Are The Woke Left Doubling Down or Fleeing the Sinking Ship?

Photo by Vlad Zaytsev on Unsplash

(Audio version here)

"The problem is the Left has shown almost no signs of moderation. The rhetoric, new leadership, and vibes all suggest a doubling down on wokeism, not a move towards rational centrism."

"And the Party of the Left, the Dems, have shown no ability to learn from the spanking they received on Nov 5. Rather than saying "We have nothing that normal voters support", they have doubled down on the "Trumpers are low-information deplorables" meme."

These were comments left on my most recent post about whether we are seeing an anti-anti-woke backlash by two of my thoughtful subscribers. This struck me particularly as I had just been on X reading conversations in which many people are currently angry that Ash Sarkar has been critical of identity politics after having been a proponent of it. These sum up the feeling of indignation well:

This metaphor of “rats fleeing a sinking ship” was repeated often and other examples were raised of politicians backing away from wokeness most commonly including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sadiq Khan having removed their pronouns from various biographies.

These two perceptions have been warring for considerable time now - I addressed them in my last book over a year ago - with critics of wokeness disagreeing. Some argue that wokeness is not waning at all and give examples of its continued existence and promotion by politicians. Others argue that it is and deplore what they see as the dishonesty and opportunism of left-wing politicians in trying to distance themselves from woke ideas they had once espoused strongly.

It cannot be true both that wokeness is waning and that it is not, that left-wing politicians are doubling down on it and that they are distancing themselves from it. So. what is true and why do these two conflicting perceptions exist among people who have the same negative views of wokeness and left-wing parties and are most commonly on the right?

The question of whether wokeness is waning is one that can be measured in various ways and the answer to that question on a societal level seems almost certainly to be “Yes”, in the United States and UK at least. (Some measures suggest Canada is not doing so well and it was on the rise in Northern Europe). As I wrote in The Counterweight Handbook.

Many social scientists, as well as political and cultural commentators of various kinds, have begun to argue that Critical Social Justice (usually referred to as “wokeness”) “peaked” in 2020 and has since been on the decline. There is evidence to support the position that there is a growing resistance to Critical Social Justice and a general sense of culture war fatigue.

The overall attrition rate for DEI roles was 50 percent higher than non-DEI jobs in 2022, as many companies began phasing out certain DEI positions. Further, while job postings for DEI positions expanded by nearly 30 percent between 2020 and 2021, they dropped by almost an equal percentage between 2022 and 2023. Support for the Black Lives Matter movement declined from 67 percent at its peak in 2020 to 51 percent in 2023, and a majority of Americans say the increased focus on race since the 2020 George Floyd protests has not improved the lives of black people.

There are also signs that other areas of Critical Social Justice focus have decreased in popularity. Analysis by sociologist

Musa al-Gharbi

arguably the most meticulous documenter of this trajectory across many spheres of society, reveals, among much more, a decline in relevant journalistic word usage as well as a drop in cancellation events, a decrease in academic output using Critical Social Justice theories, a greater confidence of students to express their views, and a greater push-back against DEI from both employers and mainstream outlets.

This is supported by research examining the language of 725 corporate social responsibility communications undertaken by Adam William Chalmers and Robyn Klingler-Vidra. Whereas companies once primarily used the term “civil rights movement” when discussing issues of social justice, their language shifted in 2015 and became dominated by “wokeisms” such as “allyship” “diversity equity,” “equity and inclusion,” and “racial justice.” Since 2021, this language has been in decline.

(The book goes on to argue that this is not grounds for complacency)

That left-wing politicians have responded to this culture shift in an attempt to move rightwards is also demonstrable by changes in their rhetoric. As Jeremy W. Peters put it shortly before the election:

[T]he country is also in a starkly different place from four years ago. Case in point: Ms. Harris is boasting about protecting her home with a Glock, proclaiming her patriotism and campaigning with Republicans like Liz Cheney.

As David Weigel argued a few weeks earlier, “No matter who wins, the US is moving to the right,”

The Democratic Party, after two decades of leftward post-Clinton drift, has jerked abruptly right. Facing Donald Trump for the third consecutive election, Democrats are making rhetorical and policy concessions that they didn’t want to, or think they needed to, in 2016 and 2020. They’ve adjusted to an electorate that’s shifted to the right, toward the Trump-led GOP, on issues that progressives once hoped were non-negotiable — immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change policies, and criminal justice reform.

We also see a shift in UK politics with the election of Keir Starmer, one of the most right-wing Labour MPs, and the subsequent defection of the most left-wing members of the party. With his pronouncements of “God Save the King” and inclusion of the Union Jack in campaign materials, the movement of his views on whether or not one should define women biologically and promises to prioritise workers and business, Starmer has clearly been trying to move away from radical views, win back centrists and appeal to the significant working class Labour voter base that is economically left-wing, socially conservative and nationalistic.

There is much evidence that, in their policy campaigns, the left-wing parties in the US and the UK have been making calculated efforts to move away from more radical left-wing positions, both identitarian and economic, and move closer to the centre. This clearly was not enough to convince American voters and while some in the UK have argued that this was influential on Starmer’s victory, this victory is shaky and others have argued convincingly that it represents a loss of faith in the Conservatives rather than an increase in trust in Labour.

I think there are three primary reasons that so many people, particularly on the right, either perceive no shift away from wokeness at all or regard it cynically as performative and opportunistic or both. These are that both of those attitudes genuinely exist in elements of the left, that so many people have been personally affected by it that there is a widespread, hypervigilant distrust and that some people on the anti-woke right don’t want it to wane.

The primary reason that people see the left as doubling down on wokeness and also distancing themselves from wokeness is because both of those elements are there to be seen! Although there is significant evidence that wokeness is waning, ‘waning’ is not the same as ‘over.’ Showing data evidencing its decline on a cultural level will be of little comfort to an individual facing disciplinary action right now for objecting to the idea that therapy clients can only be understood by therapists of the same race, arguing that basing medical practice on medical science is not colonialist or saying that, if they must tick a box indicating their gender identity, “none’ needs to be an available option. (These are three cases I am dealing with right now). Wokeness may have ‘peaked’ in 2020 but it was doing harm for at least seven years as it was rising and it will continue to do harm as it is falling. The wane may well take longer than the rise as removing a problem frequently does take longer than creating one and the ‘death throes’ of a movement can manifest as particularly extreme. People who say the woke are doubling down are likely observing incidents of the woke doubling down.

Similarly, those who say prominent leftist figures, including politicians, are distancing themselves opportunistically from wokeness because it is waning are likely observing said pundits doing that, opportunistically or otherwise. I will not presume to be able to mindread Ms. Sarkar, but I understand the anger felt by people that she is now saying identity politics are a problem after having promoted identity politics for considerable time. On an abstract, purely rational, level, we should not object to politicians changing their minds on issues as the public do as it is their job to represent the views of the people rather than their own. On a human level, this is enraging because, in order to trust and forgive not only policy-makers, but anyone, we need to hear them say, “I got that wrong and it caused harm. I’m sorry.” This almost never happens because the system of politics relies so much on spin and rhetoric and individual politicians are concerned for their own careers at least as much as for representing the will of the people. Nevertheless, left-wing parties will need to acknowledge the harm done by identitarian wokeness and demonstrate commitment to change to rebuild trust.

Radical and widespread distrust is the second reason that so many people are inclined to either disbelieve that wokeness is waning or regard evidence that it is cynically. The Critical Social Justice movement has permeated so many areas of people’s everyday lives including their workplaces, universities and children’s schools as well as dominating mainstream media and social media that it has produced a more personal and visceral anger and distrust than party politics typically do. This is because it has not only impacted public policy but culture itself on multiple levels and the strength of the resulting antipathy can be understood as the psychological impact of “Cancel Culture.” I think John Stuart Mill can be understood to be referring to this when he spoke of ‘the tyranny of prevailing opinion’, in On Liberty,

Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.

When anger, resentment and distrust are this strong and this personal, people are likely to remain hypervigilant and suspicious for a considerable time. Signs of wokeness will be pounced upon as evidence that the problem is not waning at all while signs of a move away from wokeness will be distrusted as a ‘rats fleeing the sinking ship’ phenomenon precisely because wokeness is waning. Yes, this is contradictory, especially when those two diagnoses are made by the same people depending on circumstance, and does present something of a ‘no-win’ situation. However, I’d suggest it is more than the typical kind of motivated reasoning commonly engaged in by people with their own political agenda and better understood as a hypervigilant psychological response due to how personally affected by this so many people have been. We can certainly point out that both things cannot be true, that wokeness is waning and that it’s good that left-wing politicians are starting to distance themselves from it. However, ultimately, the solution is for left-wing parties to do that more consistently and more openly and rebuild trust by being consistently principled on axes of liberalism and prioritization of the working class. Left-wingers generally can best help rebuild trust by doing this too and resisting any temptation to react to the rise of an illiberal right by supporting the illiberal left (as discussed here).

However, there is a third potential problem that is not simply an observation of doubling down on wokeness and also a cynical distancing from wokeness from elements on the left or a product of alienation, anger and distrust due to having been personally affected by it. This is known as “St. George in Retirement Syndrome” and will need to be watched out for by people on the anti-woke right. This term is drawn from an analogy used by the Australian philosopher, Kenneth Minogue, addressing progressive overreach, although I learned of it via Douglas Murray’s book, The Madness of Crowds. It is not only something progressives can fall prey to, however, as it is essentially the problem of defining oneself by a specific mission and not knowing when to quit. Chris Meyer applies it more broadly to the human condition and defines it thus,

[T]he pathological state an initially heroic person can wind up in. After having succeeded in a righteous battle, the winner becomes preoccupied with increasingly trivial causes. In the end, the hero is too committed and too proud to call it quits. What started out as a laudable pursuit is now indistinguishable from madness.

For those who have dedicated significant time and energy to highlighting the problems with wokeness, the tendency to define one’s purpose and even identity as ‘anti-woke’ can be strong and potentially destructive. In Minogue’s story, St. George defined himself by the slaying of dragons and, as he was successful and the big dragons were gone, he continued to need his dragons to have a sense of himself and to search for and fight increasingly small dragons.

It has often been commented (and this is Murray’s argument) that elements of the progressive left, having won major battles in the realm of social justice, needed to continue to find evidence of social injustice and defeat it in order to continue having a sense of purpose and identity. This has also been described in terms like “the demand for racism/other bigotry exceeding the supply” and related to silly things like claiming that the term ‘master bedroom’ is racist or that lego is anti-LGBT. This need is also implied in the concept of ‘woke’ itself as this refers to systems of power and privilege that most people cannot even see and need to be awakened to by things like unconscious bias training

In his recent book, We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that the anti-woke mirror the woke in their need to keep wokeness alive in order to maintain their status and relevance. I think his brushstrokes are somewhat too broad with this and the majority of the anti-woke (including me) are motivated to dispatch wokeness and would be only too glad to turn our attention to something else. Nevertheless, he does identify a genuine mentality among some of the illiberal, right-wing anti-woke, and with the Trump/Musk administration largely running on an anti-woke/anti-DEI platform, the risk of overreach is real. The potential to keep that anti-woke momentum going by identifying more and more things as ‘woke’ or detecting wokeness where it is not is something we need to be alert to. The last thing we need is for the demand for wokeness to exceed the supply, and to have a lot of wannabe St. Georges running around slaying wokeness dragons that are actually perfectly ethical anti-discrimination policies, anybody even vaguely on the left or members of minority groups with good jobs.