A few months ago, the term "woke right" was all the rage. I addressed it a little in an interview with Brendan Malone, but I want to revisit this in writing. The main proponent of the term in New Zealand is Ani O'Brien and she is inspired by James Lindsay. James has toured New Zealand for the Free Speech Union and is returning in collaboration with the ACT Party. You can read Ani's original Substack article from April here.
All the tactics Ani ascribes to the "woke right" as being postmodern are all tactics that have been right-wing for hundreds of years. The use of political power to enforce morality, state religion, censorship, and language are normal and bland forms of right-wing action through the ages. Failure to understand the "Old Right" makes it impossible to understand the "New Right", Exhibit A:
"Old-school conservatism says the Government should be small and stay out of our lives. Woke right conservatism says the Government should be big enough to crush the people we hate. It’s a shift from libertarianism to reactionary statism — all justified in the name of moral survival. It is the belief that the government should enforce traditional values and crush progressive threats."
The fundamental mistake here is to take 1960s-2016 neo-conservatism and call it "old-school". On the contrary, the entire point of conservatism is to have the government enforce traditional values and crush progressive threats. That's it. That's the rebuttal. That's the definition of being right-wing.
Both Ani O'Brien and James Lindsay are politically homeless. They "left the left" because they didn't want to follow liberalism to its natural conclusion. They made friends with the right because the right had no power. Now that the right is ascendant, they realise they are not part of our movement. The realisation of homelessness is setting in again. "It's not me, it's the wokeness! The right has gone woke!" is a rallying cry, because it's easier than admitting that liberalism is wrong.
The "normie conservatives" or "cuckservatives" are derided by the Ascendant Right because they are losers. They got so used to being beautiful losers that they are upset people might be winning, because winning can be messy and ugly. The very progressives Ani derides as "destroying the leftist movement" were once victorious. They achieved total domination over education, corporations, governments, and bureaucracies. They had it all. They had no idea what to do once they won and it started to fall apart since they're all mentally ill freaks, but they did win.
Contrast that with a chart James Lindsay created and Ani O'Brien reproduced on her Substack:
"Woke Right is National Socialism." Adolf Hitler was woke? Please. Let's be serious.
"Woke Right is Distributism." That's right, G. K. Chesterton was woke.
"Woke Right is white supremacy." Everyone from Sir George Grey to Sir Winston Churchill were woke believers in Anglo-Saxon superiority.
In the last few months "Woke Right" analysis has faded because it's unserious, and if taken seriously one must come to the conclusion that all of history is woke.
Wokeness is of course simply "radical leftism" with its roots in African-American liberation theology and Marxist critical theory. It is not possible to apply the label "woke" to anything that is not radically left. You can't apply it to racism or antisemitism or historical political views that were not incubated in the 20th century progressive movement.
You can't complain about language policing without engaging in policing language. Most of Ani's serious complaints are around criticism of Israel and WW2 revisionism from right-wing influencers. I don't have the time or space to go into that other than to say that breaking the mythology of the post-war consensus is inevitable.
The rising tide lifts all boats, and so as the right gains power and influence so do the grifters and narcissists. It is perhaps a bit early for liberals to separate themselves from this broad coalition. Victory is not yet assured and infighting to divide the spoils of war is premature.
I shall close with a quote from The Total State by Auron MacIntyre:
"Aliened leftists hope that once this subversion is purged, everyone can return to the previously ideal liberal consensus. This approach assumes the presidency of Barack Obama was the end of history, the final answer to all questions of moral progress and political organization. These liberal refugees can never acknowledge that much of the framework they championed led to their current situation. Their disagreements with the ideology of the total state are of degree and not kind, and this dooms any attempt at opposition."