Are Critics of Wokeness Responsible for the Illiberal Anti-Woke Backlash?

This is a failure to understand how human psychology works

Photo by Matt Paul Catalano on Unsplash

(Audio version here)

For many years now, liberal critics of “wokeness,” have been desperately trying to get people to see that the Critical Social Justice movement is harmful to the preservation of a liberal society that cares about what is true. We have argued that “wokeness” is a problem in itself because it is based on a deeply theoretical worldview that bears very little correspondence with reality and imposes itself on people in almost every area of their lives, dictating what they must pretend to believe and how they must speak. Since 2020, I have supported over 2000 individuals under threat of disciplinary action because they held beliefs like “Not all white people are racist” or ““Woman” is a biological sex category” or organisations in peril of spontaneously combusting because activists seeking to punish people for holding those views had gained dominance within it.

Many critics of wokeness, however, particularly those of us on the left, also argued that wokeness was not only a problem on the grounds of the realities and freedom it was denying directly itself, but because it would trigger a massive anti-woke backlash on the right which was potentially even more dangerous. Much of my energy from 2015 to 2020 was spent urging others on the liberal left to help address this problem on the left and to see that it was a problem and not just a rather overzealous and silly, well-intentioned effort to advance social justice. I argued that to fail to address this problem on our side for fear of giving strength to the right was a mistake and that not being seen to acknowledge and address illiberalism on the left was far more likely to make people surge right, including the voters we needed to enact genuine liberal left-wing economic policies. This could embolden an illiberal right to gain cultural dominance and enact precisely the policies that impacted the rights of the most vulnerable people in society whose interests the left is primarily concerned with.

In 2018, we wrote,

It is generally a terrible idea to have different rules of behavior dependent on identity because it goes against the most common sense of fairness and reciprocity which seems to be pretty hardwired. It is also antithetical to universal liberalism and precisely the opposite of what civil rights movements fought to obtain. . . . If most people are now working on an understanding of fairness, equality, and reciprocity as individual, this mentality can be incomprehensible and alienating.

It is in this way that identity politics is the most counterproductive and even dangerous. We humans are tribal and territorial creatures, and identity politics comes far more naturally to us than universality and individuality. Our history bears the evidence of humans unapologetically favoring their own tribe, own town, own religion, own nation, and own race over others and creating narratives after the impulse to attempt to justify doing it.

The universal human rights and principles of not judging people by their race, gender, or sexuality—which have developed over the modern period and resulted in the civil rights movements, legal equality, and much social progress—are much more uncommon to us and must be consistently reinforced and maintained. If we allow identity politics in the form of [Critical] Social Justice to undermine this fragile and precarious detente, we could undo decades of social progress and provide a rationale for a resurgence of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Given the novelty of egalitarian society, it is not at all clear that women and racial and sexual minorities could easily win these losses back.

In my most recent book published in 2024, I detailed the ways this is now happening. (I also addressed it in this piece in 2023). Over the last six months, I have been mostly focused here on urging people not to see the illiberal right as a solution to the illiberal left, then to oppose the illiberal right without surging back to supporting the illiberal left. It took a great deal of time to convince the genuinely liberal (freedom-orientated) on the left to see the seriousness of the problem and the counteraction it was likely to trigger and oppose it, or, at least, stop endorsing it. Meanwhile, the illiberal factions on the left continued not to see it and to insist that the resurgence of racist, misogynistic and homophobic sentiment is evidence that they were right all along and should have tried harder to forcibly retrain workers’ unconscious minds and dismantle their whiteness, detoxify their masculinity and decolonise their thinking. The problem, it often seems, to them is less about the illiberal factions on the right, but the liberals on the left, like me, who stood in their way while they were doing this.

Frankly, it’s exhausting.

Today, I received a comment on my latest piece trying to get people to acknowledge the damage done by the ‘woke’ and also the illiberal nature of so many of the anti-woke that said,

It doesn’t matter. We have far bigger problems than the Woke Left now. Everyone who fought that crusade now gets to own the Trump administration. I hope but do not expect that someday the warriors against wokeness will apologize for what they helped bring about, but I do not get the impression that they have the foggiest idea what they have done. You and your former colleagues crafted the ideology that was seized upon by fascists who now “govern,” busily tearing up NATO, international trade, freedom of speech, the human rights of immigrants, democracy, and the rule of law. But at least we won’t have any more postmodernism at Columbia! Thanks!

This was particularly infuriating, because I had reason to the think the commenter must, at least, have known about what happened in 2017 when I contributed to a panel arguing that psychological sex differences exist. So angry were activists about this that we had to meet with the police about which threats of violence and death were credible, the university hosting us had to move us to a smaller room to ensure security meaning that many people who wanted to come could not do so, we had to arrange bodyguards, arrive very early and hide in a backroom and then we needed a police escort off the premises. At one point in the conversation, while a female biologist was saying that people seldom objected to the claim that men are, on average, taller than women, a tall trans woman announced an objection to this claim. Then three activists, including the trans woman, broke the sound equipment in order to try to prevent us from being heard by the people who had managed to fit into the space to hear us.

Were we really expected not to highlight this as a problem? A problem for freedom of speech and belief? A problem for academic freedom? A problem for anybody who cared about what is true? Would not pointing this out have helped to hold back the illiberal anti-woke backlash? If so, how?

I screencapped this comment and posted a note about it, saying,

As predicted. To many, the people who caused the illiberal, anti-woke backlash were not the woke, but the people pointing out the illiberalism of the woke. If we’d just kept our mouths shut, nobody would have noticed and everything would have been fine?

(Of course, I did not create the ideology from which I criticise the illiberalism of the woke or anti-woke, flattering though that is. Liberalism predates me by centuries. Nor does it lead to fascism.)

Following this, the writer contacted me saying that he regretted the comment almost immediately and indicating that he himself is a liberal and does not necessarily believe me, personally, to be instrumental in empowering the illiberal anti-woke right. I removed the note because I have no wish to cause problems for anyone by drawing attention to a comment made in the heat of the moment and in error and then retracted. That is a very human failing, especially in times as volatile and frightening as we are in right now. All we can do about it is try not to make negative assumptions about others and honestly own and retract them if we do, which my correspondant did.

Nevertheless, I wanted to address the substance of his criticism and I do so with his blessing. I suspect he, and many others will continue to make it about critics of wokeness who are less demonstrably liberal and left-wing than me. Many of them will continue to make it of me too, despite this. I think this attitude presents a serious problem among liberals on the left that will prevent us from working together and also with liberals on the right to address our current problems of illiberalism on both the left and the right. It also, I would suggest, fundamentally misunderstands human psychology.

The temptation to ‘maintain solidarity’ against an opponent whom one perceive to be far more dangerous than the illiberal factions on one’s own side and thus condone or minimise the impact of the illiberalism coming from one’s own side is very natural. “Why do you punch left when right-wing populism is rising?” I have frequently been asked. Aside from the facts that I think it is important to apply principles consistently and that we have more chance of addressing illiberalism on our own side than on our opponents, I also think this attitude to be counterproductive to achieving goals.

Think about whichever illiberalism is of most concern to you right now. Is it wokeness? Far-right populism? Islamism? Now, imagine that ethical leftists, conservatives or Muslims wanted to convince you not to write off the whole of the left, right or adherents to Islam and backlash against them? What would best achieve that?

“Yes. We see the problem on the left and are on it. This identitarian authoritarianism is a betrayal of left-wing values and we will own it and push it out.”

or

“There’s no problem here and if you think there is, you’re probably racist. The right is the real problem.

What about:

“The rise of authoritarian populism on the right is a real problem and ethical conservatives are addressing it. This goes against the conservative philosophical tradition and we are responsible for bringing others on the right to see that.”

or

“The right are not the ones causing problems. We’re all about common sense and decency. If you can’t see that, you’re probably a woke communist.”

Perhaps:

“Yes. There is a serious problem with extremism, women’s rights, gay rights, antisemitism and freedom of belief and speech in the name of Islam. We liberal and reforming Muslims need to own that problem honestly and address it.

or

“What are you talking about? Islam is the religion of peace and the most feminist and inclusive thing ever. If you don’t accept that, you’re Islamophobic. That’s the real problem in society.

Repeat ad nauseam for every ideological tribe that exists.

Nearly everybody can see that the behaviour and attitude that would make them more sympathetic to tribes they are currently very wary of is one that is intellectually honest, accountable and proactive. Very many people fail to accept that being so themselves is what will make their own tribe more ethical and worthy of respect and persuade more people to regard it as such. There we tend to think that it is most important to hold the party line, assert that everything is just fine and impugn the motivations and characters of people who think otherwise. This is bizarre because it is not as though people whom we might have convinced to support our political party or activist party or religious group will stop noticing the problems with our group if we deny their existence. They’ll just take their analysis and criticisms from other groups who were never in favour of our views in the first place and are not inclined to address them accurately or charitably. This is how we lose people. That matters particularly when it comes to democracies and voting.

This is how the left lost people. I utterly reject the claim that it is left-wing, liberal critics of wokeness who care about what is true who do not have the foggiest idea what we have done. Instead, I think it is clear that if there had been more of us, we would have pushed back the left-wing, illiberal woke who care nothing for what is true when it arose. This would have prevented it from gaining institutional and cultural power in the first place and almost certainly prevented the surge to the right-wing, illiberal anti-woke who care nothing for what is true either.

Post-mortems like this are generally unhelpful. Those of us who are concerned about the rise of a deeply illiberal right, the actions of Donald Trump, and Elon Musk’s control over social media need to work together right now, rather than going back over what we should have done in the past and who is responsible for not having done it. We can, however, learn from mistakes. I would argue it to be a huge mistake to take the attitude my correspondant did and say that what the woke do now does not matter because we have bigger problems from the right. This is precisely when it matters most. We could use this time when the Trump administration is demonstrating its profound illiberalism and the threat it presents to international cooperation, individual liberty, human rights, minority groups, due process and democracy by both highlighting that and strengthening the ethical principles and material policies of the left by marginalising ‘woke,’ so that people want to vote for it again. Alternatively, we could point the finger solely at the illiberalism on the right while refraining from engaging in any critical self-reflection at all or taking responsibility for anything, accusing those on the left who criticise the woke of being terrible human beings and alienating or silencing them, and present the people whom we could have convinced with another choice between the “lesser of two evils” at the next ballot box.

I am not satisfied with trying to be the lesser of two evils by focusing all my attention on pointing out how evil the other side is. I want my political party to be a positive force for good in the world, and I think I have more power to influence it in that direction than I do the party I do not belong to. I know that ethical conservatives feel the same way, because many of you say so here, and I am encouraged to see pushback to the reality-denying, illiberal, identitarian right from liberal conservatives and traditional conservatives. This is the way.

If we focus all our attention on trying to gain support for our own side by pointing out the irrational, illiberal lunatics on the other side and tacitly condoning or minimising our own, we will simply facilitate hostility and polarisation and entirely fail to hold our own group to account and self-correct. Both the left and the right will continue to be dominated by its narrow band of lunatics enabled by its much broader band of blinkered apologists. Well-intentioned, freedom-orientated people who care about about what is true and about the future of their country will forever be forced to make calculations based on which party is likely to damage it least.

If, instead, we criticise the failings of the other side with honesty, integrity and charity, while focusing the majority of our attention on self-correction and marginalising our own irrational, authoritarian loons, we could genuinely make both sides stronger and more ethically consistent. Then we have the best chance of producing parties that well-intentioned, freedom-orientated people who care about what is true and about the future of their country might actually want to vote for as a way of improving that.

I strongly recommend we do the latter.