The term “woke” refers to something real. It is important to get clear on what that thing is because we are in the throes of a powerful social movement that is working very hard to evade criticism by refusing to allow us to utter its name.

I have used “woke” for the past few years and I’m not giving up on this perfectly adequate term. There are other almost synonymous terms such as “social justice movement,” but nothing quite captures Wokeness like Woke. I’m sticking with “woke,” even though the Woke now accuse those who use this term of being insulting or bigoted. The “woke” will be insulted no matter how far down we go down the line of cascading euphemisms, however. This succession is sometimes referred to as a “euphemism treadmill.”  Another example of the euphemism treadmill can be found with the history of the word “retarded.”  At its core, “retarded” means slow thinking. Many people have used the term “retarded” to describe a real life phenomenon that can be plainly seen in some people, unfortunately. Others have used it as an explicative and a pejorative, to hurt someone’s feelings, often directing this insult at people who are not diagnosably slow in their ability to think.  The fact that the word “retarded” can be used to both describe a real phenomenon and as an insult has resulted in the concoction of a comically long list of synonyms. Every time a new euphemism is invented, someone uses the newly created euphemism as an insult and then people go back to the blackboard to create a new synonym for slow thinking.  

By the 1960s when I was in grade school, the same process had occurred with retardation. “Retard” was a common playground insult, as in “Look where yer goin’, ya retard!”  To us at the time it was considered harmless fun (although I now recognize the potential to really hurt someone who did have an intellectual disability). In Grade 7 my buddy Doug and I did impersonations of “retarded chipmunks” in which we tucked our lower lip inside our upper front teeth and crossed our eyes.

Since that time retardation has been gradually replaced by a variety of more acceptable (at least for now) terms including mentally handicapped, mentally impaired, mentally challenged, intellectually challenged, intellectually disabled, learning disabled, and developmentally disabled. The last two of course are broader terms that include other conditions not covered by the meaning of mental retardation.

The term retardation is also associated in the minds of many with the period of time in which people with intellectual disabilities (the term I will use) were abused, discriminated against and locked away from society. While this is not the fault of the word, a change in terminology will help us put that period of history behind us.

These changes are still taking place. It wasn’t until 2006 that the American Association on Mental Retardation changed their name to American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

Louis C.K. once performed a skit that centered on the use (and avoidance) of the word retarded. But beware: If you watch this skit on retarded, you might get grief from people who are woke.

Back to “woke.” It has a meaning that is not precise because the social phenomenon to which it refers is complex. In this way, “Woke” is similar to many other words that refer to other complex phenomenon, words such as “love,” “justice” or “pleasant.” Based on many of the protestations I’ve seen regarding the word “woke” (by wokesters), these protests are mostly not concerns about the meaning of the term “woke.” Rather, they are mostly strategic attempts to shut down conversation on the policy positions of those who are woke. They are attempts to shut the Overton Window: “the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.” The protestors know that if the rest of us are hesitant to use a widely accepted word to describe wokeness, it becomes difficult to have conversations critical of woke ideas. The problem with banning words brings to mind Orwell’s 1984 , as described by this article:

By controlling the language, Big Brother controls the way that the people think. With a limited vocabulary, the people are limited in how much they can think, as well as, what they think about. In another passage, Syme says to Winston, “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.” (Orwell 52). With the people’s inability to commit thoughtcrime, the hope of the party is that, the people will no longer act out in disruptive or subversive behavior. Big Brother will have complete control of the people in every way, right down to their thoughts, and the people will become, essentially, mindless zombies who are willing to worship and do what they are told with no questions asked. They are able to achieve this by also destroying literature and controlling what the people are able to read.

There shouldn’t be any reasonable objection to using the word “woke” as long as someone rolls up their sleeves and gives it a good faith try at defining it.  Glenn Greenwald recently did this on an episode of System Update.  The topic was “The Right’s Identity Politics: Exploiting Anti-Semitism to Suppress Debate & Defame Political Opponents | SYSTEM UPDATE #25.” You can find the full transcript at Glenn’s Locals website.

Glenn’s description of “work” is long but it does a great job of capturing the essence of the movement:

The term ‘woke’ is plagued by some vagueness and imprecision. I believe people recognize it not so much because there is a universally accepted and concrete definition of it but more in line with Potter Stewart’s view of obscenity: “I know it when I see it.”

And, I would suggest, “wokeness” — even if it lacks a perfect definition — is indeed readily recognizable, and the reason that matters is because it describes an ideology and a set of political goals that are very consequential, one may even say radical. That is why the very independent writer, Freddie deBoer, responded with his own anger to Adam Serwer’s suggestion that “woke” means nothing – and is merely a useful term for espousing disguised acceptable bigotry.

The reason for DeBoer’s frustration was captured in the not-entirely-family-friendly headline of the article he wrote about Adam Serwer’s reaction: “Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand”.

Vulgar though that may be, I think it probably safely falls on the right side of Justice Stewart’s line. And about the claim that one can’t use the term “woke” to describe this new ideology because it’s racist, De Boer wrote:

If you ask these people, are you part of a social revolution? they’ll loudly tell you yes! Yes, they are! They’re going to shake society at its very foundations. Well, OK then – what do I call your movement? You reject every name that organically develops! I’ll use the name you pick, but you have to actually pick one. You can’t just bitch on Twitter every time someone tries to describe your political cohort, which again you yourself say intends to change the world. Name yourself or you will be named (Nov. 8, 2021).

As deBoer notes, proponents of this movement readily acknowledge that they are demanding sweeping changes. And those changes are expressly stated, things such as:

reparations or preferences for certain groups defined by their race or ethnicity, illustrated by the COVID relief programs we’ve been reporting on that gave priority to either black Americans or other specific non-white groups, though not all.

new views about what children should be taught in schools about race and gender.

defunding the police either literally or metaphorically.

empowering under-age children to obtain what is now called “trans-affirming care” that can range from being called a different name and identified with a different pronoun as young as 8 years old or even younger to puberty-blocking medications for 10-12-year-olds; hormonal treatments and even invasive surgeries for 16 and 17-year-olds, sometimes even 15 year-olds.

Punishing people for their refusal to comply with government orders about what they can do with their own bodies, such as whether they want to inject themselves and their children with experimental vaccines.

And even radically revising history to change the long-standing date of the American founding, as The New York Times was showered with a Pulitzer Prize for doing, even over the objections of a broad range of historians.

But beyond the specific policy goals that indicate the presence of wokeness – and perhaps even more important than those specific policy goals – wokeness is typically identifiable through a series of argumentative tactics, rhetorical approaches, and dissent-suppressing accusations. It is not just a common feature of woke activists but, I would suggest, a defining feature, that they have a very air-trigger sensitivity to finding and hearing and seeing racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other various bigotries hidden deep within their political adversaries – meaning anyone who opposes their political agenda – almost to the point that it is not hyperbole to say that advocates of woke ideology believe that the only reason a person might criticize them or oppose their policy aims is because those critics are driven by some or all of this smorgasbord of bigotries and prejudices.

And this, I’d say, is the most frequent criticism of wokeness, and it’s one I share. That in order to demonize their opponents and create a climate where nobody can safely question their views, they casually and publicly brand people as bigots even though their critics have expressed no hostility or dislike of any kind for any specific group of people.

So, for instance, someone who defends police actions or argues that we need more police, not less police, is instantly branded a white supremacist or anti-black racist — even though they’ve expressed no animus of any kind to black people and, just by the way, in the case of policing, happen to be on the side of most Black Americans, who overwhelmingly say they want the same amount of policing or even more police patrolling their neighborhoods.

Or if one argues that, say, people are being branded and vilified as sexual harassers or racists with insufficient evidence presented or due process provided, they are instantly demonized as misogynists even though they’ve expressed no hatred of any kind toward women — and those views are shared by a large number of women. Or if people question whether puberty-blocking medications are safe to administer to prepubescent children or question the fairness of allowing people who were born and passed through puberty as biological men to compete in professional sports with biological women, one is automatically called a transphobe or even wanting trans people dead even though no hatred or dislike toward trans people has been expressed – and many gay men and lesbians and even trans people agree with that view.

We have, on many occasions, reported on these kinds of tactics and denounced them. And, given how popular such critiques are among everyone other than the pro-establishment liberal-left, it would be very easy for me to continue to do so. It’s an easy thing for me to offer my audience since I know my audience and I believe that most of you likely concur with my assessment of woke ideology and particularly the immoral tactics I just described – that not only unfairly vilify people and try unjustly to destroy their reputations, but far worse, place vital societal and political debates off-limits by making clear that unless you agree with their prevailing orthodoxy, they will try – and often succeed – in destroying your reputation. I have no doubt I will continue to report on the use by the liberal left of these dreary and lowly tactics.

But for tonight, I would like to ask you to consider whether parts of the American and Western Right use this same tactic – not by calling unjustly or demonizing someone as racist for their views on policing or smearing someone as misogynistic for their views on due process, or decreeing someone transphobic for questioning the use of medication on children but, instead, for maligning people as anti-Semitic for either criticizing the government of a foreign country – Israel – or questioning whether the U.S. should continue to transfer billions and billions of dollars every year to strengthen that foreign country even while Israeli citizens enjoy benefits – including health care coverage and access to college – that many Americans citizens themselves still do not share.