced similar critiques during this period. Figures like Sophia Amoruso, founder of the fast fashion brand Nasty Gal, rose to prominence as feminist icons. Amoruso’s bestselling book Girlboss framed female empowerment through the lens of entrepreneurship and capitalism. However, as Holly Neal argued in her article “Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss: A Critique of the Neoliberal Illusion”, capitalism can never truly empower all women, as it thrives on exploitation and is deeply rooted in the subjugation not only of women but of all people.

Disillusioned by the failures of liberalism, many on the left sought refuge in alternative commentaries. One such outlet was Red Scare, a cultural commentary podcast launched in 2018 by Dasha Nekrasova and Anna Khachiyan. Initially positioned as a critique of liberal feminism and capitalism, the podcast’s irreverent tone and rejection of sanctimony struck a chord with people. “At the time, a lot of the online left felt very censorious and puritanical,” says Dazed’s political editor James Greig. “So when Red Scare came along, there was something satisfying about people refusing to take some of that stuff seriously.” However, Greig notes a significant shift in the podcast’s politics over time; originally aligned with a dirtbag-left and Bernie Sanders, Red Scare has since veered sharply to the right, openly supporting Trump in this year’s election. It’s hardly surprising they ended up there. In their quest to present a bolder, edgier alternative to liberalism, they veered into flirtations with right-wing politics; a trend that, as Emily Kirkpatrick highlights in her Substack essay “Fashion’s Alt-Right Flirtation”, is becoming increasingly prevalent. As Nekrasova told the Yale Political Union last year, “extremism is sexy”. It was only a matter of time before they began to embrace the ideology they had so often toyed with.

“Part of the reason I have felt let down by ‘wokeness’ is that it was quite quickly appropriated by the liberal establishment and turned into representation politics stripped of its radicalism” – Kate Bugos

While I agree that the fake progressivism of the 2010s masked a lot of harm and was often unhelpful, I’d argue that many leftists abandoned “wokeness” because they found it cringe-worthy. Girlbosses: cringe. Infographics: cringe. Jameela Jamil: cringe. For the most part, I agree – a lot of it was embarrassing. But I’d rather be cringe and care, than “cool” and indifferent. Bugos shares this sentiment, telling Dazed that young people’s fear of being perceived as cringe has driven many toward platforms like Red Scare. “I’m generalising, but I feel like millennials were often overly sincere, and Gen Z are now reflexively scared of sincerity or taking things seriously because they think it’s ‘cringe.’” This attitude is perhaps exemplified by Brat, an album that, as The Swaddle argues, celebrates women who are “postmodern, post-feminist, post-race, post-politics, post caring about anything”. The album is essentially about apathy, hedonism and prioritising a good time over everything else. Its release coincided with horrific events, most notably, the genocide in Gaza. On social media, videos of Charli xcx and her friends partying often appeared right below footage of burning hospitals and lifeless bodies. This stark contrast epitomises what this year has felt like: a disjointed reality of privilege and global suffering.

But where do we go from here? As we enter another Trump presidency and see conservative groups gaining increasing power worldwide, how do we reclaim the courage to stand up for what we believe in, as we did in the 2010s? One way is to recognise that all language has the potential to be co-opted. Terms like “woke”, “feminism”, and even “identity politics” have all been warped and stripped of their original meaning. In her book Decolonial Feminism, Françoise Vergès writes: “We should not underestimate the speed with which capital is able to absorb ideas and turn them into empty slogans. Why wouldn’t capital be able to incorporate the idea of decolonisation or decoloniality?” She warns that even radical terms like “decolonial feminism” risk being co-opted, but that doesn’t mean we should abandon the political ideas and emotions they ignite. These words mattered – they stood, and still stand, for something profound and necessary.

Dr Francesca Sobande, a digital media studies lecturer at Cardiff University, agrees, reminding me of the histories we risk erasing when we dismiss these terms. “These critiques sometimes occur in ways that dismissively overlook the Black feminist roots of certain understandings of identity politics, such as the vital work of the Combahee River Collective,” Sobande explains. “At times, the way that ‘wokeness’ is discussed and critiqued in some leftist settings involves a similar process of disregarding the knowledge, consciousness-raising, organising work and lives of Black people, from which the concept of ‘wokeness’ originally emerged.”

I know people think the word “woke” is cringe, but I love it. I love its history, its roots in Black resistance and how it ultimately encourages us to care; for the world and one another. As we grow older, it’s easy to get jaded. That’s exactly what capitalism wants: to grind us down until we’re too focused on survival to care about collective wellbeing. Capitalism thrives on isolating us, forcing us to centre our lives on labour instead of community. But we cannot let it win.

Yes, people on the left can be annoying, and debates within progressive spaces can feel like endless cycles of moralising and virtue-signalling. However, we must learn to navigate these challenges and how to disagree with one another normally. Solidarity is messy. Working with others is hard. Struggling together is uncomfortable. But it’s worth it. Because, in the end, we’re not just fighting to oppose something. We’re fighting to build something – something that lasts, something that matters, something that shows the world a better way is possible. And that’s a struggle worth embracing, cringe or not.