In Ebonics, woke can be used in the present tense, as in “I be woke” which would mean, “I am awake.” We are not kidding nor are we mocking Ebonics. As Oscar Gamble supposedly said,
people don’t think it be like it is, but it do.
and yo dats 4 real cuz dats legit ‘cuz it do b like dat! It is indeed verifiable that we are not joking. Simply go to the Ebonics Translator and translate the English word awakened into Ebonics and see that it translates to woke. Also, see woke in the Urban Dictionary. Seriously, tough, this is supported by other, more serious sources as we will see below. Additionally, for what they are worth, Merriam-Webster states that in the sense of that we are concerned with here, woke
originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The word Buddha roughly translates to “the awakened one.” This is not to be taken in the literal sense as in “one who has roused from unconsciousness and who is now alert”, but in a metaphoric sense. The word woke is used in sociopolitical matters in a metaphoric sense as well.
In the case of the word Buddha, being awake is a metaphor for being enlightened in the psycho-spiritual sense (see “I Am Awake” by the University of Chicago). In the case of woke or wokeness, being awake is a metaphor for being
aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)
according to Merriam-Webster who gives the following example,
With recruitment rates to the U.S. military falling, attention is turning to the rise of woke politics, which is undermining public confidence in America's military leaders.—The Editorial Board, WSJ, 2 Nov. 2023
We will see more examples below.
Shorter Version
Western political correctness (‘wokeness’) has displaced class struggle
and so on. These terms more-or-less refer to the same political alignment and while these range from academic to pedestrian, the term woke is still colloquial (slang).
We could also say that to be woke is to have critical consciousness, race consciousness and similar concerns related to sociopolitical power as it pertains to gender, sex, sexual orientation, ability status, body type, attractiveness privilege or lack thereof, citizenship status and so on.
“woke, adjective: Originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice; frequently in stay woke.”
Woke means being conscious of racial discrimination in society and other forms of oppression and injustice. In mainstream use, woke can also more generally describe someone or something as being “with it.”
“Woke” is currently used by the political left to refer to progressiveness and social justice, while those on the political right have weaponised it as a way to denigrate those who disagree with their beliefs.
1 a: aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)
—often used in contexts that suggest someone's expressed beliefs about such matters are not backed with genuine concern or action
b: reflecting the attitudes of woke people
2 disapproving: politically liberal or progressive (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme
They give examples of the use of each of the above.
When we consider the meaning of words (linguistics is fun!) we have to consider what they represent, and what they represent can change, or be interpreted differently by different people.
Furthermore, on page 3, he notes the difficulty of describing wokeness and writes,
Some of its proponents describe it singularly as being aware of racial injustices- but that is only one puristic notion behind the term itself; it is, at least in practice, much more broad, and amorphous (deliberately) as Critical Race Theory, which is counterpart to wokeness itself.
He writes also that
the different definitions of wokeness are all fundamentally useful- if not wokeness itself! But when we define things for the reason of debate and discourse, it is sensible, nay, necessary, to have a solid definition in order to either reasonably support or criticize the ideal, thing, person, etc.
On pages 4-5 he writes,
wokeness, being tied in directly with sociopolitics- a discourse affecting law, justice, and even economics- is therefore much more important, and it is a debate that continues. Although I consider wokeness easily defined and rebuked for its nonsense, a pretense of its proponents pretends otherwise, and hapless critics get drawn off the debate by linguistic phantasms and constantly shifting definitions and re-definitions. To define wokeness, first we will look under the banner of pragmatism and colloquial usage at what its professed proponents and supporters subjugate to the concept to be defined:
First, that equality is a negative thing and leads to injustice- a direct tie-in to Marxist- derived Critical Race Theory.
Second; that meritocracy is also a negative force in the world, leading to inequality- which will of course be criticized when compared to its first basic tenet.
Third; Science is malleable, and there is no absolute truth of any sort. Except, of course, the need for wokeness.
Fourth, that all things must necessarily be subjugated to social justice (social experimentation) and centralized attempts at creating “equity”, no matter how concrete and non-abstract.
Fifth; Free speech is a form of violence.
Sixth; Tolerance should be inverted. To tolerate that which is labelled intolerance is itself intolerance, and to be intolerant is a form of tolerance when applied properly.
Seventh; Business should be subjected to sociopolitics, and can be benevolent.
Eighth; Marxism is fundamentally justified, if not the actions of Marxist regimes (which are normally argued not to have been Marxist by these same proponents.)
Ninth; History must be sanitized for the purpose of protecting people’s sensibilities.
Tenth; Corporations are made sanitary through participation in ESG and similar things- even if their behavior abroad is in direct contravention to social justice.
Eleventh; Cancel culture is good, but the real cancel culture is any form of pushback against any woke policies or figures. Any criticism of them is censorship, while censorship of any other group or individual is justified.
Twelfth; The rule of law is both meaningless and even problematic.
Thirteenth and finally; everything can be racist except for actual racism, everything sexist except for actual sexism, and so forth; a Marxist style newspeak elaboration on fundamentally Stalinize tactics of yesteryear.
He then spends most of his book elaborating on these thirteen before deducing (page 27),
If someone claims that we cannot describe a machine, but we then proceed to detail how it works in minutiae- for example, its gears, switches, valves, we can study its operation, and see its actual operation in real time, then we can describe he machine whether or not we give it a proper name. The name is effectively irrelevant, standing only to describe the function and why the machine exists. It has a specific mode of operation and a specific outcome to the same. I thus deduce the actual function of wokeness based on what it seeks to oppose. It opposes equality, merit, individual liberty, deregulated economics, and any form of cultural appreciation. It upholds collectivism, statism, and corporate power. So the final deduction is based on answering one question; what are all of these things, which wokeness opposes, hallmarks of?
The answer is simple. These are the hallmarks of enlightened Western civilization itself.
Wokeness is nothing more than an elaborate Marxist and arguably neofascist canard designed to weaken the fabric of civilization itself in order to usher in authoritarianism in every manner; legal, social, intellectual, and behavioral.
Note, by the way, that what Warwick describes in that last paragraph is more-or-less cultural Marxism. See our section (cultural Marxism).
Of course, dictionaries exist to describe what words mean according to how they are used. Ideally, dictionary definitions reflect what words mean to those who use them. With this in mind, let us note that the University of Massachusetts Amherst reported on June 19, 2023 that they conducted a national poll that
surveyed Americans’ views on some of the culture issues being used by politicians to divide the country, including diversity, trans rights, antisemitism, immigration and even the definition of the political buzzword of the day – “woke.”
Furthermore, they write that
Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the poll
stated,
“Americans seem to be attentive to this discussion of the prospect of a ‘woke’ nation, as three in four Americans have heard ‘a lot’ or ‘some’ about the term woke. However, former President Donald Trump has opined that ‘half of the people can’t even define it’ and more recently conservative thinker Bethany Mandel famously stammered and struggled to define the term in a clip that became a viral sensation.
“What then does ‘woke’ mean to Americans?” Nteta asks. “We found that for most, the term that best describes woke is its synonym, ‘aware,’ with many speaking to the racial implications of the term – a callback to the origins of the term in the African American community where it was meant as a clarion call for people to awaken to the role of systemic racism in shaping the lives of people of color.”
On January 2, 2025, a man named James Lindsay who figures in the section on woke right posted this [archive here],
This aligns with our statement above that it could be said that
to be woke is to have critical consciousness
According to a book he co-authored with Helen Pluckrose called Cynical Theories - How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender and Identity and Why This Harms Everybody,
James Lindsay is a mathematician with a background in physics and founder of New Discourses (newdiscourses.com). His books include Everybody is Wrong About God and How to Have Impossible Conversations and his essays have appeared in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Time.
At the end of the day, the simplest trait defining "Woke" is believing in collective justice.
Based on what we will see ahead, Lindsay seems to be using “collective justice” synonymously with the Social Justice Movement and so on. Earlier we quoted from Cynical Theories - How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender and Identity and Why This Harms Everybody (2002) which he co-authored with Helen Pluckrose. According to the inside back cover, she
is a liberal political and cultural writer and speaker. She is the editor of Areo Magazine and the author of many popular essays on postmodernism, critical theory, liberalism, secularism, and feminism.
In that book, they state on page 14,
The movement has thus come to be known as the “Social Justice Movement” and its online critics often refer to it, for brevity, as “SocJus” or, increasingly, “wokeism” (due to its belief that it alone has “awakened” to the nature of societal injustice).
They associate this movement that has
come to be known as the “Social Justice Movement”
with being “cancelled” (page 14) and with rejecting the principle of charity (page 15) when it comes to interpreting potentially “problematic” expression. Expressing thoughts, even humor, involving sexism, racism or homophobia (page 14) are potentially “problematic”. They write on page 14,
It is becoming increasingly difficult to miss the influence of the Social Justice Movement on society - most notably in the form of “identity politics” or “political correctness.” Almost every day; a story comes out about somebody who has been fired, “cancelled,” or subjected to a public shaming on social media, often for having said or done something interpreted as sexist, racist, or homophobic.
In other words, they associate wokeism with what is known as identity politics (or political correctness), cancel culture and, on pages 14-15, the sense that
any well-intended person, even one who values universal liberty and equality, could inadvertently say something that fall afoul of the new speech codes, with devastating consequences for her career and reputation. This is confusing and counterintuitive to a culture accustomed to placing human dignity first and thus valuing charitable interpretations and tolerance of a wide range of views. At best, this has a chilling effect on the culture of free-expression, which has served liberal democracies well for more than two centuries, as good people self-censor to avoid saying the “wrong” things. At worst, it is a malicious form of bullying and - when institutionalized - a kind of authoritarianism in our midst.
In “Woke/Wokeness” James Lindsay writes (“revision date: 2/24/20”)
In brief, “woke” means having awakened to having a particular type of “critical consciousness,” as these are understood within Critical Social Justice.
Again, we see Lindsay stating that woke more-or-less is what is meant by “social justice” by the Social Justice Movement. He later writes that wokeness is concerned with
nearly synonymous with having a critical consciousness as provided through critical race Theory, although it has been appropriated through intersectional thought to apply to other issues of identity relevant to postcolonial Theory, queer Theory, feminism, and so on. It has since expanded and memefied further and is now seen from the outside as being wholly synonymous with having been converted to a Social Justice critical consciousness. As such, “wokeness” often refers to both critical Social Justice doctrine and the state of having accepted it.
Earlier we saw Lindsay saying that woke means critical consciousness. In “Critical Consciousness”, James Lindsay writes,
Critical consciousness is, in short, having adopted a critical mindset, in the sense of critical theories. It is to have taken on a worldview that sees society in terms of systems of power, privilege, dominance, oppression, and marginalization, and that has taken up an intention to become an activist against these problematics. To have developed a critical consciousness is to have become aware, in light of this worldview, that you are either oppressed or an oppressor—or, at least, complicit in oppression as a result of your socialization into an oppressive system. To have a critical consciousness is to be aware of—and generally unhappy about—your positionality in society, i.e., your relationship to systemic and institutional power as determined by Theory and based mostly on facts concerning what demographic groups you are a part of.
He goes on to write that to have critical consciousness is to have come to see the world as critical theories do,
as being constructed in terms of power dynamics that oppress certain people (minoritized groups) to the benefit of the dominant group(s).
and
realizing this awareness must be spread to others, and understanding that radical or revolutionary activism is needed (usually urgently) to change the system to end its injustices.
He writes, furthermore, that people who are woke or who have critical consciousness,
are likely to be hypersensitive to issues surrounding race, sex, gender, sexuality, ability status, weight, national origin, and economic class, and they are expected to share this awareness (consciousness raising), often by attempting to expose the “hidden biases,” “unexamined assumptions,” or “inherent contradictions” in the system in order expose its injustices and thus lead to its deconstruction, dismantling, or subversion, i.e., a social revolution. This is most often done by problematizing things, which is to say finding issues (like potential offense or hidden racism—see also, code and mask) wherever they can be found. This mindset begins by rejecting questions like “did racism occur?” and replacing them with “how has racism manifested in this situation?”
History
In “On the origins of ‘woke’”, published by the Past, April 24, 2023, Chris Catling writes that,
Most of us would guess that this was a word of recent coinage
and that
‘Woke’ leapt into mainstream use following the death of Michael Brown in 2014 and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Before this, he writes,
African-American in origin, the word has entered the mainstream to describe being politically alert and vigilant, especially to racial prejudice and increasingly to all forms of social injustice.
Catling notes that in a BBC mini series presented by journalist Matthew Syed it was reported that,
young supporters of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election formed a popular national movement called the Wide Awakes, campaigning for workers’ rights and the abolition of slavery. The movement’s half-a-million members were renowned for turning political rallies into festive occasions, parading at night by torchlight in colourful costumes, with music and fireworks. In a Bible-soaked age, few would have failed to recognise the allusion to the moral and spiritual wakefulness that is encapsulated in the parable of the wise virgins (Matthew 25:1-4).
Also, the series, according to Catling, showed that the term woke
first occurred in the lyrics of a 1938 song by the blues singer Lead Belly (real name Huddie Ledbetter). His song about the Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers wrongly accused of rape and sentenced to death, warns of the dangers of a racially prejudiced justice system and concludes ‘best stay woke’.
They include the following image and caption,
The term ‘woke’ was coined by the blues singer Lead Belly in the lyrics of a 1938 song about the Scottsboro Boys.
In her report for the Independent, Kate Ng writes,
Origin of the word ‘woke’
The phrase “woke” and to “stay woke” is not new — it began appearing in the 1940s and was first used by African Americans to “literally mean becoming woken up or sensitised to issues of justice”, says linguist and lexicographer Tony Thorne.
Mr Thorne, a visiting consultant at King’s College London, told The Independent that the word is rooted in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), and was used in American street and youth culture for a long time.
A 1943 article in The Atlantic quoted a black United Mine Workers official from 1940 playing with woke in a metaphor for social justice: “Waking up is a damn sight than going to sleep, but we’ll stay woke up longer.”
The Conversation, apparently also unaware of reports about Lead Belly using the term in the late 30s, reported that the term woke was first used as such in the 40s. Returning to the Slang Dictionary,
By the 1960s, woke could more generally mean “well-informed” in Black English, but it still strongly aligned with political awareness, especially in the context of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950–60s and appearing in the phrase stay woke. The term was notable enough to prompt a 1962 New York Times article commenting on black slang, titled “If You’re Woke You Dig It.”
A 1972 play about the black nationalist Marcus Garvey, Garvey Lives! by Barry Beckham, notably used woke for awareness of racial injustice in the Black community
We note that Kate Ng places this play in 1971 in her report for the Independent;
In 1971, the phrase was used in a play by American playwright Barry Beckham titled Garvey Lives!, in which he wrote: “I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon’ stay woke. And I’m gon’ help him wake up other black folk.”
It also entered popular culture thanks to singer Erykah Badu, who used the phrase “I stay woke” in her 2008 song Master Teacher. David Stovall, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, told the New York Times that Ms Badu’s use of the phrase meant “not being placated, not being anaesthetised”.
After Trayvon Martin, a young unarmed black man, was shot dead in February 2012, many in the black community issued calls to stay woke to the discrimination and injustice black people face in the US, particularly in the form of police brutality.
They and Ng note that in 2014, the term gained additional traction in association with BLM. Slang Dictionary writes,
Especially under the hashtag “#staywoke” on social media, woke took off in 2014 with the Black Lives Matter movement, ignited by the tragic shooting of two other young, unarmed black men by police officers
Among activists, woke and stay woke were cries not just to be aware of racial injustice, but to organize and mobilize to do something about it.
Woke was quickly appropriated by mainstream white culture in the mid-2010s, to the criticism of many black observers. In many instances, woke did spread in keeping with its activist spirit, referring to awareness of other forms of injustice, such as sexism, anti-gay sentiment, and white privilege.
From February 26, 2012 to April 19 2015, a sequence of incidents brought attention to the treatment of young black Americans by police and sparked an eruption in social justice and equality activism. In summer 2013, after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing teenager Trayvan Martin, the hashtag #blacklivesmatter was created, urging people to stay woke and be conscious of race struggles.
A review of Google keywords shows the search for defining wokeness surged post 2015 with phrases such as “defining woke”, “woke meme”, “woke urban”, and “woke define” used.
By September 2016, the phrase Black Lives Matter had been tweeted more than 30 million times. The phrase “stay woke” gained strength and became a symbol of movement and activism. Staying woke became the umbrella purpose for movements like #blacklivesmatter (fighting racism), the #MeToo movement (fighting sexism, and sexual misconduct), and the #NoBanNoWall movement (fighting for immigrants and refugees).
Ng quotes linguist and lexicographer Tony Thorne as stating,
“‘Woke’ was largely unknown in the UK until the BLM movement, but in the 2000s it was a popular word used by young people in America, especially in black communities,”
While we are touching upon the use of the term in the UK, Daisy Hall writs for Grazia,
Do we use the word 'woke' in the UK?
In the UK, there are questions around the validity of using African-American slang for both white people and amongst Black British communities. Can ‘their’ slang also be our slang? Racism is distinct and distinctive on both sides of the Atlantic, and you could argue that appropriation of slang by people outside of a specific culture is appropriation, regardless of whether you share the same skin colour or not.
Then again, there’s a case to be made that the African diaspora is linked by more than skin and cultural heritage, but also through the ongoing sharing of culture, customs, music, media, and of course, language. Slang is a constantly evolving way of speaking and if black people use the word ‘woke’ worldwide then perhaps it can foster a global community and, by extension, a global approach to combating racial injustice. Being truly woke is thinking beyond yourself and being aware of how you fit into a global eco system that is bigger than you.
Ng then brings our history lesson forward, writing,
It was only in 2017 that the word “woke” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary, and was defined as “being ‘aware’ or ‘well-informed’ in a political or cultural sense”.
It evolved into an all-encompassing term to describe leftist political ideology, used as a “shorthand for people on the left” to signal progressiveness, but weaponised by those on the right as a “sneering, jeering dismissive term” to denigrate those who did not agree with their beliefs, said Mr Thorne.
Like phrases before it - such as “politically correct”, “social justice warrior” and “cancel culture” - “woke” has become a toxicised term used by alt-right and politically conservative groups to insult people on the left.
“People who are woke simply can’t use the word anymore,” explained Mr Thorne. “It’s been appropriated, co-opted and toxicised by the alt-right and right-wing speakers. Those who are woke can still talk about empathy and compassion and social justice, but I think they’ve had to abandon the neat, snappy slang words and go back to explaining what they really believe.”
In other cases, though, the force of woke was diluted, the subject of humorous memes or just casually used as a label for anyone who is “with the times,” not necessarily engaged in the fight for justice and equality. This dilution especially occurred on woke Twitter, with major brands appearing to capitalize on social justice to appeal to millennials.
Now, stay woke is pretty abundant in mainstream media … everyone from Childish Gambino to Netflix is cashing in on the phrase’s popularity but also spreading its 100% important and influential meaning, as well.
Ng writes for the Independent that as with the terms liberal and snowflake - as in, “we are each a special little snowflake” - the term woke has been turned into a joke and an insult by the right so that people who might have once identified as woke no longer do so. She then addresses the question,
Is there another word to replace “woke”?
Again, this was published in 2021. She proceeds,
Not at the moment, said Mr Thorne. People who are woke have mostly abandoned the term because it is being used with “malicious intent” by those with opposing views, but no similar slang word has surfaced in its place.
“When the word “woke” was being used by woke people, it wasn’t a word they obsessed about, so perhaps it is inconvenient but they wouldn’t mind much about having to abandon it,” he said.
In a debate on social media, Mr Thorne found that people who were progressive did not want to be “condemned with a lazy, casual slur like that”.
He thinks the next word could be more academic or scientific, but whatever it is, “we do need a vocabulary that progressives can use, they deserve to have that”, he said.
However, any word that crops up to replace “woke” could easily be co-opted once again by those with opposing ideologies.“
"I do fear that the same process of terms appearing and then being hijacked and weaponised might be likely to happen again,” said Mr Thorne.
Moving on to 2018, on September 8, The Conversationreported,
the term “woke” has resurfaced in recent years as a concept that symbolises awareness of social issues and movement against injustice, inequality, and prejudice.
But popularity has diluted its meaning and the idea has been cynically applied to everything from soft drink to razors, attracting criticism if too liberally applied.
One recent stretch for this term is the New Yorker magazine’s headline for a story about a vegan chef’s output, which read: What’s in a Woke McRib?
Being woke was originally associated with black Americans fighting racism, but has been appropriated by other activist groups – taking it from awareness and blackness to a colourless and timeless phenomenon.
Like “politically correct” before it, the word “woke” has come to connote the opposite of what it means. Technically, going by the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s definition, woke means “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)”, but today we are more likely to see it being used as a stick with which to beat people who aspire to such values, often wielded by those who don’t recognise how un-woke they are, or are proud of the fact.
Laurence Fox nailed his colours to the latter mast this weekend, doubling down on his defence of the privileged white male on last week’s Question Time to a Sunday Times article under the banner “Why I won’t date ‘woke’ women”. Toby Young piled in, applauding how Fox was “terrorising the Wokerati”, while the Sun last weekend branded Harry and Meghan “the oppressive King and Queen of Woke”.
For those who would broadly consider themselves woke, the word has been weaponised against them. But the Fox/Young brigade often claim the same.
Also,
Rather than rejecting the concept of wokeness outright, today’s detractors often claim they are rejecting the word as a signifier of pretentiousness and “cultural elitism”. However, as Fox and others have shown, it is as much to do with the issues of racial and social justice. Criticising “woke culture” has become a way of claiming victim status for yourself rather than acknowledging that more deserving others hold that status. It has gone from a virtue signal to a dog whistle. The language has been successfully co-opted – but as long as the underlying injustices remain, new words will emerge to describe them.
On August 13, 2023, PBS News published an interview in which the interviewer uses the term woke when stating that the military is
reaching out to the LGBTQ plus community. They're reaching out to women. They're trying to access people who are gamers.
And yet some of these efforts have landed them in the hot seat with conservatives who accused them of engaging in the culture wars and then being to quote woke.
Of course, there are many more examples. Let’s look beyond looking at examples and consider the popularity of the term over years of time. According to Google Trends, the following chart shows “interest over time” of the term measured by how many times the term was searched.
By the way, the following chart is for the search term “woke right”…
Woke Military?
The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece, “Wokeism in the Military” in 2022 that opined on
the rise of woke politics, which is undermining public confidence in America's military leaders
On September 6, 2023, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala. statedon FOX News,
"We've got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker. It is absolutely insane the direction that we're headed in our military, and we're headed downhill, not uphill."
We are so woke in the military we are losing recruits right and left. Pentagon policies criticized as being “woke” — like diversity trainings, time off and travel allowances for abortion access, and healthcare coverage for transgender members
Further on in this report, we read, that in his campaign for president,
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who served in the military as a Judge Advocate General officer, has similarly characterized "wokeness" in the armed services as a key issue obstacle to recruitment.
"As commander in chief, on Day One, we are going to eliminate all the politicization from the military, all the woke, all the social experimentation," DeSantis said at an Aug. 4 campaign stop in Iowa. "We're restoring it to its proper function and you will see the recruiting surge as a result."
No doubt, they mean “too, quote, woke”, not “to, quote, woke”. At any rate, on November 30, 2024, the Atlanticreported,
Trump also attempted to reach past the senior leaders who discipline the rank and file by ridiculing “the generals” and accusing them of stupidity, cowardice, and betraying the fighting forces. He has since said that, once back in office, he will fire all the “woke” generals and that he’s considering creating an external board of preferred veterans to determine which active-duty military leaders to remove. He insinuated that retired General Mark Milley in particular should be executed for treason.
Notice how frequently the word woke is used in the following chunk of that same article,
By considering Ron DeSantis, Florida’s anti-woke governor, as his pick for defence secretary, Donald Trump has shown the war on woke generals will not stop with Pete Hegseth.
The president-elect’s first-choice to lead the Pentagon, Mr Hegseth, looks poised to withdraw or be replaced because of intensified scrutiny into a string of accusations over his personal and professional lives.
Mr Hegseth, 44, a Fox News anchor who served almost 20 years as an officer in the Army National Guard, had set out a manifesto for a radical shake-up of the US armed forces.
He announced intentions to oust “woke” generals, end war crimes investigations against American soldiers and remove women from combat roles.
“It is time to rip the woke out of the military and return it to its core mission. We must restore a sense of confidence, conviction, and patriotic duty to our institutions — and that begins with our military.”
Military leaders are rattled by a list of “woke” senior officers that a conservative group urged Pete Hegseth to dismiss for promoting diversity in the ranks if he is confirmed to lead the Pentagon.
The list compiled by the American Accountability Foundation includes 20 general officers or senior admirals and a disproportionate number of female officers. It has had a chilling effect on the Pentagon’s often frank discussions as leaders try to figure out how to address the potential firings and diversity issues under President-elect Donald Trump.
Those on the list in many cases seem to be targeted for public comments they made either in interviews or at events on diversity, and in some cases for retweeting posts that promote diversity.
Tom Jones, a former aide to Republican senators who leads the foundation, said Friday that those on the list are “pretty egregious” advocates for diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, policies, which he called problematic.
“The nominee has been pretty clear that that has no place in the military,” Jones said of Hegseth.
Hegseth has embraced Trump’s effort to end programs that promote diversity in the ranks and fire those who reflect those values.
Further on, they seem to associate DEI with woke by adding,
Some service members have complained in the past about the Pentagon’s DEI programs, saying they add to an already heavy workload.
Later, they write,
Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Friday that the list would have “considerable, wide and deep consequences.”
…
The list, which was first reported by The New York Post, includes nine Air Force general officers, seven Navy admirals of different ranks and four Army general officers. Eight of those 20 are women even though only 17% of the military is female. None are Marines.
One female Navy officer was named because she gave a speech at a 2015 Women’s Equality Day event, where she noted that 80% of Congress is male, which affects what bills move forward. The officer also was targeted because she said “diversity is our strength.”
…
An Air Force colonel, who is white, was called out for an opinion piece he wrote following the death of George Floyd, saying, “Dear white colonel, we must address our blind spots about race.”
A female Air Force officer was targeted because of “multiple woke posts” on her X feed, including a tweet about LGBTQ rights, one about “whiteness”
…
Another female Air Force officer was on the list because she “served as a panelist for a diversity, equity and inclusion” discussion in 2021.
…
Hegseth said Trump told him he wanted a “warfighter” who would clean out the “woke crap.”
They report that Tom Jones sent a letter with his list to Hegseth in which he stated
“purging the woke from the military is imperative.” The letter points to tensions with Iran, Russia and China and says “we cannot afford to have a military distracted and demoralized by leftist ideology. Our nation’s security is at stake.”
Policies allowing out gay people to serve in the US military have been denounced as part of a “Marxist” agenda aimed at prioritising social justice above combat-readiness by Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s embattled defence secretary pick.
The assertion was among many contentious “anti-woke” views expressed in Hegseth’s latest book, The War on Warriors, published this year, in which he lambasted a previous policy – known as don’t ask, don’t tell (DADT) – that tolerated gay service members as long as they did not disclose their sexual orientation, while also excoriating its repeal.
Woke in Advertising - ‘Go Woke, Get Broke’
We’ve almost reached our word limit here so we are working on a separate section for this. For now see our section on go woke, go broke.
By quoting from a source or describing what it states, we are not implying that they are accurate.
Pluckrose, Helen & James Lindsay - Cynical Theories - How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender and Identity and Why This Harms Everybody - Pitchstone Publishing (2020)
