“Woke Right” is an Op. The People Using It Are Being Shmucks

Some anti-woke liberals, who fought the “woke” cultural revolution, have decided to turn this formerly unifying, coalition-building term into a weapon against the political right

A version of this essay was published by Blaze Media on May 18, 2025.

I’d like to talk with you about a dirty trick that handful of liberal intellectuals and media personalities have been playing on you over the last few months. Their goal is to delegitimize the nationalist right—and in doing so, to destroy the “anti-woke” coalition that’s been looking like it just might save America from neo-Marxist cultural revolution.

So what’s the trick?

Until recently, everyone knew what the word “woke” meant. Woke was a slang term used to describe a vicious neo-Marxist movement that sought to smash traditional power structures in America and other democratic countries through cultural revolution.

The “woke” neo-Marxists said the U.S. was “systematically racist,” and that it had to “abolish whiteness” through revised hiring educational and hiring practices that would eliminate whites, Jews, and conservatives from positions of influence. The “woke” claimed that America was a sexist “patriarchy,” and worked to overthrow male dominance by “ending heteronormativity” and transitioning children to a world in which gender and sexuality would be infinitely “fluid.” Mass immigration, defunding the police, men in women’s sports, mixed gender bathrooms, trans-gender surgeries, naming your preferred pronouns, trigger warnings on books and college courses, safe spaces where whites and Jews weren’t allowed in, “sensitivity training,” censorship, land acknowledgments, taking the knee—all of these were the familiar characteristics of the “woke” cultural revolution. And through it all, we were also treated to street violence, burning cities, shooting cops, looting stores and Maoist-style persecutions of anyone who objected.

These things were “woke”. That’s what the word “woke” meant.

And for 10 years, whenever we used the word “woke,” we knew exactly what it meant.

“Woke” was a word that liberals, nationalists, and conservatives, Christians and Jews—all of us engaged in the desperate struggle to defeat this neo-Marxist plague—had in common. It was a term we could use to communicate with one another. To understand one another. In other words, the term “woke” played a crucial role in building a broad coalition that looked like it could be strong enough to defeat this enemy.

It was a pretty big achievement for such a small word.

But in recent months, something astonishing happened. Suddenly, a handful of anti-woke liberals—people we knew because they were out there fighting the “woke” cultural revolution together with us—decided to turn this formerly unifying, coalition-building term into a weapon to use against the political right.

Suddenly, a handful of anti-woke liberals started attacking other members of our anti-woke coalition—calling us the “woke right” and seeking to smear us with all the horrific and truly unspeakable evils that the word “woke” has come to represent.

The truth is that there are actually two different kinds of people who have suddenly started applying the word “woke” to different parts of the right. Some of the most malicious liberals are intentionally using “woke right” to cover just about the entire nationalist right. While other, more naive liberals, having taken the bait, are trying to apply the term “woke right” only to the what used to be called the “alt-right” or “white nationalists.”

I get it. I really do. I understand that some of the liberals who’ve been pumping up the term “woke right” are deceitful scoundrels, and that others are just honestly, nerdishly trying to work out a way of answering real questions in political theory that are bothering them.

But for present purposes, it doesn’t matter if you’re a deceitful scoundrel or an earnest nerd. Every liberal using the term “woke right” is being a shmuck.

Because what they are all doing is taking a flag and a symbol that for 10 years was highly effective at rallying opposition to the neo-Marxist revolution—and worked well to cement a coalition that could defeat it—and throwing that flag to the ground and trampling on it so it can’t be used any more.

Yes, you shmucks, “woke” always meant exactly one thing: It referred to that part of the Left which anti-Marxist liberals, conservatives, nationalists, Christians, and Jews had to join forces to defeat. And by repurposing that term as a weapon against parts of this coalition, you’ve turned it into gall in our mouths. You’ve taken a shared term of discourse, gutted its common and universally accepted meaning, and mangled it so we can’t use it to talk to one another anymore.

That’s why so many on the nationalist right are so amazed by the treachery of certain anti-Marxist liberals who’ve been promoting the theory of the “woke right”—and by the incredible foolishness of so many other liberals who’ve walked right into the trap. Turning the term “woke” against the nationalist right isn’t just re-defining any old term. It’s a betrayal. A betrayal which, if it goes through, will mean the termination of the anti-woke coalition that looked, for a few short months, like it could actually win.

Sure, there were always different streams on the right. (A) There was always an “alt-right” (as Richard Spencer called it) or a “white nationalist” right, or an “identitarian right”—that set itself up in opposition to mainstream nationalist conservatives. (B) There was also the “dissident right,” which was a little broader in its reach. (C) Then there were mainstream nationalist conservatives (the “NatCons”), like the people you’d see at National Conservatism Conferences over the past ten years. (D) And finally, over toward the political center, there were the “anti-woke” liberals—people who were never really nationalists or conservatives, but who understood that we were living through a neo-Marxist cultural revolution that was going to destroy America and other democratic countries if it wasn’t stopped.

All of these were all well-known and reasonably accurate terms for talking about the various movements on the political right.

And of course, if you didn’t feel like using these reasonably accurate labels, you could always use one of the lefty media’s go-to favorites like “illiberal right” and “Christian nationalist right”—which is what they usually use when the idea is to show how much they despise just about anybody who isn’t a liberal.

In other words, if you were an anti-woke liberal, and all you wanted to do was to express some completely legitimate criticism of various parts of the right, well there were plenty of terms available that you could have used. Those labels existed and everyone who cared about this kind of thing knew what they were referring to.

So why weren’t all these existing categories good enough? Why did some of the super-geniuses who spend their time competing for the title of Grand Poobah in the anti-woke liberal camp feel like they had to manufacture this entirely new term— “woke right”—and work day and night to get it to take off?

Well, obviously, it was because, in the eyes of a few liberals, “woke right” had advantages that more accurate terms like “alt-right” or “white nationalist right” didn’t have.

Let’s count the advantages these aspiring Poobahs thought they could milk out of using “woke right” instead:

1. “Woke right” is intentionally designed to be humiliating. The whole point of the term “woke right” is to target people who have devoted years of their lives, often with really serious personal and professional consequences, to opposing the “woke” cultural revolution. That’s who the “woke right” smear is targeting. The whole point of it is to tell them: Sorry pal, but don’t think you’re any better than the Maoist revolutionaries you were out there fighting. And coming out of the mouths of anti-woke liberals, who were at least sometimes out there on the barricades with us, that’s in fact a pretty awful thing to hear.

2. “Woke right” is perfect for virtue signaling. Because the term “woke right” signals a rupture and a betrayal of the coalition that some anti-woke liberals forged with the right, it serves as proof of ideological purity. Because it says: As for me, I’m still untainted. I’m going to keep on delegitimizing and cancelling nationalists and conservatives forever.

3. “Woke right” succeeds as a provocation where previous terms of contempt like “illiberal right” and “Christian nationalism” failed. The fact is, the term “woke right” really has outraged many nationalist conservatives. And for a small number of especially thuggish liberal trolls, causing that upset and confusion in the ranks of nationalist conservatives, well that’s an achievement in itself.

4. “Woke right” is a term that neutralizes the power of the term “woke” to forge a broad coalition between anti-Marxist liberals and nationalist conservatives. The term “woke right” destroys the flag and symbol of that broad coalition and makes it impossible to rally around it any longer.

5. “Woke right” is a term that actively works to destroy the possibility of mutual respect, political alliance, and friendship between anti-Marxist liberals and the nationalist right. Because of its strong connotations of intentional humiliation and provocation, betrayal, and the destruction of shared symbols, getting this term into wide circulation, well that’s the best weapon anyone has come up with yet to make sure that anti-Marxist liberals and nationalist conservatives will truly despise one another, and do everything possible to avoid working together going forward.

So that’s a lot of reasons why a liberal intellectual, or media personality, might want to use the term “woke right” instead of all the previously existing terms for talking about the right. But notice that he would only use this new term, if his goal was to drive a wedge between anti-Marxist liberals and the nationalist right, increase mutual distrust and mutual resentment between them, and cripple the ability of the two camps to work together.

That’s why I say that every anti-woke liberal using this term is being a shmuck. Because either (A) you are purposely trying to destroy the anti-woke coalition, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; or (B) you are completely clueless about the damage you’re doing to the anti-woke coalition, and don’t have the political sense to know when you’re being played like a fiddle and who’s playing you.

Of course, none of this means that it’s illegitimate to criticize the nationalist right. There are vicious people and bad ideas in every political movement and in every religious faction. We’re only human, and human beings are fallible and easily corrupted. There’s no question about that. And it’s certainly true of the nationalist right in America and in other democratic countries right now.

So we need to be able to challenge and criticize the nationalist right, just like we need to be able to challenge and criticize everyone else.

But does that mean that the nationalist right in America is “woke”? That it’s fair or reasonable to smear just about all nationalist conservatives, with the term “woke,” which is a synonym for one of the most potent and destructive evils that we’ve seen in our lifetimes?

No, it’s not. Whatever problems we may have on the right, being “woke” isn’t one of them.

There is no “woke right.”

And anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is being a shmuck.

* * *

There are lots of things I find aggravating and distasteful about having to work with liberals to achieve common aims. But probably the worst is the way that certain big shot liberals continue to find ever-new ways of expressing their disgust and loathing for their nationalist and conservative allies—no matter how much nationalist conservatives may have contributed to a common political effort, and no matter how recent the memory of it.

I know some of you are too young to remember the end of the Cold War. So for you younger people, let me just add a relevant historical observation. If you want to know what happened in 1989 to transform the victorious anti-Communist alliance between liberals and conservatives, into a dystopian reality, in which liberals worldwide ended up trying to persecute their former nationalist and conservative allies into the ground—well it looked just like what we’re seeing now, with this despicable “woke right” campaign.

What happened after the fall of the Berlin Wall was that a small number of fanatical liberal commissars, decided that the victory over Communism was the perfect moment to try for a world without nationalists, and without real conservatives, in any positions of influence anywhere. When they talked about a “unipolar” world, they didn’t mean that America was going to be the single great power on earth. What they meant was that their liberalism was going to be the single great power on earth, so that no one with any power or influence would ever be anything other than a liberal again.

Frank Fukuyama’s grotesque fantasy about banishing anyone driven by “thumos,” to jungles at the edges of the political world, was only the best known example of this ideal.

Well, it seems like we’re going through an attempted replay of this same liberal fantasy now, although still on a much smaller scale. A small number of fanatical liberal commissars are giddy with the feeling that the Berlin Wall has fallen again. They think (mistakenly) that the war against “woke” is basically over and that our side has already won. They think (mistakenly) that they can safely turn their attention to trying to remove nationalists and genuine conservatives from whatever positions of influence they’ve succeeded in gaining in the last ten years.

For now, admittedly, this effort still looks pathetic. For now, the anti-woke liberals, who really believe these things, are still just a fanatical few. But when you see how quickly they’ve hoodwinked, so many in their camp, into embarking on an immediate war against their nationalist and conservative coalition partners, it just makes your head spin.

President Trump and Vice President Vance were right to bring anti-Marxist liberals into their coalition and into their administration. They couldn’t have won without broadening their appeal. And that broad coalition is going to be needed for many years to come if any part of the nationalist and conservative agenda is going to be implemented in reality.

But there’s not going be any hope of holding this coalition together if certain fanatical liberal commissars, continue inflating the lie that nationalist conservatives are an immanent threat to all things good and beautiful—“just like the Left.”

The second edition of Yoram Hazony’s award-winning book, The Virtue of Nationalism, will be published in June and is available for pre-order now.