The War on “Woke”
What on earth is a woke scone?
A snack with a land acknowledgement? A pastry that self-identifies as a croissant? A radical leftist baked good demanding reparations for colonial tea plantations? No. Apparently, it’s just a scone without butter.
The National Trust, a heritage conservation charity in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, dared to make its plain and fruit scones dairy-free so vegans and the lactose-intolerant could enjoy them. The Daily Mail, ever-vigilant in its defense of British identity, declared this an act of wokery.
Never mind that the Trust’s scones had been dairy-free for years, or that the same critics once praised a near-identical recipe. The reactionary outrage machine must be fed, and, apparently, nothing is more dangerous than a pastry’s refusal to conform.
How on earth did we get here? After all, “woke” was once an imperative.
The term “woke” has its origins in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), where it initially meant an alertness to how racism does not announce itself, but rather seeps into the structures of the world.
“Woke” started to gain widespread attention in the 2010s, particularly through the rise of social media and movements such as Black Lives Matter. It migrated into broader progressive movements, expanding its jurisdiction to include class struggle, queer liberation and the fight against patriarchy.
The term once signified an awareness of systemic injustices, a refusal to be lulled into complacency by the soft comforts of ignorance. But language is rarely stable. “Woke” is no longer what it was; it has become what it has been mutilated into. It has become the territory of those who needed an enemy but didn’t want to go through the trouble of naming one.
To be “woke” — or rather, the modern accusation of being “woke” — is to be humorless and laughable, fragile yet somehow militant, and oversensitive but also tyrannical. The contradictions don’t matter. What matters is that “woke” had been refashioned into a one-size-fits-all strawman, stuffed with every cultural grievance it could fit.
“Woke” today is a parody of itself, a warped fun house mirror held by those who claim that recognizing racism is more offensive than racism itself, that asking to be called the right name is oppressing, and that justice is tyranny if it creates any discomfort at all. It is a familiar process.
There is a tried and true trick to these maneuvers, a sleight of hand that has been performed so many times it barely registers. Take a radical idea, defang it, castrate it, and sand down its edges until it no longer threatens anyone in power. Then, ridicule the dulled idea that remains.
Consider “politically correct,” once a phrase used within leftist circles to describe a correction to discriminatory behavior, rebranded as a South Park-endorsed one-liner, wielded against any effort to make the world a more inclusive place. Or “feminism,” which, in some circles, has been contorted into a caricature of man-hating rather than a movement for gender equality. Even “social justice,” which surely ought to be self-evident in its aim, has been repackaged as an overreaching doctrine of grievance rather than a demand for fairness.
“Elitism” once addressed unchecked power hoarded by an aristocracy. Now, it’s embodied by a personification of pretentiousness recommending a book. Even “cancel culture,” the modern monster under the bed, is just the age-old concept of social consequence, now rebranded as a societal apocalypse. “Radical” used to mean someone who dared to question the foundation of the system. Now, it means anyone with a reusable tote bag and political laptop stickers.
These transformations follow a pattern: words that once demanded change are hollowed out, turned into cultural punchlines, and redeployed to justify resistance to the very things they once represented. “Woke,” then, is just the latest casualty in a long history of linguistic distortion. It is, in other words, a rhetorical void.
Yet, it is inescapable that modern “woke” exists in a fraught relationship with capitalism, the deformity of “woke” is possibly due to the detrimental partnership. “Woke” positions itself as a critique of systemic injustice under neoliberal capitalism, yet it often finds itself absorbed into the circuits of commodification, “woke’s” critique repackaged for consumption.
In the market-driven world of consumerism, notions of “woke-ness” have been packaged and monetized through “woke capitalism” — corporations that present themselves as socially conscious through performative progressiveness while maintaining exploitative practices. This, in turn, raises another question: Can one truly be “woke” within systems that, by their very nature, profit from the perpetuation of inequality?
However, the conservative war on “woke” is not a battle against performative activism under capitalism, but instead, a battle against an invented enemy, a fight staged against the shadow puppet boogeyman of progressivism, grotesque enough to justify the backlash.
No one self-identifies as “woke” anymore — at least not without irony — because the term no longer exists in relation to its origins. It exists only as a vessel for resentment toward progressiveness, a convenient catch-all umbrella for all the growing pains of cultural discomfort.
And what a useful umbrella it is! The so-called war on “woke” is not waged in the realm of policy or material conditions but in the theater of the absurd, where the outfit of an M&M mascot or the existence of gender-neutral pronouns apparently signal civilizational collapse. Meanwhile, “woke’s” original target — those who hoard wealth, erode civil rights, and privatize the air one breathes — laugh from a safe distance, delighted that the masses are too busy debating rainbow packaging to notice true egregiousness.
The war on “woke” is a discourse where nothing is proven because everything is already assumed. To argue against the existence of “woke” is to chase a ghost. The moment one engages, the terms have already been set, and they are not in one’s favor.
The reactionary right does not need to define what “woke” means. That would make it easier to disprove. Instead, the definition shifts, elastic enough to ensnare any movement, any critique, any person who dares to suggest that the status quo is anything less than just. This is the paradox of opposing the right’s war on “woke” — when one fights against it, it risks seemingly affirming its existence.
What if, instead of constantly clarifying, refuting and explaining, one simply walked away from the absurdity of the debate? “Woke” — as its critics define it — does not exist. The real battles have never been about this word. The battle against injustice predates “woke” and will continue long after the term has faded from cultural discourse.
Why not let the strawman burn? After all, the fight is elsewhere.
The image used in this article is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Deed. It was taken by Benson Kua and has been unaltered from its original form. It can be accessed here.