Woke In Retreat

2024 America is less woke than 2017 America

America in 2024 is a crazy place. Our president is clearly senile. His challenger, a former president, faces four separate criminal indictments, yet is favored to win in November. Transsexuals are treated as women’s icons, mass looting is tolerated in major cities, and American schoolchildren are taught that the Founders were white supremacists. Both sides of the aisle warn that America could very well end if the nation picks the wrong president this year. 

This America is definitely different from the country you grew up in. But the bizarre nature of America today obscures an interesting development: the America of 2024 is less woke than it was in 2021. It’s even less woke than it was in 2017. 

Many will argue against this point. They will point to significant social, demographic, and structural changes and say America has never been more woke. They would have a point about long-term changes, but, in the way woke is perceived by conservative critics, this social and legal force is in decline.

Woke has many different meanings. For most conservatives, it means extreme political correctness. I personally prefer the definition of wokeness as a belief that America is plagued by systematic inequalities that require radical changes to correct. However, for most Americans, wokeness is something they cannot clearly define, but they instinctively know it when they see it. Aggressive Pride Month celebrations, white privilege training, cancel culture, and statue destruction are all seen as woke.

Assessing America by vibes and metrics would lend to the conclusion that America is now less woke. That doesn’t mean it’s completely un-woke. It just means it’s less politically correct relative to years past.

The peak of wokeness was 2020-2021. 2020 was the year that an overwhelming majority of Americans supported Black Lives Matter. We experienced a major social revolution over a career criminal having a heart attack under police arrest. The masses celebrated as statues dedicated to white heroes were torn down. Rioters were lionized, cheered on by the future Vice President, and subsequently paid out. Several people lost their jobs and were kicked out of school simply for criticizing BLM. The MLB, NFL, and NBA boycotted games and practice over a violent criminal being shot by police. Every sports league turned itself into a propaganda outlet for BLM. Democrats embraced reparations and “defund the police.” It was a dark time in America.

Much of these changes were institutionalized in that year and the following year. Corporations adopted DEI policies and promised to openly discriminate against whites in the hiring process. Schools eagerly adopted critical race theory as colleges dropped SAT requirements. Juneteenth became a federal holiday. The military launched an effort to remove all traces of Southern heritage from its facilities. Outside of race, gender pronouns were enforced in many places of employment and transgenders became another protected class. Social media censorship reached an all-time high. Alongside enforcing speech codes around race and gender, social media users couldn’t question COVID’s origins, the vaccine, or the 2020 election.

These changes didn’t suddenly appear. They were a result of a long-build up during the Obama presidency. Even back in the early 2010s, cancel culture began to rear its head. An early example of this was Justine Sacco, a random woman who had her life ruined for tweeting a joke about South Africa in 2013. There would be a lot more Saccos throughout the 2010s. Obama’s second term saw more of what we would call woke come to dominate American life. Universities began adopting white privilege training and rigid speech codes. Black Lives Matter and gender ideology gained prominence. The dramatic expansion of online media created legions of wannabe Stasi who targeted various figures, from the unknown to the well-known, for speech crimes. The new online world ensured that one Facebook post could cost someone their job and reputation. Movies and TV shows became noticeably more left-wing at this time and more concerned with “equal representation.” Companies and government agencies rapidly began to adopt DEI policies at this time. Conservative media even enforced political correctness. For instance, National Review fired John Derbyshire over a racially “insensitive” article in 2012.

All of these things escalated in 2015, which coincided with Trump’s entry into politics. The 2016 campaign illustrated these changes on the political front. Many Trump supporters were fired just for openly advocating for him—even when he was president. The media encouraged harassment and even violence against his supporters. Conservative media also encouraged this. At one point, Ted Cruz implied Trump supporters deserve to be attacked by BLM supporters. Conservatives would threaten the employment of people known to be Trump supporters within the political world. (I experienced this firsthand.)

2015 also marked three other big cultural events that marked America’s woke transformation. One was the Supreme Court making gay marriage the law of the land. Immediately after, nearly every corporation changed their logo to pride colors and the White House was illuminated in the same style. Caitlyn Jenner came out as trans in Vanity Fair, which exemplified the mandatory acceptance of transgenders. Following the Charleston church shooting, Confederate symbols became verboten.  All of these trends that first emerged in the Summer of 2015–anti-Trump persecution, mandatory LGBT celebrations, and the erasure of Southern heritage–accelerated over the next few years. 

Unwritten rules were adopted on what public figures were not allowed to criticize. Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me was above reproach. The Economist’s milquetoast critique of the book met an avalanche of vitriol, signaling that it was not a wise move to criticize the work. (I was warned at the Daily Caller, of all places, about criticizing Mr. Coates in 2015.) The all-female Ghostbusters was another example of this. The only tolerated option was to love this movie. A popular YouTuber was lambasted for simply refusing to review the movie. The “Angry Video Game Nerd” knew he couldn’t criticize it, but he didn’t realize neutrality wasn’t acceptable either. Milo Yiannopoulos lost his Twitter account for mocking the film’s black star. 

In the late 2010s, Pride Month became a high holy month. Social media censorship was taken to extremes, severely limiting public discourse. Entire websites were taken off the internet for being “racist.” Journalists began publishing exposes on random people for running politically incorrect Twitter accounts or appearing at alt-right rallies. Journos also had plenty of time to try to take down popular figures for old offenses. One such example was the media getting Shane Gillis fired from Saturday Night Live for politically incorrect jokes. Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, and other great American figures were added to the list of figures ripe for erasure. Popular media—from video games to movies—became even woker. MeToo allowed for men to be canceled for bad dates and awkward advances. That same movement also gave more power to HR departments to rigorously police employee behavior. Anti-white indoctrination, gender pronouns, and diversity quotas were increased during this era as well.

This all built up to woke’s peak at the start of this decade. 

These changes were even apparent in the conservative movement. Many were purged for associations with the alt-right or alt-right ideas—such as this author. People were fired from the Trump administration for speaking at conferences with “wrong thinkers” in attendance and for criticizing Islam too harshly. Steve King was universally condemned and ostracized from Congress just for an oddly-worded statement in defense of western civilization. (Before that, conservatives wanted him purged for meeting with European nationalists.)

No sphere was safe from the long arm of wokeness.

When did it begin to change? 

The backlash began slowly in 2021 at school board meetings where parents protested at school board meetings over left-wing indoctrination and draconian COVID measures. This was a nation-wide movement with a popular base of support. It helped Glenn Youngkin win in blue Virginia and toppled several school boards. It also spurred lawmakers to pass bills against CRT and gender ideology in the classroom. This backlash indicated the public had reached its limits with woke.

After 2021, wokeness began to retreat from its peak. Social media companies became less censorious, especially in the case of Twitter. Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform effectively made it a right-wing site. YouTube announced it would now allow questioning of the 2020 election. Facebook began deemphasizing political posts in 2021, making the site less of a left-wing echo chamber. Apolitical platforms such as TikTok and Instagram became the favorites among most Americans, illustrating the masses’ exhaustion with the culture wars.

Corporate LGBT celebrations took a hit in 2023 with the backlash against Bud Light and Target. In turn, companies began moderating their Pride Month celebrations.

The Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action in university admissions signaled that DEI had reached a ceiling. Several lawsuits were filed against companies that openly discriminated against whites and/or imposed anti-white training on employees. In turn, corporations rolled back some of the diversity initiatives they adopted after George Floyd. Many also laid off their newly-hired diversity apparatchiks. Red states began banning DEI in government workplaces, schools, and public universities. This has led to prominent institutions restricting the scope of their DEI offices, e.g. the University of Florida laid off its entire diversity administration. Universities are also reluctantly scrapping their racial quotas. The affirmative action ruling is also being used to diminish minority favoritism in other aspects of American life, such as the government prioritizing loans for non-white business owners. 

Cancel culture almost seems a thing of the past. Several doxes were published over the last year of prominent commentators saying “racist” things in private or under pseudonyms. None of the people targeted faced serious consequences. Richard Hanania, one of those targeted, still saw his book published by HarperCollins. That would’ve been unthinkable in 2019. The formerly-canceled Shane Gillis triumphantly returned to Saturday Night Live a month ago and used the word “retard” in his opening monologue. No one really cared. Politicians and conservative pundits are able to get away with edgier rhetoric than ever before. The Republican Party purged Steve King for a minor comment, yet  now proudly stands behind Mark Robinson and Marjorie Taylor Greene over their more “offensive” statements. Figures such as Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens explicitly address topics such as the Great Replacement that would’ve gotten them fired in 2018. 

America also seems to tolerate Trump and his supporters more now than before. People aren’t that worked up about his indictments or his fiery rhetoric. The hysteria of his time as president seems to be weakened. MSNBC and CNN still warn he’s a threat to our democracy—but the public just shrugs its shoulders. 

Democrats have gotten some of the message. They’re now less keen on reparations and they’ve repudiated “defund the police” rhetoric. That’s not to say that they’ve adopted better policies in the process. Democrats still push open borders, minority identity politics, and a soft-on-crime approach. They’re just aware the public isn’t as woke as it was before and adopt rhetoric to appear more moderate.

This is not to say that wokeness is over. Far from it. The civil rights regime is still here and imposing its will on the country. Many people are still required to use gender pronouns in work correspondence. A person can still face repercussions for misgendering someone or making an offensive comment. The NFL still has “End Racism” stenciled in stadium endzones and plays the black national anthem before marque games. There are also social trends that have certainly not reversed. More people are identifying as LGBT, smoking weed, and getting tattoos than ever before.

But wokeness feels less imposed now than it did at its peak, or even in Trump’s first year of office. Woke’s retreat should be seen as a moderation rather than the result of a right-wing counter-revolution.  What caused these changes? Here are some of the reasons why:

• Mass media layoffs that resulted in far fewer people enforcing these dictates for a living.

• The public’s exhaustion with politics and culture wars. They’re more focused on sports betting and TikTok now.

• Millennials, the shock troops of wokeness, aged and got burnt out. America’s youth are now zoomers, who are less politicized than millennials. 

• Changes to social media that de-emphasized political content or, in X’s case, left-wing content.

• Radicalization of the conservative movement and a greater ability to organize a backlash against woke corporations and specific policies.

Many X users disagreed with my assessment of the current state of woke. One X user asserted that 2024 is more woke than 2017:

Don’t know about your definition of “woke” but in 2017 we didn’t have:

-most of young women getting tats

-pronouns in the workforce 

-bestselling movie is the Barbie movie (no explanation needed)

-30-40% of Zoomers identifying as LGBTQ

If anything Trump made Americans more “woke”

There are a few things to keep in mind here. One, all of these trends were present in 2017. Whether Barbie is truly woke or not is beyond the article’s scope, but criticism of it was allowed in the current year. The same could not be said for 2016’s Ghostbusters. 

The more important thing to consider is, besides enforced pronouns in the workplace, all of these things are choices made by Americans. No one is getting forced to have a tattoo, see Barbie, or identify as gay. These are not imposed on people. America’s rejection of wokeness centers on it as an imposition, whether it be mandatory white privilege training, trans indoctrination of their child, or censorship of their political opinions. Most Americans are fine with it as long as it doesn’t affect their lives. To the chagrin of many right-wingers (including myself), the majority of Americans maintain a live and let live attitude. 

A second-term Trump can do a lot to de-wokify America. He can weaponize his Justice Department and other agencies against DEI and the civil rights regime. The end of affirmative action could very well occur under President Trump. The institutionalized wokeness could see many reversals. But social wokeness—as in what’s accepted by the broader public—is here to stay unless dramatic transformations await in the future. 

America’s radical demographic changes means some form of woke will be around for awhile. It has the potential to grow into an even more radical movement in the future. A political movement that combines explicit anti-whiteness with socialist economics would win over many adherents in a majority-minority America. But, for now, woke is put aside. The silent majority wants a sense of normalcy so they can focus on their FanDuel picks in peace. They’re tired of wokeness getting in the way of their lives.

Many of them may get lulled into the false sense that we’ve returned to the idyllic 90s, which now stands as the conservative dream decade. But we will never return to the 1990s with a minority white population. A new America awaits over the horizon–and it will be much different than anything we’ve seen before.