February 5, 2025 - 7:00pm

Shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration, #DarkWoke emerged as the newest entry in the growing, accursed vernacular of the President’s second term. Much like its Right-wing counterpart, the “Woke Right”, #DarkWoke manages to be grating in all the wrong ways.

Over the weekend, what began as a ham-fisted joke metastasised into something more serious: an earnest call for a harsher, meaner Left. “I think the ‘dark woke’ stuff had to happen eventually because the liberal side of the culture war has not been overtly cruel enough to fit into American politics,” wrote Liv Agar. She wasn’t alone. A few voices floated borderline accelerationism: if Republicans want to drive us into chaos, let’s crank up the dial and maybe that’ll finally spur a revolution. Some even invoked the Black Panthers.

Of course, for anyone not on the Left this whole thing feels like bad sketch comedy. It’s not the disapproval of Trump’s policies, which can be taken for granted with Left-wingers. Instead, it’s the idea that the reason the Left lost is because it wasn’t “mean enough”, whether “mean enough” means their language was too sensitive or they didn’t care enough about retribution. That the problem wasn’t messaging, candidate choice, policy preferences, or practically anything else, but simply that progressives hadn’t been cruel enough to their political opponents.

For all the Right’s faults, the Left deserves most of the blame for the cultural climate of the last 10 years. Plenty of moderates and freshly-minted conservatives can attest that from 2015 until relatively recently, one misstep could demolish a career. Where the Right might dogpile and insult you online, the Left will contact your employer and try to get you fired. Its members will deplatform you and do so gleefully. We’ve seen it happen to journalists, academics, artists — people who weren’t Right-wing at all, but who veered too far off the accepted script. Lives were ruined.

Since the election, it feels like many people on the Left have all been explicitly asking: “Why doesn’t anyone like us?” The same tone-deafness that animates #DarkWoke also animates the question of why there’s no Left-wing Joe Rogan — someone who can speak to the everyman, make progressive ideas accessible, and bridge cultural divides. Excuses abound: no money, no audience, bad premise. But the real reason is simpler. The Left doesn’t have a Joe Rogan because it holds Rogan’s demographic in contempt. In fact, far too many on the Left hold anyone who doesn’t agree with them — exactly as they wish to be agreed with — in contempt. At best, they view them as pathetic.

Many prominent Leftists believe that anyone who votes Republican is not just misguided, but morally bankrupt. If they lose their job, their platform, or their ability to function in polite society, well, that’s justice. Trump voters, in this view, become a monolith: all equally irredeemable, all fit for ridicule or worse.

The irony is that this culture war shuts down any chance to address what really matters: policy. “Dark Woke”, then, is not only misguided — it’s fuelling the very culture war its side created in the first place.


Katherine Dee is a writer. To read more of her work, visit defaultfriend.substack.com.

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