Video: Conservative Pundit Goes Viral When Asked to Define ‘Woke’

The words “woke” and “wokeness” have become catchall phrases for conservatives to describe policies or ideas they disagree with. If you follow conservative media, you can hear commentators talk about “woke” banks …

Bradley CortrightMar 15, 20233 min read

Watch the video below:

The video had received 4.9 million views by Wednesday morning.

With politics, theology, and philosophy, you sometimes need phrases that can be a stand-in for discussing a complex theory, so you do not have to explain the whole idea all the time.

But recently, the use of “woke” and “Wokeness” has exploded, and they have become amorphous phrases with no clear, easy-to-understand definitions other than “ policy is bad.”

And to be fair, liberals have this problem too, but with calling people Nazis or fascists. Earlier this month, a conservative commentator called for the eradication of the “preposterous ideology” of “transgenderism.” His comments led Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) to label him a “Nazi hellbent on keeping only white men alive and in power.”

Why is calling for people to stop accepting gender identity bad? Who knows. Bowman did not elaborate. But he does not need to because calling someone a Nazi discredits someone’s ideas.

There is nothing wrong with conservatives using “woke” as a derogatory term. But to use the word to attack anything they do not like is a lazy way of confronting ideas and an attempt to avoid having to really explain why a policy or idea is bad.