National Review writer Noah Rothman thinks he knows the future of woke. In a feature for the conservative magazine, the neoconservative outlined a decent overview of Woke 1.0 and how it devastated the country.
He doesn’t see woke as dead, arguing it will be reborn as a new beast, shorn of its western sympathies and fully in-line with Third Worldism.
[T]he second draft of wokeness seems destined to dispense with its gestures toward Western religious traditions. Indeed, its adherents reserve special contempt for all things Western: holidays, cultural expressions, moral codes. But the movement’s loudest voices seem most offended by liberalism, the theory of social organization that emerged out of the Enlightenment and on which most Western governments are founded.
The socialist movement overtaking the left, for example, proposes doing away with the Senate and the Supreme Court as conceived in the Constitution, and with them the separation of powers that has preserved liberty and stability in America for generations. Its leading lights flirt openly with the exotic allure of Maoism. At the center of it all is what one Democratic Socialist of America national committee member, Cliff Connolly, confessed was his movement’s “hatred of the Constitution.”
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It has fetishized violence, for example, particularly against what it construes as the symbols of the dominant American political culture: its statues, its courthouses, its law enforcement officers. It is hostile toward Western conventions, particularly the religious and capitalistic varieties, just as the anarchists of the early 20th century were. Its virtues are those articulated by the Iranian revolutionary thinker Jalal Al-e-Ahmad in his radical tome Westoxification. The Iranian intellectual Ali Shariati summarized the book’s thesis as opposition to “world imperialism, including multinational corporations and cultural imperialism, racism, class exploitation, class oppression, [and] class inequality,” among other social ills allegedly cultivated and exported by the West.
Woke 2.0’s intense focus on anti-westernism, anti-colonialism, “Palestinianism,” and socialism, will apparently leave little room for sexual politics. “The sexual politics that were once so central to the movement’s self-conception are far more muted than they were at the end of the last decade,” Rothman argues.
This argument is almost entirely off the mark. Rothman’s vision of the next form of woke is too coherent and too convenient for right-wing interests. Woke 2.0 is unlikely to be a domestic Hamas or as ideological as he describes. It will incorporate many tendencies from its former self, but it’s not going to be a third world solidarity movement. Women will dictate its course and it will fixate on petty sexual politics. Look at Cornell and outrage over Shane Gillis to see a preview of the future.
There will be plenty of issues covered by Woke 2.0. The woke still care about “racial justice” and diversifying America through mass immigration and DEI. But the concerns of the past will recede before the almighty anger of women out for blood over trumped-up grievances and ordinary annoyances. The Gender War will take center stage, and make politics a whole lot more confusing.
It’s more convenient for the Right to imagine itself against a third worldist Left. Rothman’s depiction of Woke 2.0 offers a useful foil for every possible faction of the Right. For foreign policy hawks, a third worldist Left commits treason by standing with America’s enemies. For Zionists, a third worldist Left can be cast as anti-Semitic and obsessed with Israel. For free marketers, a third wordist Left is openly communist and threatening the property rights of all Americans. For identitarians, a third worldist Left is empowered by mass immigration and unapologetically seeks to erase white America.
Even those right-wingers who want to ally with the Left can find something in a third wordlist Left. Putting aside the domestic issues makes the Left attractive to the Insane Clown Party and wignats. A third worldist Left would share some of their interests. They can unite against the billionaires and fight for the common man. They may disagree about immigration, but at least they can agree about the need to impeach Trump and arrest the Epstein Class.
But a female-focused Woke isn’t convenient for the Right at all. It’s hard to create a bogeyman about women protesting “sexist” jokes and claiming they were raped over regrettable sex. Republicans depend on women to win elections; the party isn’t going to be warning about the “foid” menace and making ads about how Lindsay Clancy fans may murder their kids. Much of what Woke 2.0 will focus on will be frivolous and beyond the realm of ordinary politics.
We’re already seeing signs of what will animate the new age of woke. The only people who demonstrated against Karmelo Anthony’s guilty verdict were the most deranged black activists. America hardly experienced any street protests over the Iran War. In the past, these causes could’ve excited mass movements. Black Lives Matter was inspired by the justifiable homicides of black assailants. The latest police shootings only cause local controversy and no riots. The national media barely pays attention to them.
The Left mobilized against the Vietnam War and Iraq War, and both conflicts defined left-wing movements of their respective times. We’re only two years removed from widespread campus demonstrations over Gaza. However, we’ve seen barely any demonstrations over Iran, which undermines Rothman’s point that the next version of woke will be even more invested in solidarity with “anti-imperialist” causes. Of course, Americans care about the Iran War and don’t have a high opinion of it. But for the Left, it doesn’t inspire them to take the streets. It’s not the cause for them to organize around.
The biggest campus protest this year was in response to the Cornell 7 case. That case dominated social media discourse over the last few weeks as well. When looking at social media “protests,” issues deeply concerning to women garner far more attention than anything dealing with the third world. When Shane Gillis mocked women’s gym attire, women across the country protested by filming themselves in their skin-tight athleisure gear. This was preceded by Lindsay Clancy mania. Tens of thousands of women across their country adopted the child killer as their heroine and posted solidarity clips to support her. Clancy supporters even staged a rally for their icon outside of her court hearing. It was arguably larger than any anti-war protest this year, and Clancy herself had a bigger cultural impact than the Iranians.
These may just seem like frivolous concerns, but they relate to deeper motivations about what kind of society liberal women desire. Cornell 7, the gym clothing protests, and Lindsay Clancy all center on how women demand society adjust to their whims and protect them from consequences. Despite having more power and freedom than ever before, women seem remarkably aggrieved. Polls show young women have particular animosity towards men and blame them for society’s problems. This gives them grounds to feel oppressed and demand change.
Don’t expect the new version of woke to offer much intellectual depth or ideological coherence. You won’t see any Ibram X. Kendis emerge to explain to the masses. But it will be a deeply-felt sentiment that the Left will cater to.
There are already plenty of examples. Democratic politicians rushed to exploit the Cornell 7 allegations and vowed to make sweeping changes to sexual consent laws in response. Many liberals want to ban fraternities entirely over the case, which will likely be a cause to gain more support in the near-future. Several cities are expanding their civil rights protections to cover dubious “sexual orientations” that an increasing number of women identify with. Now a woman can expect even greater privileges if she identifies as polyamorous or pansexual.
This does make things complicated for the Left. Politicians can’t legislate that boyfriends be better and that no man takes a gander at women at the gym. They’re not gonna propose reparations for women going on shitty dates. But it’s a sentiment they have to cater to–and bow before. A number of Democratic politicians have been cancelled over questionable MeToo claims. Most famously, Graham Platner, who embodied the kind of woke Rothman thinks is the future, had to drop out of his Senate race because of a questionable claim of sexual assault, along with other women claiming he was a bad boyfriend. Mandela Barnes, once the establishment favorite in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, dropped out after he was accused of hitting on women at the office.
MeToo is a powerful force on the Left, and no Democrat can ignore it. Its dominance reminds the party of who’s driving the new version of woke.
The female-led Woke 2.0 won’t force the Left to forget about systemic racism and the evils of colonialism. These will still be matters of concern for leftists. Democrats will still have to cater to the various protected classes that make up their coalition, including entertaining reparations and promising to end deportations. The old aspects of woke will still be around.
But the new version will not be the coherent, third wordist movement imagined by Rothman. You will not see solidarity protests in support of Iran, Venezuela, or Cuba. You will not see serious discussions of eliminating the US empire in favor of anti-imperialist China. Woke 2.0 will largely be okay with American Empire. It will just want to make the empire more woke and more feminine.
The third worldist focus would be a distraction from what really matters to the activists: legislating against the male gaze.
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It will be feminists and thirdworldists, like the red/ green alliance, same as it ever was.
It's possible that those MGTOW guys were onto something, 15 years ago. Chateau Heartiste and all that. At some point, people will tune out blacks. They will condemn the Muslim. They will ridicule the troon. They will question the Jew.
But very few can ignore the p*ssy