Until recently, “woke” served as a useful term among anti-Marxist liberals, nationalists, and conservatives. It gave us a shared language in the post-2015 fight against the rise of a virulent neo-Marxist ideology. The term helped forge a broad coalition that seemed capable of resisting this aggressive cultural revolution.
That kind of unity, born from a single word, marked a real political achievement.
Now, a handful of anti-woke liberals have decided to weaponize the term, turning it against the very coalition that made resistance possible in the first place.
Some malicious liberals now use “woke right” to smear the entire nationalist right. Others — more naive — try to limit it to what used to be called the “alt-right” or “white nationalists.”
I understand. I really do. Some liberals pushing the term “woke right” are deceitful scoundrels who act in bad faith. Others, more earnest, seem to be nerdishly trying to solve abstract questions in political theory.
Once a rallying cry for a shared fight against neo-Marxist ideology, ‘woke’ has now become a poisoned well. That’s not an accident — it’s the goal.
But in this case, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a cynical manipulator or a confused theorist. Every liberal using “woke right” is being a schmuck. They’ve taken a term that, for a decade, helped unite anti-Marxist liberals, conservatives, and nationalists against a rising neo-left — and crushed it underfoot. They’ve made it unusable.
Yes, you schmucks, “woke” always meant one thing. It referred to the radical neo-leftism that sane liberals, conservatives, Christians, Jews, and nationalists could unite to fight. By repurposing it as an insult aimed within the coalition, you’ve turned it into gall in our mouths. You’ve stripped a common term of its meaning and made it a weapon to divide allies.
Targeting the anti-woke coalition
This explains the astonishment — and sense of betrayal — many on the nationalist right feel toward certain anti-Marxist liberals who invented and promoted the term “woke right.” It also explains their dismay at the credulous liberals who walked straight into the trap.
This isn’t just a matter of redefining an old term. It’s a betrayal. And if it sticks, it will destroy the anti-woke coalition that, for a brief moment, looked like it might actually win.
Of course, the right has always contained distinct factions. The “alt-right,” as Richard Spencer labeled it, and the narrower “white nationalist” fringe set themselves apart from more mainstream nationalist conservatives. The “dissident right” occupied a broader space. Then there were the “NatCons” — mainstream nationalist conservatives. These terms were familiar and reasonably accurate. And for those who couldn’t be bothered with accuracy, the liberal media always had ready-made labels like “illiberal right” or “Christian nationalist right” to lump together anyone right of center with a tone of condescension and alarm.
In short, anyone seeking to critique parts of the right already had a full vocabulary to choose from. The language existed. The definitions were known.
Poisoning the well
So why invent something new? Why did a handful of self-styled intellectuals in the anti-Marxist liberal camp decide they needed a new term — “woke right” — and then labor relentlessly to make it stick? What drove them to sabotage a shared language that had helped build a broad but fragile alliance?
Here’s the answer. A few anti-Marxist liberals saw strategic value in “woke right” that more precise terms like “alt-right” or “white nationalist right” lacked. Let’s count the advantages these aspiring poobahs aimed to squeeze from the phrase.
“Woke right” exists to humiliate. The term targets people who spent years — often at great personal and professional cost — building a serious opposition to the woke left. It tells them: You’re no better than the Maoist radicals you fought. And when that message comes from liberals who once stood beside them on the barricades, the insult cuts even deeper.
“Woke right” signals virtue. By turning on the very coalition they helped build, anti-Marxist liberals get to prove their ideological purity. Using “woke right” says: I’m not one of them. I’ll keep delegitimizing and canceling nationalists and conservatives forever.
“Woke right” provokes. Unlike clunky phrases like “illiberal right” or “Christian nationalism,” this one hits a nerve. It enrages the very people it targets. For a certain breed of liberal troll, that outrage is the entire point.
“Woke right” destroys the term “woke” as a coalition-builder. Once a rallying cry for a shared fight against neo-Marxist ideology, “woke” has now become a poisoned well. Nobody can use it without suspicion. That’s not an accident — it’s the goal.
“Woke right” ensures mutual hostility. The term injects humiliation, provocation, betrayal, and contempt into what was once a fragile alliance. That’s not just linguistic sabotage. It’s a deliberate strategy to guarantee that anti-Marxist liberals and nationalist conservatives despise each other — and never cooperate again.
So that’s why an anti-Marxist liberal might prefer “woke right” over all the existing, more accurate terms. But he’d only do so if he aimed to drive a wedge between liberals and the nationalist right, fuel mutual distrust and resentment, and cripple the two sides’ ability to work together.
That’s why I say every anti-Marxist liberal using this term acts like a schmuck. Because either you’re deliberately sabotaging the anti-woke coalition — snatching defeat from the jaws of victory — or you’re too politically clueless to see the damage you’re doing and too blind to recognize who’s playing you for a fool.
Either way, the political term fits: schmuck.
An agenda endangered
Plenty about working with liberals aggravates me. But nothing grates more than watching big-name liberals find new ways to express their disgust toward the very nationalists and conservatives who helped them advance a common cause, no matter how recently those alliances formed or how much those allies contributed.
Some readers may be too young to remember the end of the Cold War, so let me offer a bit of history. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a handful of liberal ideologues saw the moment not just as a triumph over communism, but as an opportunity to erase nationalists and real conservatives from public life. When they talked about a “unipolar” world, they didn’t mean global American leadership. They meant unchallenged liberal dominance — an order where no one with influence could deviate from liberal orthodoxy. Francis Fukuyama’s infamous fantasy of exiling anyone driven by “thymos” to the political wilderness captured this vision perfectly.
Today, we’re watching a smaller-scale attempt to rerun that liberal fantasy. A few ideological commissars — flushed with self-satisfaction — mistakenly believe they’ve won the war against wokeness. They’re eager to shift from fighting the woke left to purging their nationalist and conservative allies. They want another “end of history” — one where liberalism rules unopposed and everyone else disappears.
I’ll concede this much: For now, the campaign looks pathetic. Only a small group of fanatics in the anti-Marxist liberal camp genuinely believe this nonsense. But the speed with which they’ve duped others into turning their fire on their own coalition partners should make anyone’s head spin.
Donald Trump and JD Vance made the right call by bringing anti-Marxist liberals into the fold. Their victory depended on building a broader coalition, and that coalition remains essential if any part of the nationalist-conservative agenda stands a chance of becoming law.
But that coalition can’t hold — not for long — if a handful of ideological commissars keep advancing the lie that nationalist conservatives pose the same threat to decency and order as the radical left. That’s not coalition politics. That’s sabotage. And unless it stops, the people pushing this narrative won’t just fracture the alliance. They’ll ensure its collapse.
Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a post that appeared originally on X.
Opinion & analysis, Woke right, James lindsay, Coalition, Twitter, Conservatives, Nationalists, Liberals, Anti-woke, Alliance
