Woke
About
Usage of the the word woke is changing rapidly. For a backgrounder on the word's usage shortly before the war on woke escalated sharply in 2024-5, see 2023.
General Meaning
"Woke", in the political-vernacular sense intended by those who first used and popularized it, is an adjective that basically means "alert to systemic injustice and danger": staying awake instead of being lulled into letting down one's guard.
Approximate antonyms to "woke" are "clueless", "oblivious", "asleep", "gullible".
Legal Definitions
Members of the Florida state government (an early instigator of the war on woke) have given their own definitions:
- Taryn Fenske, the governor's Communications Director, said it's a "slang term for activism... progressive activism" and a general belief in systemic injustices in the country.
- Ryan Newman, the governor's General Counsel. said "it would be the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them."
Surprisingly, these are both more or less on target. Given this, it remains unclear why the governor of Florida, or any of the other anti-woke warriors, believe it represents a threat – unless, of course, they believe that those systemic injustices are somehow valuable and important to preserve.
History
Origins
It originally referred specifically to awareness of systemic racial injustice.
The likely-first recorded use of the word in this sense is in a Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter) recording of a song he wrote about a 1931 incident in which some "colored" teenage males traveling through Alabama were imprisoned and sentenced to death for merely being in proximity to white women. In a discussion after playing the song, Ledbetter warns "colored folk" to be careful and "best stay woke" when travelling in Alabama.
Popularization
Around 2010, the word started being applied more generally, in tacit acknowledgement of the reality that "none of us are free unless all of us are free" – i.e. as long as one group can get away with subjugating another, nobody is safe or free from possibly being targeted in the future. We all need to be "woke" to right-wing narratives and techniques that can be used to turn others against us for arbitrary reasons, lest those narratives take root and start effecting harmful social and political change.
We must all be "woke" to social hazards, even those that may not be visible to us, or we may be next; that's basic survival in the information age.
Demonization
In the early 2020s, it suddenly became an epithet popular on the political Right, who began using it as a label for anything they wanted people to hate – in the grand tradition of right-wing/authoritarian leaders choosing particular Left-originated terminology as cue-words by which to direct the emotions of their followers and instill moral panic. "Woke" is just one of the latest, stomping along in the bootprints of other Authoritarian Greatest Hits like 2021's "critical race theory", "politically correct" from the 1990s and early 2000s, "socialism" and "communism” in the mid 20th century, and doubtless many others.
See /myths for a list of specific false claims about the meaning of "woke" and related terms.
The methodology appears to be that they first use these terms to refer to things they know their followers dislike – using meaningful words and phrases as if they were nothing more than general pejoratives – to replace genuine meaning with a purely emotional (and negative) association.
This effectively disables any critical thinking which the followers might have somehow accidentally acquired (despite the Right's best efforts to prevent any teaching of same) and replaces it with rage.
(In classic right-wing fashion, of course, they claim the Left is doing the same thing – "I'm rubber and you're glue", but with more words.)
Conclusions
It is important to be woke to the machinery at work, here.
The Right is defined by a wish to conserve and defend the accumulation of individual power over others. That’s why they like money and dislike democracy, social safety-nets, public services, and so on. The idea of The Wrong People ("losers") having the same amount of power as The Right People ("winners") is, to them, intolerable.
...but they also know that most people do want a free and equal society where everyone can just exist and go about their business, and would never go along with plans to strip away the rights of the majority so as to preserve the "rights" of a privileged few. Right-wingers unfortunately find it necessary, therefore, to lie quite a lot in order for their agenda not to be immediately laughed off stage and run out of town on a rail.
People who understand enough to see through these lies are a legitimate threat to the Right's power-structures, for obvious reasons. Those who doubt may ask questions, and sow seeds of doubt in others… and pretty soon, you can't just manipulate people into doing what you want anymore because they're thinking for themselves and realizing that what you want them to do isn't good for anyone; it's like the Nazi Bar problem in reverse: let in one freethinker, and pretty soon you can't get rid of them.
The Right must, therefore, paint those people as being a threat to everyone – not just to the powerful. They have to set people against each other, lest those people join together against them.
They do this, of course, by lying (it's all they’ve got).
This recent attempt to demonize "wokeness" is particularly telling, because... well, when you're openly fighting a "war on woke" – a war against the idea that people should be aware of the dangers posed by too much unaccountable power – that kind of makes it clear what your values are, doesn't it.
The Right wants to make sure people don't catch on to the con.
That's why they hate it when people become "woke": they want everyone to stay asleep.