Comment by dragonwriter

4 days ago

“wokeness” is the current right-wing dysphemism for “not being a raging bigot against the groups the Right demands be targeted with bigotry”, and, when understood that way, it is clear that this is at least “venturing into bigotry”, and understandable how it could be “too far” from a particular speaker’s perspective.

Yes. Ultimately I'm attempting to show up the underhand meaning of the term "woke"; the definition given towards the start of Graham's essay is distinct from the way it's being applied here and later in the same essay.

It's important because conservatives will use different definitions to support different aspects of their arguments. For example, when woke means "performative and meaningless", then you can argue that it's malicious. However, when woke means "doesn't fully reject progressive causes", then you can argue that it's widespread.