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.
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SubscribeI used to think the Left used censorship to stop other people from hearing heterodox viewpoints. That may be part of it but the bigger issue is actually that open discourse forces the Left to articulate a response.
It’s quite clear that Leftism is actually a self-serving ideology of retribution and resentment masquerading as one of tolerance and empathy.
I think your last paragraph is absolutely spot on.
You should distinguish between ‘leftism’ of the old-fashioned redistributive type and progressivism, which is a divide-and-rule movement of the graduate middle class essentially designed to deflect attention from economic issues with pseudo-science and psychobabble.
In the States, “Leftism” and a “Leftist” are understood to be as you define. Amongst my circle, anyhow, of old Millennials and Gen X’rs, mostly in the Heartland. Not so, in your parts?
I’m not sure the gulf between the Fabians and the Marxists is as deep as one might think.
you’ve really caught it all. excellent…..since the 70’s at least …maybe the sixties….the Left has begun practicing thought control through intimidation and public shaming like their model the Red Guard. the Iran/hamas war of Genocide of the Jews….and its campus student and academic supporters are examples of this. especially when they practice intimidation and scream “Shame” at others….while they evince no self awareness or shame.
Vengence is justice, retribution is tolerance, resentment is empathy, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
Soon after the Brexit vote, when the comments pages on the BBC started to spew much bile towards Brexit voters, I used to go on there to try and explain why people had voted for it. Naively, I thought some would listen, but the only response was that Brexit voters are stupid, Brexit voters are racist etc (not unlike CS’s post below about Trump voters).
But now some of those commentators have started to ask why we couldn’t have had a sensible discussion about immigration because then Brexit wouldn’t have happened. It’s taken nearly a decade for them to get there, and it is still only a few, but it is progress. But I still haven’t seen any of them acknowledge that they were a large part of the reason there wasn’t a sensible debate, that they were a large part of the reason for Brexit and, over in the US, that they were a large part of the reason for Trump.
And Brexit has been such a triumph, hasn’t it?!?!?
Yes, and will be increasingly seen to be so as time goes on. Short-termism such as yours is precisely why those with a more realistic view voted to leave the EU, which itself is now a crumbling edifice of blind fools.
The purpose of Brexit was to leave the EU. That is all the vote asked, and it triumphed eventually, despite the establishment’s ongoing attempts to thwart the public’s wish.
Still longing for the old Brussels vassalage where bureaucratic experts determined your fate and future? It marks you rather a sad sack.
Brexit is what politicians made of it. It was a wonderful opportunity to break away from bureaucracy, energy poverty, climate catastrophism, overregulation, and so on. The politicians largely blew it. That is not a mark against Brexit.
Actually from someone closely observing from the other side of the world it is a success if for mo other reason than watching the EU fray at the edges and rot in the center.
Yes and No DR. Some Brexit voters had v legit concerns, but they tipped their grievances and supposed solution into the wrong bucket. Some of that part-understandable. The marketing and the lies had been working on them for 25yrs alongside the human tendency to want to identify a scapegoat and kick at the supposed Establishment. The Remain campaign was complacent and lacked a positive narrative easily articulated.
But the History books will say it was stupid and lacked proper thought.
And as we’ve seen Brexit turbo-charged broader immigration from non western countries. Predictable as it’s adherents offered nothing on what would reduce reliance. Was just rage amplified.
As regards Trump, let’s see how many he deports. In his first term for all the bluster he deported less than Obama. He may be a bit better prepared now, but as yet Congress not given him the funds for his plans and he’s likely to prioritise the Billionaire tax cuts before this funding too.
No. The history books will describe Brexit as a desperate response to the most brutal episode of class war and the largest upward transfer of wealth in British history. The false consciousness on display in your posts is no less terrifying because it is commonplace, almost universal, in your class.
You’re still doubling down on the same nonsense, claiming people didn’t know or understand what they were voting for.
People knew that Johnson and Trump were liars. But they knew their opponents were too. It should be no great surprise that they chose the honest liars over the hypocritical ones. In a binary choice between only two options, it’s baffling to see selecting the least worst labelled as the “wrong bucket”. What else could they do ?
2024 is a prime example of a “least worst” election.
Brexit didn’t turbo-charge immigration. That was a quite separate decision by Boris Johnson, executed behind the scenes without the authority of the electorate. For which the Tories are rightly being punished.
Basically your post is just a more polite way of saying the same thing – Brexit voters didn’t know what they were doing, were misled etc. The only point you have is that Boris misled wrt immigration, but he only jumped on the bandwagon at the end and the cons have sonce been hammered in the polls.
Brexit has not been the disaster we were told it would be. Since the Brexit vote we’ve had the pandemic and Ukraine war, both bigger, actual disasters. Germany has had less economic growth. The young can’t afford housing or to have children, which for many will be personal disasters much more significant than Brexit.
At the same time, some hardcore Eurosceptics are still convinced the Brexit vote wasn’t about immigration, and are still wedded to the idea that a big chunk of the population was animated by issues around trade agreements.
No. The Brexit vote was almost entirely on the question ‘who rules?’. ‘Who decides immigration policy?” is an important component of that – but only a component..
Ad hominem attack is the only form of discourse left can do. Lacking principled position, it can only attack, not debate.
The American Left did have a Joe Rogan. Specifically Joe Rogan himself. He backed Sanders like a bunch of other people who went on to endorse Trump. I’m not the biggest fan of Sanders myself but a big part of his appeal was probably just that the Democrat establishment hated him.
They almost cancelled Bernie after that
Rogan is a tool – of course he endorsed Trump.
Have a look at this and see his reaction to when he initially thought Biden had said something dumb to when he realized it was actually Trump. Pretty telling on where ol’ Joe is coming frtom..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2ilWxRn0_A
Hey, come out of the jungle. The war is over. You lost by the way.
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbour? Nothing is over until we say it’s over.
No use faking an AI response. We know you’re real.
Do you think AI can help you find a sense of humour?!?!
The Germans !??!?
It’s from the iconic movie Animal House. Widely referenced by Boomers and with good reason. My favorite line is by Dean Werner, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” There are many others.
Good summary of how liberals have been alienating so many of us who were once on their side.
Can’t really imagine how woke could become ‘more cruel’, unless they start openly advocating for enforced paedophilia or something.. Maybe they will
I’m sure Trump and Matt Gaetz are already drawing up the executive order. Maybe Hegseth can help if he sobers up and there’s no helicopter crashes that day.
Wow. I think I touched a nerve there
Is that what you think? Not even close, Trump boy! Feel free to try again though – it amuses me.
Yeh I can just imagine you sitting there in quiet, under-stated bemusement. You don’t seem over-invested or manically deranged at all
Well, at least I know the difference between being amused and bemused.
Can you guess which I am right now?!?!?
Anyone who is terminally online would have noticed that quote being used by the online right to demonstrate just how cruel the ‘woke’ were already. They created the cultural conditions that first led to Trump, and as if that wasn’t enough, they then doubled down and led to Trump 2.0.
Increasing societal economic inequality created the conditions for Trump, and Brexit too in UK. Woke didn’t help, but nice smokescreen too for the v rich to continue their enrichment.
The moment came when technocracy replaced democracy in the early ’90s. What we have now is a purely performative democracy run by bankers, corporations and the parasitic NGO class. They could have listened to electoral concerns but they were too busy enriching themselves and decided to double down instead.
JW’s definition of the ‘v rich’: “people who are even richer than me”.
Bring ’em on – we’re ready! Even the true Left hate wokeness, evidenced by Vivek Chibber’s tirades against it. The illiberal ‘progressive’ Left’s days are numbered. If they want to go down in a blaze of glory, I’ll be there to take a front row seat.
The left today is defined by moral litmus tests which are inherently exclusive. It made politics a status affair (“luxury beliefs”) and then got what it wanted: a small, exclusive and smug membership.
The New Discourses (mocking) description of “inclusion”: Silencing undesirable speech and removing members of undesirable groups so people feel welcome.
These weirdos will have the same success with this as trying to force trans-crap into the mainstream. Despite all the fan boy clamor in the news media in favor, it never went anywhere
Well it can’t be too surprising. After all, if they were halfway competent, one presumes that they could have understood that globalism was unsustainable, understood the people’s basic mood, and tailored their policies and messages in a way that addressed the people’s concerns and put forth a coherent vision of a transition into the future that was gradual and stable and averted the need for a destabilizing, revolutionary element like Trump. They failed to do that, and now they’ve failed to change or even properly identify the reasons why they failed. They have thus reached the level of becoming the embodiment of a famous meme. They fail at failing. They might think it can’t get much worse than having to endure four more years of Trump, but it can, in fact, get worse for them, and it will if they don’t do some serious soul searching here.
Who is it that first said “The ends justify the means.”?
If you agree with Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt that the political is the distinction between friend and enemy, then the not “mean enough” Left makes sense.
If you didn’t defeat your enemy last week then the only thing to do is to fight harder against the enemy this week.
The thing is both sides of this need each other. They may be two different ends of the spectrum but the narcissistic psychological characteristics are the same.
Coming from a Blairite neo-liberal that’s quite rich.
Of course I view anyone who voted for Trump or supports him with complete and utter contempt and fit only for ridicule.
They are racists, bigots and morons, and have decided to worship – and it is worship beyond a shadow of a doubt – a malevolent clown.
The question I have is, why wouldn’t you despise such people?
Dark woke anyone? Who are these people?
Step up … Champagne Socialist.
Hooray . Hooray!!.
Unherd! Give this man(?) a column!. He makes me smile!
Another fool with no vision just loathing. And it’s at its root just projection of their own self loathing.
I think he’s too funny for there to be any chance of self-loathing there.
Are you a rightwinger pretending to be a leftist?
I actually find you to be refreshing because you’re open about hating everybody that’s not a Socialist.
Most Left Wing activists pretend to be kind in order to express their moral and intellectual superiority. You aren’t beholden to that nonsense.
My moral and intellectual superiority derive from the incontestable fact that I am morally and intellectually superior to you.
Your whole movement is nothing more than a Donald Trump cult. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating – its no great surprise that the sheep on the right want to follow a dictator – happens all the time. I’m still just surprised that you chose a buffoon like Trump as your fuhrer.
You’ve put a lot of hard thought into this
Yet your intellect and prose match that of a sixteen year boy. Judging by that first sentence of yours, I’m being more than generous.
You have to be a parody account because nobody can be this stupid.
We didn’t – Trump was the only person prepared to speak on our behalf.
btw He isn’t a dictator, but (unlike Hitler) the winner of two free and fair elections.
Far too busy despising you, mate.
Why wouldn’t we despise you ?
You are an imbecile by choice, not misfortune.
You’re pretty funny, CS.