🔒 You Can't Kill Woke Because You Still Can't Define It

Month nine (year 30? 50? 100?) of the Trump presidency, and already a number of books are coming out about how woke is over now thanks to the good work Trump has done to stamp it out, and given the timeline of publishing, any book that’s coming out now was probably written by February.

 Holy shit, I wish I could write a book that fast. I’m sure they are comprehensive and studiously researched deep analyses of a complex social phenomenon. I’m sure they pass a much higher bar of rigor than they demand from the academic social sciences. I’m sure they’re not just hastily slapped together recycled reactionary grievance slop they rearranged to sound like brand new sentences.

 But anyway, thank God woke is dead. Thank God references to the Enola Gay were removed from government websites because there is now zero tolerance for gay shit in America. Thank God American taxpayer money is being redirected to costly but necessary projects like saving Americans from gay crosswalks.

 But alas, there is dissent in the ranks. Some are skeptical that woke truly is dead, or whether it’s lying dormant. The tweet replies on Piers Morgan’s book announcement in particular are a string of incredulous backlash: How can you say woke is dead when Zionism still exists? When media still exists? When there are still trans people? When there are still black people? 

Quillette founder Claire Lehmann can affirm: Rumors of the death of woke have been greatly exaggerated. In an article on September 2 she argues that woke isn’t dead, it’s just shapeshifted into a new form: Communism.

 I had to do a record-scratch double-take on this one because I was sure that blanket-describing everything to the left of Reagan as full-blown communism was what they’ve been doing this whole time, but nope. According to Lehmann, whatever the original woke was—she seems to define it as “left-liberalism,” which she further reduces to… trans people, just trans people, in sports, schools, public, anywhere—that’s all finished now, but what we now have is communism. And she justifies this by citing the existence of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who is brown, and a total communist, and also, she hints, maybe a terrorist?

She also, then, describes support for Palestine as being part of this New Woke. Which is weird, isn’t it? Because just earlier, we saw a guy who says Zionism is woke. And Palestine isn’t communist, though Lehmann groups it under that umbrella, and goes further to say that Alex Jones and Candace Owens are woke because they rail against globalist elites, and anyone who criticizes Wall Street elites is woke and communist too, because that’s capitalism. She also says fighting climate change is woke, just in general.

 Uh-oh, do you feel it? Do you feel this same goddamn carousel spinning around again? Do you feel the madness setting in? Do you feel the urge to apply clown makeup and dance on the streets of Gotham? We’ve been here before, friends. We’ve always been here.

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