Woke 1.0's Core Principles Were Sound; Blame for Backlash Is Misplaced
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/nesrinemalik. "Here is the news from the US: Woke 1.0 is over. But what did progressives do wrong? | Nesrine Malik | The Guardian." August 18, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
Malik argues that even though 'wokeness' had some cringe-worthy excesses (like performative social media gestures or unfair cancellations), the underlying push for racial and gender equality wasn't 'crazy' as critics now claim. She says it's illogical to blame this culturally-focused, politically powerless movement for the Trump administration's actual use of state power to crack down on universities, the military, and protesters—these are fundamentally different things, and conflating them lets the truly powerful off the hook.
Conclusion
While excesses of performative culture accompanied 'Woke 1.0,' the underlying movement for racial and gender equality was not 'crazy,' and it is illogical to blame this relatively powerless cultural movement for the subsequent rightwing authoritarian backlash and consolidation of state power.
Premises
- Woke 1.0 was fundamentally about legitimate concrete concerns: policing of minority communities, sexual harassment, systemic racism and sexism, and reforming exclusionary cultural institutions.
- Some accompanying behaviors were performative and low-stakes (black squares, taking the knee) while others were more consequential (people losing jobs over questionable cancellations, diversity theater without substance).
- The left, unlike the right, has rarely held genuine executive political power, so its energies were necessarily channeled into cultural and social venues rather than policy.
- There is a critical distinction between social/cultural behaviors (boycotts, shaming, toppling statues) and actual state power (legal prosecution, funding cuts, military purges, suppression of protest).
- The current backlash includes the Trump administration's use of actual state power against universities, the military, and protesters—actions of a fundamentally different category and severity than anything the left did.
- Blaming 'wokeness' for this backlash reflects a naive and motivated narrative that assumes the right would not have pursued these authoritarian actions absent a cultural provocation.
- There may be a psychological element of shame driving progressives to blame themselves ('we got it wrong') rather than acknowledging they were simply outmatched by more powerful opposing forces.
Assumptions
- Cultural/social power and state/executive power are categorically different in kind, not just degree, such that the former cannot meaningfully cause or justify the latter.
- The excesses of Woke 1.0 (job losses, scolding, performative gestures) were marginal or secondary to the movement's 'real' substance, rather than being an integral and predictable feature of it.
- The right's authoritarian actions (purges, funding cuts, legal crackdowns) were driven by pre-existing ideological goals rather than being a proportionate or explicable reaction to progressive overreach.
- Readers/critics who blame 'wokeness' for the backlash are doing so out of political motivation or naivety rather than making a good-faith causal argument.
- The core goals of safety, dignity, and equality are separable from the specific tactics and cultural practices used to pursue them, such that the former can be preserved even if the latter are abandoned.