This is a follow-up piece to last week's How to Deal with a Leftist (link below). This went through a few versions before I landed on a Q&A, which seems the clearest way to highlight what's going on here. Let me know what you think of either piece. And thanks for reading.
Sadly and depressingly spot on. Tribal thinking has become so widespread. Could it be that as national boundaries are eroding, people need to identify with some kind of tribe and the internet makes it possible. Or is it the erosion of Christian values? Then there’s the slow indoctrination that’s been happening in the west via the Frankfurt School and the Fabian Society both of which want to destroy western democracies, values and culture. People want something to believe in and are currently scrabbling around to find a tribe amongst all the chaos. Unfortunately it would seem that too many educated people have lost the ability to think critically and are choosing the tribe that shouts the loudest. I can only think that they’re basically cowards.
I loved the piece from last week. I used to write comments in the Guardian during the Brexit debate and thoroughly enjoyed winding up all the emerging wokerati.
Thanks, TT. I agree – it’s probably a mix of all the things you mention. The erosion of Christian values, especially, tends to get overlooked in Europe and the UK.
I still worry more about the progressive-left variety because it’s been so successful at capturing institutions and the education system, which is where so much of the groupthink starts. But the backlash is a worry too.
As for comment sections, I’ve been called a communist and a fascist on Substack and elsewhere. Ha, what a world.
I completely agree, the left has gone insane - and I speak as an ex leftie. Now I try to think in terms of right and wrong rather than left/right.
There was always going to be a backlash when you think of how bad the left has become. We can only hope that common sense will eventually prevail which is where most of ‘the plebs’ are…..although Starmer and the EU are doing their best to shut us all up.
The only difference I can see between communists and fascists is that communists convince themselves they’re doing good, fascists don’t care as long as they get what they want. Can’t see you in either role!
'Tribal thinking has become so widespread. Could it be that as national boundaries are eroding, people need to identify with some kind of tribe and the internet makes it possible?'
It's a bit more complicated than that. Sure, the Left essentialised race with a view to creating Mancur Olson distributional coalitions which could unite politically to defeat centre Right majoritarian demographics. In America, it was the 'Demographics is Destiny' argument. In the UK, Tony Blair championed 'Cool Britannia' whilst Andrew Neather was working on a mass migration policy which would "rub their noses in it" (by which he believed he meant social and economic conservatives, but what he really meant was the British people). It was also inevitable that once people began to deconstruct colour blindness (which is actually treating people on the basis of their character, with the nomenclature beginning as a slur against the concept), there would be a backlash by white people forming their own collective groups based upon political/cultural/ethnic identity.
At the same time, they were unwittingly unleashing irreversible economic forces. Loose labour supply equals the Gilded Age. Tight labour markets equal 50s America prosperity, which had less to do with FDRs big government policies, but everything to do with the fact that foreign-born labour had fallen from 15% to 5%. And this is not a historically isolated incident. The Black Death massively increased the value of labour and as a consequence it was probably one of the contributory root factors required for the Enlightenment to occur. Tight labour market conditions also equal high productivity and growth. The fear of not having enough workers to cope with demand causes employers to make capital investments in labour savings and this drives growth and productivity.
Here's the problem. Prolonged periods of economic insecurity and economic stagnation also have a profound influence on the brain. It raises cortisol levels and stress. In many ways this creates effects which are somewhat similar to PTSD. Of key interest is a possible reduction in empathy towards out-group individuals and even more likely increased threat perceptions.
No academic has studied the two phenomenon together. They wouldn't because it would invariably lead to cancellation. They are also loathe to admit that mass migration has profoundly negative economic consequences for large segments of the socioeconomic spectrum and the problem is basically irremediable in all but about 8% of the affected group with any approach other than ceasing mass migration, because of the basic labour inelastically of the group in question. A huge percentage of mass migrants are going to be competing for the type of jobs this part of the economic spectrum does, and they can literally do little else of value in the advanced economies of the West.
So they have a very strong economic self-interest in not wanting the migrants to compete with their labour. The economic forces unleashed alter their brain chemistry, making them less likely to be sympathetic and more likely to perceive threat from out-groups. Add to this the fact that people are hardwired for fairness rather than equity or equality of outcome, then it was inevitable that they would see the Left's jury rigging attempts to engineer equality through reparative approaches to pay for historical sins based upon largely fictional reasons as why some of the world is poor, and some of the world is rich, and it was inevitable that they were going to see this as deeply unfair and a terrible betrayal.
Then there is the culture issue. If you're like me, you love immersing yourself in foreign cultures on holiday, rather than sitting by a pool or beach and insisting on British/American food. But not everyone is an 'Anywhere'. A large percentage of most Western populations are 'somewheres'- deeply attached to cultural homogeneity. Most can handle a fair amount of diversity- Right populism seems to emerge when foreign culture reaches 10%, and really begins to gain momentum around 14%, and race seems to be largely irrelevant to the question, although obviously within any Right populist movement there will always be a small percentage of racists. The reason why we know this is the case is because the thresholds remain constant regardless of the racial demography of the host culture- although we only really have America's four populists periods as historical evidence.
The problem with liberals is that they tend to look at their own experiences and extrapolate outwards. They make the deeply misguided mistake that other people are capable of liking what they like. It's an incredibly destructive assumption. In a real-life version of Shirley Valentine her husband would have almost certainly divorced her. The research shows that ingroup is almost impossible to shift once it has formed in childhood. Only military service overrides it by forming a new aegis for group loyalty. The only option is to mitigate outgroup hostility which can only be down by treating people fairly regardless of disparate outcomes. In other words, one can get two communities with high ingroup to not hate each other, but you will never ever get them to like each other, other than with a few token individuals who happened to have low ingroup to begin with.
Here's a Nobel economist in a three minute clip proving the point about tight labour market mechanics:
It should also be noted that only one-third of the declines in the blue collar/working class group are due to wage stagnation or dilution. Two-thirds of costs are through increased housing costs. Housing supply may not be inherently inelastic, but it might as well be given the complexities involved, and the fact that it's almost impossible to shift the needle upwards as a matter of deliberate policy.
This makes sense to me intuitively. What are your sources for (1) Right populism seems to emerge when foreign culture reaches 10%, and really begins to gain momentum around 14% and (2) decline in working class living standards being 2/3 due to housing affordability?
The 2/3 figure relates to a Congressional Report: Worst Case Housing Needs 2025 Report to Congress. Sure, one can say that partisan politics influences the summary level, but a lot of the detail of the 127 page is granular, and lots of data I've found in the past supports the same conclusion.
The best source on the population issue is Neill Ferguson. In 2016 he gave a talk to Google Zeitgeist called 'A Recipe for Populism'. He drew upon American historical sources to reach his conclusions...
I’m sure it is a lot more complicated but I only see the comments as a place for a quick comment rather than an essay. But thanks for your detailed reply.
😁 I will certainly digest what you’ve said so no need to apologise. And intelligent discussions are extremely enjoyable after the shouting and abuse of so much online discourse.
To be honest I was a bit of a late adopter. I signed up to the various platforms and didn't even look at them for years, other than as a means of seeing whether friends and family had arrived safely when flying somewhere.
But then the culture seemed to go batshit crazy overnight and I really wanted to know why. My original bubble was one of blissful ignorance.
I’ve now had time to read your comment properly and I agree with much of it, particularly regarding the economic effects of mass immigration on the poorest in society. In fact that was the main theme of my comments in the Guardian during the Brexit debate. As you can imagine, the replies I got from the ‘anywhere’s’ were less than flattering.
I hadn’t thought in terms of cortisol levels before, so thanks for that. I agree, it would make for a useful study. Perhaps you’ll write your own piece sometime. I’m sure it would be interesting. Thanks for making me think more deeply about it.
The woke left movement certainly warrants a backlash. It’s weird and dystopian and is designed to turn everything on its head. Civilisation could not continue if we were all woke lefties. So, we need to keep up the momentum, but keep it sensible. Fortunately, I believe Carlson and Owens are the exception. Unfortunately, they do have a huge following.
Researching this piece, I was struck by how extreme some of this has become – a genuine strain of fascism bubbling away beneath the surface of some parts of the right.
Of course, the left’s constant overuse of the term "fascism" has largely robbed the word of its power. Fools.
Outstanding piece and one of the best I've read on this subject. Highly recommend Ben Shapiro's recent TPUSA speech where he takes Carlson, Owens and others aprt. Very satisfying.
This is excellent, and more important than the 'Leftist' piece. I'm used to being called a 'fascist' and a 'racist' by deranged leftists, but then also being called 'an establishment shill' by rightists for making the same point in a different forum is not only bizarre but worrying for the future of civic discourse in the West.
I recall - 25 years ago - when I was involved with an anti-fascist leftish group that nevertheless critiqued Multiculturalism and identity politics - predicting a large backlash from the white working class to the then developing obsession with race on the Left. The (genuine) far right, which had lost ground over the course of the 1990s, had always espoused identity politics, of course (Blood and Soil). There was a blink-and-miss-it moment when MLK's dream looked like it might be realised, before identity politics went supernova on the Left. There's a real danger, now, because of the woke right backlash, that the (genuine) far right will make headway once more. It's rare to find anyone in politics - on either side - with the critical thinking skills required to drag Western civilisation out of the mire its walked blindly into.
Excellent comment – captures it perfectly. Each side's excesses drive people toward the other's worst elements. The doom loop in action. I had no idea as a young man at the time how weird the 1990s were, and now realise that was an anomaly – the blink-and-you-miss-it moment. What a shame we couldn't hold on to it.
Yes, from my own personal recollection, there was a window between say 1999 and 2005 when it looked as though racism had been expunged from civic life and things looked rosy. There is always a temporal drag, though: so the MacPherson report was published in 1999 - which did a lot to revive racism from the Left - and Nick Griffin's Question Time appearance was in 2009, long after he had any political influence. I'm obvs over-generalising ....
Excellent article Frederick I was looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint. Spot on! As for the causes of the woke right you could say they're similar to the origins of the woke left and the pendulum swings the other way. Trust lies at the root of it and many people no longer trust a lot of things they used to. Both sides are concerned with power - one the imagined demons that attack their intersectional victims the other the power of the elites. We have come full circle haven't we when both Chomsky and Carlson support Putin. As you rightly say the boring work is the key work like checking the facts and applying rational arguments. Just because democracy appears to have failed us doesn't mean we must slide into authoritarianism as the alternative.
Thanks, Ewan. I had your comment from last week in mind when I wrote this, so I'm glad it hit the mark. As you say, so much of this comes down to power. The Carlson-Chomsky convergence is fascinating, isn't it? Horseshoe theory in real time.
I'm not sure about the Ukraine issue because what was strange was that The Left appeared to be in support of the Russian invasion at the start of the war, accusing Ukrainians of being Nazis etc However, the narrative appeared to change all of a sudden. I have tried to look into this, and I do think that NATO should take some blame for breaking the promises it made to Russia following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Was there an acceptable peace offer on the table at the beginning of 2022? Did Boris Johnson rush to Kiev to persuade Zekensky to turn it down? Mmm. I think there are so many questions over the Russia/Ukraine issue.
Yes, I really don't know what to think about the Russia-Ukraine thing except that it's much more complex than many like to think. Still, Carlson completely failed in his duty as a journalist to ask the important questions.
Oh, yes, I don't really listen to people like Carlson, but I do like to understand what's really going on. I find all this stuff about Churchill very upsetting because my dad fought in WWII, and his 2 brothers were killed. For my mum and dad, Churchill was a hero, and I was made to watch his funeral on TV.
Thank you for this seminal piece! As someone in podunk OH living the nightmare….. There is a group that started out as the antithesis of the woke left (as you describe), fighting to bring real education back to the schools. They have quickly morphed into the woke right - once they realized the money that can be made! They have assembled their team of lawyers and grifters and are targeting smaller districts with high poverty rates. They have coupled with a far right PAC to elect far right school board members and at the Jan meeting rush thru contracts with their cronies (lawyers with no school experience, “consulting” firms from TX….that are extremely difficult and pricey to break. My district tried this 12/26 but there were enough of us doing research that it was thwarted for this month…..3 other school districts this has happened to in OH actually contacted those of us researching this, and showed up to help!
Thanks, Mary. That's a fascinating and grim example – all the more so for being on the ground, not just in YouTube/podcastland. Keep up the good fight for common sense. I hope things improve there soon.
Thank you for writing this, and us classical liberals need to recognize the new "woke right" as not only as authoritarian as the Left, but also promulgate terrible political ideals (especially economic) that are indistinguishable from progressives (Trump's current economic policies are being lauded by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren).
It should also be stated that anyone that regularly listens to Candace Owens need to reflect on their life choices, because she is batshit crazy, and she should only be considered a performance artist at this point, not a political pundit.
A performance artist – precisely. And an increasingly unhinged one at that. Also, something very strange is going on when Trump's current economic policies are lauded by Bernie Sanders, as you say.
Very well written description of both woke left and right. How can our country survive this destructive tag team? And both political parties are more concerned with themselves than what is happening to the USA.
I'm no fan of some of these things happening on the Right, but with due respect, the Right did not "go woke." To fall to using this term to describe the phenomena you cite is to drain *wokeism* of its specificity. Wokeism is a left-wing movement and what is happening on some corners of the Right, though one can make parallels, is not the same thing. Worse, to employ this usage is to weaken your stance against wokeism.
Wokeism can be traced to post-structuralist, late Frankfurt-School-inspired leftism in the universities. It is a specific thing. Let's keep focused on its enthusiasm for censorship and social engineering--as part and parcel of a Left project. Do these "woke" figures you see on the Right have any relationship to that tradition? Do they favor censorship? Are they utopians?
That they fall into conspiratorial thinking isn't woke. That they're kneejerk and contrarian also isn't woke. That they’re nationalists certainly isn’t woke. Such tendencies have happened before. Long before "wokeism."
We need to respect the specificity of terms, otherwise we foster thinking as sloppy as what we see on the emotivist Left. And worse, it’s mostly left-liberals that are egging people into using this term. It’s classic whataboutism. In hopes finally of papering over the real crimes the woke Left has gotten away with this past decade.
Please think about it, Frederick. Again, with due respect. That some figures on the Right are getting nutty doesn’t mean they’re “woke.”
This was from some time back, but he's still right in his assessment:
Thanks, Eric – I appreciate the comment. I’m not claiming Carlson or Owens are literally adopting Frankfurt School theory or anything of the sort. I’m arguing that they’ve adopted some of the same psychological habits associated with the woke left. In other words, I’m using the word to describe a disposition and style of discourse rather than an ideology. I make that distinction at the start of the piece, though I accept that this may confuse things and might seem a little mischievous to use it in the title in that way (although it got us discussing the point here).
Of course I know you're not claiming they're adopting Frankfurt School ideology. But the claim that they're falling into "wokeism" of the Right is still to drain the concept. And as Hazony clarifies in the link, this matters.
I’ve read the article and I take the point about coalition politics, which seems to be the objection he’s making: betrayal, unity, coalition damage, “schmucks", etc. That’s a fair concern on its own terms.
My argument was about epistemics, but on further reflection, I agree that using "woke right" was the wrong choice for this essay – and probably an unhelpful label more generally – because it distracts from the broader point I was trying to make, and most of the discussion has ended up being about semantics.
I’m understanding you to be saying that you are not taking issue with the parallel behavior that Frederick describes, just the term. What would you propose to call it?
The term 'woke' has always been 'problematic', as the academic wokists like to say; it has, after all, been 'decontextualised' from its origins in US black political discourse. Arguing that 'wokism' can be traced back to the Frankfurt School, and all that, is not etymologically accurate: indeed it's a bizarre claim to make. I've only read works by Adorno, Benjamin and Marcuse and I don't recall coming across its use. I understand, of course, why you are making such an anachronistic claim, and it's because a myriad of complex concepts have - over time - come together in a loose 'movement' and a handy, popular, shorthand term has emerged to describe it. We all think we know what we are talking about when we use the word, but it is slippery, and perhaps a better, more accurate descriptor would have been useful, but - especially in the internet age - we have no control over what neologisms come to mean, as much as we might rage. (Indeed, we can barely maintain control of the meaning of long established concepts.) Your demand that we 'respect the specificity of terms, otherwise we foster thinking as sloppy as what we see on the emotivist Left', not only exposes your own shortcomings in this regard, but is a stable door you can waste your time trying to reinforce as much as you like, albeit your frustration is not unwarranted.
As for there being on the 'woke right' no calls for censorship, no utopianism, you clearly haven't been reading some of the deranged shit I've come across on social media from those quarters.
Thanks for the blaze link - I'll read it with interest.
I’m afraid I disagree regarding the roots of woke. The term is newish and I agree that none of those people used it but I think the roots lie in the Marxist oppressor/ oppressed narrative ( hence the Frankfurt School) which contributed much to post modern thinking. This led onto Queer Theory, gender ideology, critical race theory and woke ideas in general. But I also agree that the term woke has come to cover a myriad of ideas but that the term was used specifically regarding black oppression in the first place.
New terms arise and get pasted on movements. The fact that the term "woke" has a particular etymology in black US discourse and only later got adopted by this movement is irrelevant. Look at its use in earlier black discourse and you'll see the term there only has a glancing overlap with what it later came to mean. The point is the particular school of leftism, which is distinct and very different from, say, the Marxism of the past. This particular leftism started in the universities in a few corners of the humanities and slowly spread from there to neighboring departments. Over its 4 decades of spred, it's taken different names in the wider culture.
In the 1990s, the people we now call woke were called "politically correct," or "PC" for short. This continued until the early-2010s. Starting then, they were called SJWs, for "social justice warriors." About 2016 the term "woke" arose, and then replaced the others.
But here's the point: it's the same movement grounded in the same intellectual background. It's very different from the Communism of the past, very different from the leftism of the Democratic Party of the 1950s to '70s. Specifically: it ignores class struggle in the economic sense, replacing economic class with identity class, defined by race or sexual behavior. Eventually the Democratic Party adopted it as its go-to ideology, in my view because it allowed the Party to be more corporate-friendly while still having a leftish banner to wave. They had Left cred without the hard work of being leftists. They could scorn the working class while still being "progressive."
Yes, I consider it a fake leftism. A leftism of the elite. It has been a disaster for the US and the West.
I'm probably older than both yourself and Frederick, and studying the field I did I was schooled in this Left tradition in the late 1980s and early '90s, well before it became a national party ideology. I watched the Left shapeshifting over the course of my undergrad and grad years. Many of the uneducated "wokeists" of today don't themselves recognize where their movement comes from--they've absorbed it from having listened to professors in this or that class years ago and from the culture around them. In 1990 I never would have guessed that Marcusan "repressive tolerance" would come to inform HR departments in US corporations, but that's what happened. The HR ladies didn't read Marcuse, but his concept of progress and how to get it became dominant in the culture as a whole thanks to this particular Left tradition slowly taking over campuses and year after year graduating the people who moved into government, media, the corporate world. Three generations have now been graduated on this stuff, and many are now nearing 50.
This happens all the time in cultures. Islam takes over a region, and pretty soon it's informing the discourse and thinking of the whole society. Many of those talking and thinking in Islamic terms have never read the Koran or the Hadith. Their betters are those who have, or at least those who can quote key lines when needed.
I get your point about the stable door, but in fact this horse is just now in the process of bolting. It's only been a year before people, only some people, have been referring to the "woke Right." It should stop, because terms matter, and this parallel is bogus. The more traction this parallel gets, the more the woke Left is let off the hook. Muddy terminology means muddy thinking, as Orwell rightly insisted. And often muddy thinking serves just the people we don't want to serve.
I don't like Carlson's shift, I find Candace Owens a fraud, but the main problem we face as a constitutional republic is that this particular fake leftism still dominates the institutions.
Thanks for your considered reply. From the content of your comment I would guess I am slightly older than you - I was born in '64. My earliest political activity was at university c1983 when I joined Anti-Apartheid picketing of Barclays Bank here in the UK. I then became heavily involved in Trotskyite far left activism from the late 80s and most of the 90s. With respect, and of course our experiences and how we categorise events to help shape our understanding of the world are different, I don't think there is a direct lineage from PC to woke, any more than I think that there is a direct link from the anti-racist/anti-fascist activity I was engaged in in the 80s and 90s to what is termed 'anti-racism' today by the likes of critical race theorists. We have both lived through times where left and right have 180d on a great many issues: the battles I was fighting against the right back in the day were, for example, in favour of freedom of speech, social liberalism (gay rights and anti-racism), authoritarianism. Now, I am fighting those same battles against the Left! 1980s/90s PC was a positive force in a world where racism and homophobia did not just exist in the febrile imaginations of SJWs but had real-world, often violent consequences, for people on the streets. You could argue this is just a case of the pendulum swinging too far, but I think it's more complex than that, both politically and psychologically.
I am a great admirer of Orwell, and while I agree that we should resist the perversion of linguistic definitions, it is clearly - especially as a consequence of the cultural impact of the internet - a constant rear-guard action to maintain meaning. This is not just a problem caused by the 'progressive' Left, although it is a truly Orwellian movement when it comes to concept inversion, it's also a feature of popular culture and political populism, too. To return to the issue of the term, the 'woke right', it's not the sort of precise term that Orwell would have favoured, I expect, and I acknowledge its limitations, but I think you are wasting your time in trying to push the toothpaste back into the tube, as they say.
This clarifies things. You're right that I'm slightly younger than you. Some of my earliest political activism was also against Apartheid: for me, pushing to get my university divested from South Africa.
So we've lived through the same decades. Our difference in perspective on "woke" is likely more related to differences between the Left in the US vs. UK. As you know, in the UK the actual class politics grounding, as well as actual Marxism, remained more viable for much longer. This was already being sidelined during my undergrad years, so that by the early 1990s "political correctness" was already a matter of policing social mores inside the US. And thus the slow drift toward embrace of censorship began. Yes, at that time I recognized that the push for gay and lesbian recognition was needed. We were nowhere near the LGBTQwerty as state religion that would eventually dominate the Left. Just as we were still mostly in the milieu of MLK, Jr. rather than what we saw in the late 2010s.
I'd put it this way. The Left in the US mostly did its main 180-degree flip about 1990. Once the Democratic Party and the music industry and Hollywood got on board it was all downhill from there. The last hints of economic challenge to the elites happened with Occupy Wall Street. After that it was all identity politics all the time.
And the Democrats are now more the elite party. Managing globalization along with their junior partners the Con Inc. Republicans. Meaning that our Left, as a political force, is fake, and has been for almost 15 years.
Anyhow, for Americans who've been watching, "woke" is more a traceable linear development from that earlier American shift.
I still think it's worthwhile to insist on it as a Left perversion, one that now has a stable term to define it. Certainly in the US context. The idiocy we're seeing from Tucker Carlson and others on the Right is mostly just garden-variety antisemitism, as conspiratorial as it's always been.
Cheers. As an undergrad, I also read and reread *Gravity's Rainbow*. So we have that in common too.
Thanks for this article, Frederick. In Britain, we did debate whether the Holocaust happened or not, in the David Irving libel trial. This case was dramatised in the 2016 movie 'Denial', which appears to have a very low profile. Perhaps it should be shown in schools.
Thanks, Daniel – yes, I vaguely remember this at the time. I recall reading an article by Christopher Hitchens about the Irving trial. I’ll have to track it down. I didn’t realise a film had been made about it. I'll look out for it in future. Thanks.
Despite knowing about the libel trial at the time, I only found out about the film last year and ordered the DVD. Despite an A-list British cast, the film seems to have been buried. Well worth watching, in my opinion.
Excellent analysis, and very much needed. One comment: please drop the hyphen, it is antizionism. Adam Louis-Klein explains this, what it boils down to is that antizionism is its own ideaology.
In the piece I’ve kept “anti-Zionism” in quotes to show how the term is used rhetorically, but I see what you’re saying. I’m looking at the Adam Louis-Klein site now, which I’ll add here in case others are interested. Thanks for pointing it out.
This is a follow-up piece to last week's How to Deal with a Leftist (link below). This went through a few versions before I landed on a Q&A, which seems the clearest way to highlight what's going on here. Let me know what you think of either piece. And thanks for reading.
https://www.gadflynotes.com/p/how-to-deal-with-a-leftist
Sadly and depressingly spot on. Tribal thinking has become so widespread. Could it be that as national boundaries are eroding, people need to identify with some kind of tribe and the internet makes it possible. Or is it the erosion of Christian values? Then there’s the slow indoctrination that’s been happening in the west via the Frankfurt School and the Fabian Society both of which want to destroy western democracies, values and culture. People want something to believe in and are currently scrabbling around to find a tribe amongst all the chaos. Unfortunately it would seem that too many educated people have lost the ability to think critically and are choosing the tribe that shouts the loudest. I can only think that they’re basically cowards.
I loved the piece from last week. I used to write comments in the Guardian during the Brexit debate and thoroughly enjoyed winding up all the emerging wokerati.
Thanks, TT. I agree – it’s probably a mix of all the things you mention. The erosion of Christian values, especially, tends to get overlooked in Europe and the UK.
I still worry more about the progressive-left variety because it’s been so successful at capturing institutions and the education system, which is where so much of the groupthink starts. But the backlash is a worry too.
As for comment sections, I’ve been called a communist and a fascist on Substack and elsewhere. Ha, what a world.
I completely agree, the left has gone insane - and I speak as an ex leftie. Now I try to think in terms of right and wrong rather than left/right.
There was always going to be a backlash when you think of how bad the left has become. We can only hope that common sense will eventually prevail which is where most of ‘the plebs’ are…..although Starmer and the EU are doing their best to shut us all up.
The only difference I can see between communists and fascists is that communists convince themselves they’re doing good, fascists don’t care as long as they get what they want. Can’t see you in either role!
Haha, yeah. If I have one constant, it's that I can't bear fanatics of any stripe. Not that I'm a centrist either (so often the problem).
"Now I try to think in terms of right and wrong rather than left/right." That's a very good way to think about it.
'Tribal thinking has become so widespread. Could it be that as national boundaries are eroding, people need to identify with some kind of tribe and the internet makes it possible?'
It's a bit more complicated than that. Sure, the Left essentialised race with a view to creating Mancur Olson distributional coalitions which could unite politically to defeat centre Right majoritarian demographics. In America, it was the 'Demographics is Destiny' argument. In the UK, Tony Blair championed 'Cool Britannia' whilst Andrew Neather was working on a mass migration policy which would "rub their noses in it" (by which he believed he meant social and economic conservatives, but what he really meant was the British people). It was also inevitable that once people began to deconstruct colour blindness (which is actually treating people on the basis of their character, with the nomenclature beginning as a slur against the concept), there would be a backlash by white people forming their own collective groups based upon political/cultural/ethnic identity.
At the same time, they were unwittingly unleashing irreversible economic forces. Loose labour supply equals the Gilded Age. Tight labour markets equal 50s America prosperity, which had less to do with FDRs big government policies, but everything to do with the fact that foreign-born labour had fallen from 15% to 5%. And this is not a historically isolated incident. The Black Death massively increased the value of labour and as a consequence it was probably one of the contributory root factors required for the Enlightenment to occur. Tight labour market conditions also equal high productivity and growth. The fear of not having enough workers to cope with demand causes employers to make capital investments in labour savings and this drives growth and productivity.
Here's the problem. Prolonged periods of economic insecurity and economic stagnation also have a profound influence on the brain. It raises cortisol levels and stress. In many ways this creates effects which are somewhat similar to PTSD. Of key interest is a possible reduction in empathy towards out-group individuals and even more likely increased threat perceptions.
No academic has studied the two phenomenon together. They wouldn't because it would invariably lead to cancellation. They are also loathe to admit that mass migration has profoundly negative economic consequences for large segments of the socioeconomic spectrum and the problem is basically irremediable in all but about 8% of the affected group with any approach other than ceasing mass migration, because of the basic labour inelastically of the group in question. A huge percentage of mass migrants are going to be competing for the type of jobs this part of the economic spectrum does, and they can literally do little else of value in the advanced economies of the West.
So they have a very strong economic self-interest in not wanting the migrants to compete with their labour. The economic forces unleashed alter their brain chemistry, making them less likely to be sympathetic and more likely to perceive threat from out-groups. Add to this the fact that people are hardwired for fairness rather than equity or equality of outcome, then it was inevitable that they would see the Left's jury rigging attempts to engineer equality through reparative approaches to pay for historical sins based upon largely fictional reasons as why some of the world is poor, and some of the world is rich, and it was inevitable that they were going to see this as deeply unfair and a terrible betrayal.
Then there is the culture issue. If you're like me, you love immersing yourself in foreign cultures on holiday, rather than sitting by a pool or beach and insisting on British/American food. But not everyone is an 'Anywhere'. A large percentage of most Western populations are 'somewheres'- deeply attached to cultural homogeneity. Most can handle a fair amount of diversity- Right populism seems to emerge when foreign culture reaches 10%, and really begins to gain momentum around 14%, and race seems to be largely irrelevant to the question, although obviously within any Right populist movement there will always be a small percentage of racists. The reason why we know this is the case is because the thresholds remain constant regardless of the racial demography of the host culture- although we only really have America's four populists periods as historical evidence.
The problem with liberals is that they tend to look at their own experiences and extrapolate outwards. They make the deeply misguided mistake that other people are capable of liking what they like. It's an incredibly destructive assumption. In a real-life version of Shirley Valentine her husband would have almost certainly divorced her. The research shows that ingroup is almost impossible to shift once it has formed in childhood. Only military service overrides it by forming a new aegis for group loyalty. The only option is to mitigate outgroup hostility which can only be down by treating people fairly regardless of disparate outcomes. In other words, one can get two communities with high ingroup to not hate each other, but you will never ever get them to like each other, other than with a few token individuals who happened to have low ingroup to begin with.
Here's a Nobel economist in a three minute clip proving the point about tight labour market mechanics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRBsDcHoWZU
It should also be noted that only one-third of the declines in the blue collar/working class group are due to wage stagnation or dilution. Two-thirds of costs are through increased housing costs. Housing supply may not be inherently inelastic, but it might as well be given the complexities involved, and the fact that it's almost impossible to shift the needle upwards as a matter of deliberate policy.
This makes sense to me intuitively. What are your sources for (1) Right populism seems to emerge when foreign culture reaches 10%, and really begins to gain momentum around 14% and (2) decline in working class living standards being 2/3 due to housing affordability?
The 2/3 figure relates to a Congressional Report: Worst Case Housing Needs 2025 Report to Congress. Sure, one can say that partisan politics influences the summary level, but a lot of the detail of the 127 page is granular, and lots of data I've found in the past supports the same conclusion.
The best source on the population issue is Neill Ferguson. In 2016 he gave a talk to Google Zeitgeist called 'A Recipe for Populism'. He drew upon American historical sources to reach his conclusions...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSLEGafuEd4
I’m sure it is a lot more complicated but I only see the comments as a place for a quick comment rather than an essay. But thanks for your detailed reply.
I've been making TLDR comments since around 2018. Discourse Forums probably conditioned me a little more than might be ideal for some tastes.
😁 I will certainly digest what you’ve said so no need to apologise. And intelligent discussions are extremely enjoyable after the shouting and abuse of so much online discourse.
To be honest I was a bit of a late adopter. I signed up to the various platforms and didn't even look at them for years, other than as a means of seeing whether friends and family had arrived safely when flying somewhere.
But then the culture seemed to go batshit crazy overnight and I really wanted to know why. My original bubble was one of blissful ignorance.
I’ve now had time to read your comment properly and I agree with much of it, particularly regarding the economic effects of mass immigration on the poorest in society. In fact that was the main theme of my comments in the Guardian during the Brexit debate. As you can imagine, the replies I got from the ‘anywhere’s’ were less than flattering.
I hadn’t thought in terms of cortisol levels before, so thanks for that. I agree, it would make for a useful study. Perhaps you’ll write your own piece sometime. I’m sure it would be interesting. Thanks for making me think more deeply about it.
The woke left movement certainly warrants a backlash. It’s weird and dystopian and is designed to turn everything on its head. Civilisation could not continue if we were all woke lefties. So, we need to keep up the momentum, but keep it sensible. Fortunately, I believe Carlson and Owens are the exception. Unfortunately, they do have a huge following.
Researching this piece, I was struck by how extreme some of this has become – a genuine strain of fascism bubbling away beneath the surface of some parts of the right.
Of course, the left’s constant overuse of the term "fascism" has largely robbed the word of its power. Fools.
Fools indeed. We brush it off by claiming, ‘We are all fascists now’ - except some of us actually are!
Outstanding piece and one of the best I've read on this subject. Highly recommend Ben Shapiro's recent TPUSA speech where he takes Carlson, Owens and others aprt. Very satisfying.
Thank you. Yes, Ben Shapiro – spot on. One of the sanest voices out there right now.
This is excellent, and more important than the 'Leftist' piece. I'm used to being called a 'fascist' and a 'racist' by deranged leftists, but then also being called 'an establishment shill' by rightists for making the same point in a different forum is not only bizarre but worrying for the future of civic discourse in the West.
I recall - 25 years ago - when I was involved with an anti-fascist leftish group that nevertheless critiqued Multiculturalism and identity politics - predicting a large backlash from the white working class to the then developing obsession with race on the Left. The (genuine) far right, which had lost ground over the course of the 1990s, had always espoused identity politics, of course (Blood and Soil). There was a blink-and-miss-it moment when MLK's dream looked like it might be realised, before identity politics went supernova on the Left. There's a real danger, now, because of the woke right backlash, that the (genuine) far right will make headway once more. It's rare to find anyone in politics - on either side - with the critical thinking skills required to drag Western civilisation out of the mire its walked blindly into.
Excellent comment – captures it perfectly. Each side's excesses drive people toward the other's worst elements. The doom loop in action. I had no idea as a young man at the time how weird the 1990s were, and now realise that was an anomaly – the blink-and-you-miss-it moment. What a shame we couldn't hold on to it.
Yes, from my own personal recollection, there was a window between say 1999 and 2005 when it looked as though racism had been expunged from civic life and things looked rosy. There is always a temporal drag, though: so the MacPherson report was published in 1999 - which did a lot to revive racism from the Left - and Nick Griffin's Question Time appearance was in 2009, long after he had any political influence. I'm obvs over-generalising ....
Just a different world. Also, before the internet dominated every aspect of life, of course.
Excellent article Frederick I was looking forward to this and it didn't disappoint. Spot on! As for the causes of the woke right you could say they're similar to the origins of the woke left and the pendulum swings the other way. Trust lies at the root of it and many people no longer trust a lot of things they used to. Both sides are concerned with power - one the imagined demons that attack their intersectional victims the other the power of the elites. We have come full circle haven't we when both Chomsky and Carlson support Putin. As you rightly say the boring work is the key work like checking the facts and applying rational arguments. Just because democracy appears to have failed us doesn't mean we must slide into authoritarianism as the alternative.
Thanks, Ewan. I had your comment from last week in mind when I wrote this, so I'm glad it hit the mark. As you say, so much of this comes down to power. The Carlson-Chomsky convergence is fascinating, isn't it? Horseshoe theory in real time.
I like this essay, and you make good points, but I really, really dislike the term “woke right.” It’s just James Lindsay’s attempt at gatekeeping.
Yes, you're not alone on that. Its biggest weakness is that it (understandably) distracts from the larger point. We need a better expression for it.
I'm not sure about the Ukraine issue because what was strange was that The Left appeared to be in support of the Russian invasion at the start of the war, accusing Ukrainians of being Nazis etc However, the narrative appeared to change all of a sudden. I have tried to look into this, and I do think that NATO should take some blame for breaking the promises it made to Russia following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Was there an acceptable peace offer on the table at the beginning of 2022? Did Boris Johnson rush to Kiev to persuade Zekensky to turn it down? Mmm. I think there are so many questions over the Russia/Ukraine issue.
Yes, I really don't know what to think about the Russia-Ukraine thing except that it's much more complex than many like to think. Still, Carlson completely failed in his duty as a journalist to ask the important questions.
Oh, yes, I don't really listen to people like Carlson, but I do like to understand what's really going on. I find all this stuff about Churchill very upsetting because my dad fought in WWII, and his 2 brothers were killed. For my mum and dad, Churchill was a hero, and I was made to watch his funeral on TV.
I agree, very good points.
Thank you for this seminal piece! As someone in podunk OH living the nightmare….. There is a group that started out as the antithesis of the woke left (as you describe), fighting to bring real education back to the schools. They have quickly morphed into the woke right - once they realized the money that can be made! They have assembled their team of lawyers and grifters and are targeting smaller districts with high poverty rates. They have coupled with a far right PAC to elect far right school board members and at the Jan meeting rush thru contracts with their cronies (lawyers with no school experience, “consulting” firms from TX….that are extremely difficult and pricey to break. My district tried this 12/26 but there were enough of us doing research that it was thwarted for this month…..3 other school districts this has happened to in OH actually contacted those of us researching this, and showed up to help!
Your observations are not just a theory.
Thanks, Mary. That's a fascinating and grim example – all the more so for being on the ground, not just in YouTube/podcastland. Keep up the good fight for common sense. I hope things improve there soon.
Sorry 1/12/26*
Follow the money.
Clicks = money. People like Carlson will say anything for money. If you listen to him then you are the product that is sold for advertisers.
What do you want to hear? Woke left or right? Someone will be glad to give you what you want to hear and make money off you in the process.
Thank you for writing this, and us classical liberals need to recognize the new "woke right" as not only as authoritarian as the Left, but also promulgate terrible political ideals (especially economic) that are indistinguishable from progressives (Trump's current economic policies are being lauded by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren).
It should also be stated that anyone that regularly listens to Candace Owens need to reflect on their life choices, because she is batshit crazy, and she should only be considered a performance artist at this point, not a political pundit.
A performance artist – precisely. And an increasingly unhinged one at that. Also, something very strange is going on when Trump's current economic policies are lauded by Bernie Sanders, as you say.
Sanders and Warren playing straight hands or Uno Reverso cards?
Very well written description of both woke left and right. How can our country survive this destructive tag team? And both political parties are more concerned with themselves than what is happening to the USA.
Thanks, Dennis. I wish I had a good answer to that question. The world needs a strong and coherent USA now more than ever.
Also, thanks for subscribing!
I'm no fan of some of these things happening on the Right, but with due respect, the Right did not "go woke." To fall to using this term to describe the phenomena you cite is to drain *wokeism* of its specificity. Wokeism is a left-wing movement and what is happening on some corners of the Right, though one can make parallels, is not the same thing. Worse, to employ this usage is to weaken your stance against wokeism.
Wokeism can be traced to post-structuralist, late Frankfurt-School-inspired leftism in the universities. It is a specific thing. Let's keep focused on its enthusiasm for censorship and social engineering--as part and parcel of a Left project. Do these "woke" figures you see on the Right have any relationship to that tradition? Do they favor censorship? Are they utopians?
That they fall into conspiratorial thinking isn't woke. That they're kneejerk and contrarian also isn't woke. That they’re nationalists certainly isn’t woke. Such tendencies have happened before. Long before "wokeism."
We need to respect the specificity of terms, otherwise we foster thinking as sloppy as what we see on the emotivist Left. And worse, it’s mostly left-liberals that are egging people into using this term. It’s classic whataboutism. In hopes finally of papering over the real crimes the woke Left has gotten away with this past decade.
Please think about it, Frederick. Again, with due respect. That some figures on the Right are getting nutty doesn’t mean they’re “woke.”
This was from some time back, but he's still right in his assessment:
https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/meet-the-schmucks-trying-to-kneecap-the-anti-woke-alliance
Thanks, Eric – I appreciate the comment. I’m not claiming Carlson or Owens are literally adopting Frankfurt School theory or anything of the sort. I’m arguing that they’ve adopted some of the same psychological habits associated with the woke left. In other words, I’m using the word to describe a disposition and style of discourse rather than an ideology. I make that distinction at the start of the piece, though I accept that this may confuse things and might seem a little mischievous to use it in the title in that way (although it got us discussing the point here).
Of course I know you're not claiming they're adopting Frankfurt School ideology. But the claim that they're falling into "wokeism" of the Right is still to drain the concept. And as Hazony clarifies in the link, this matters.
I'll take a look at it, thanks.
I’ve read the article and I take the point about coalition politics, which seems to be the objection he’s making: betrayal, unity, coalition damage, “schmucks", etc. That’s a fair concern on its own terms.
My argument was about epistemics, but on further reflection, I agree that using "woke right" was the wrong choice for this essay – and probably an unhelpful label more generally – because it distracts from the broader point I was trying to make, and most of the discussion has ended up being about semantics.
I’m understanding you to be saying that you are not taking issue with the parallel behavior that Frederick describes, just the term. What would you propose to call it?
The term 'woke' has always been 'problematic', as the academic wokists like to say; it has, after all, been 'decontextualised' from its origins in US black political discourse. Arguing that 'wokism' can be traced back to the Frankfurt School, and all that, is not etymologically accurate: indeed it's a bizarre claim to make. I've only read works by Adorno, Benjamin and Marcuse and I don't recall coming across its use. I understand, of course, why you are making such an anachronistic claim, and it's because a myriad of complex concepts have - over time - come together in a loose 'movement' and a handy, popular, shorthand term has emerged to describe it. We all think we know what we are talking about when we use the word, but it is slippery, and perhaps a better, more accurate descriptor would have been useful, but - especially in the internet age - we have no control over what neologisms come to mean, as much as we might rage. (Indeed, we can barely maintain control of the meaning of long established concepts.) Your demand that we 'respect the specificity of terms, otherwise we foster thinking as sloppy as what we see on the emotivist Left', not only exposes your own shortcomings in this regard, but is a stable door you can waste your time trying to reinforce as much as you like, albeit your frustration is not unwarranted.
As for there being on the 'woke right' no calls for censorship, no utopianism, you clearly haven't been reading some of the deranged shit I've come across on social media from those quarters.
Thanks for the blaze link - I'll read it with interest.
I’m afraid I disagree regarding the roots of woke. The term is newish and I agree that none of those people used it but I think the roots lie in the Marxist oppressor/ oppressed narrative ( hence the Frankfurt School) which contributed much to post modern thinking. This led onto Queer Theory, gender ideology, critical race theory and woke ideas in general. But I also agree that the term woke has come to cover a myriad of ideas but that the term was used specifically regarding black oppression in the first place.
If I recall correctly, from my reading of 'Post-Structuralist Linguistics for Dummies', this is the problem of Saussure's signified and signifier. :-)
If it’s for dummies, I definitely need to read it. 😁
I wasn't joking. I might have my copy somewhere - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Linguistics-Dummies-Strang-Burton/dp/1118091698/ref=sr_1_1?
Brilliant, thanks
New terms arise and get pasted on movements. The fact that the term "woke" has a particular etymology in black US discourse and only later got adopted by this movement is irrelevant. Look at its use in earlier black discourse and you'll see the term there only has a glancing overlap with what it later came to mean. The point is the particular school of leftism, which is distinct and very different from, say, the Marxism of the past. This particular leftism started in the universities in a few corners of the humanities and slowly spread from there to neighboring departments. Over its 4 decades of spred, it's taken different names in the wider culture.
In the 1990s, the people we now call woke were called "politically correct," or "PC" for short. This continued until the early-2010s. Starting then, they were called SJWs, for "social justice warriors." About 2016 the term "woke" arose, and then replaced the others.
But here's the point: it's the same movement grounded in the same intellectual background. It's very different from the Communism of the past, very different from the leftism of the Democratic Party of the 1950s to '70s. Specifically: it ignores class struggle in the economic sense, replacing economic class with identity class, defined by race or sexual behavior. Eventually the Democratic Party adopted it as its go-to ideology, in my view because it allowed the Party to be more corporate-friendly while still having a leftish banner to wave. They had Left cred without the hard work of being leftists. They could scorn the working class while still being "progressive."
Yes, I consider it a fake leftism. A leftism of the elite. It has been a disaster for the US and the West.
I'm probably older than both yourself and Frederick, and studying the field I did I was schooled in this Left tradition in the late 1980s and early '90s, well before it became a national party ideology. I watched the Left shapeshifting over the course of my undergrad and grad years. Many of the uneducated "wokeists" of today don't themselves recognize where their movement comes from--they've absorbed it from having listened to professors in this or that class years ago and from the culture around them. In 1990 I never would have guessed that Marcusan "repressive tolerance" would come to inform HR departments in US corporations, but that's what happened. The HR ladies didn't read Marcuse, but his concept of progress and how to get it became dominant in the culture as a whole thanks to this particular Left tradition slowly taking over campuses and year after year graduating the people who moved into government, media, the corporate world. Three generations have now been graduated on this stuff, and many are now nearing 50.
This happens all the time in cultures. Islam takes over a region, and pretty soon it's informing the discourse and thinking of the whole society. Many of those talking and thinking in Islamic terms have never read the Koran or the Hadith. Their betters are those who have, or at least those who can quote key lines when needed.
I get your point about the stable door, but in fact this horse is just now in the process of bolting. It's only been a year before people, only some people, have been referring to the "woke Right." It should stop, because terms matter, and this parallel is bogus. The more traction this parallel gets, the more the woke Left is let off the hook. Muddy terminology means muddy thinking, as Orwell rightly insisted. And often muddy thinking serves just the people we don't want to serve.
I don't like Carlson's shift, I find Candace Owens a fraud, but the main problem we face as a constitutional republic is that this particular fake leftism still dominates the institutions.
Thanks for your considered reply. From the content of your comment I would guess I am slightly older than you - I was born in '64. My earliest political activity was at university c1983 when I joined Anti-Apartheid picketing of Barclays Bank here in the UK. I then became heavily involved in Trotskyite far left activism from the late 80s and most of the 90s. With respect, and of course our experiences and how we categorise events to help shape our understanding of the world are different, I don't think there is a direct lineage from PC to woke, any more than I think that there is a direct link from the anti-racist/anti-fascist activity I was engaged in in the 80s and 90s to what is termed 'anti-racism' today by the likes of critical race theorists. We have both lived through times where left and right have 180d on a great many issues: the battles I was fighting against the right back in the day were, for example, in favour of freedom of speech, social liberalism (gay rights and anti-racism), authoritarianism. Now, I am fighting those same battles against the Left! 1980s/90s PC was a positive force in a world where racism and homophobia did not just exist in the febrile imaginations of SJWs but had real-world, often violent consequences, for people on the streets. You could argue this is just a case of the pendulum swinging too far, but I think it's more complex than that, both politically and psychologically.
I am a great admirer of Orwell, and while I agree that we should resist the perversion of linguistic definitions, it is clearly - especially as a consequence of the cultural impact of the internet - a constant rear-guard action to maintain meaning. This is not just a problem caused by the 'progressive' Left, although it is a truly Orwellian movement when it comes to concept inversion, it's also a feature of popular culture and political populism, too. To return to the issue of the term, the 'woke right', it's not the sort of precise term that Orwell would have favoured, I expect, and I acknowledge its limitations, but I think you are wasting your time in trying to push the toothpaste back into the tube, as they say.
This clarifies things. You're right that I'm slightly younger than you. Some of my earliest political activism was also against Apartheid: for me, pushing to get my university divested from South Africa.
So we've lived through the same decades. Our difference in perspective on "woke" is likely more related to differences between the Left in the US vs. UK. As you know, in the UK the actual class politics grounding, as well as actual Marxism, remained more viable for much longer. This was already being sidelined during my undergrad years, so that by the early 1990s "political correctness" was already a matter of policing social mores inside the US. And thus the slow drift toward embrace of censorship began. Yes, at that time I recognized that the push for gay and lesbian recognition was needed. We were nowhere near the LGBTQwerty as state religion that would eventually dominate the Left. Just as we were still mostly in the milieu of MLK, Jr. rather than what we saw in the late 2010s.
I'd put it this way. The Left in the US mostly did its main 180-degree flip about 1990. Once the Democratic Party and the music industry and Hollywood got on board it was all downhill from there. The last hints of economic challenge to the elites happened with Occupy Wall Street. After that it was all identity politics all the time.
And the Democrats are now more the elite party. Managing globalization along with their junior partners the Con Inc. Republicans. Meaning that our Left, as a political force, is fake, and has been for almost 15 years.
Anyhow, for Americans who've been watching, "woke" is more a traceable linear development from that earlier American shift.
I still think it's worthwhile to insist on it as a Left perversion, one that now has a stable term to define it. Certainly in the US context. The idiocy we're seeing from Tucker Carlson and others on the Right is mostly just garden-variety antisemitism, as conspiratorial as it's always been.
Cheers. As an undergrad, I also read and reread *Gravity's Rainbow*. So we have that in common too.
Thanks for this article, Frederick. In Britain, we did debate whether the Holocaust happened or not, in the David Irving libel trial. This case was dramatised in the 2016 movie 'Denial', which appears to have a very low profile. Perhaps it should be shown in schools.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4645330/
Thanks, Daniel – yes, I vaguely remember this at the time. I recall reading an article by Christopher Hitchens about the Irving trial. I’ll have to track it down. I didn’t realise a film had been made about it. I'll look out for it in future. Thanks.
Despite knowing about the libel trial at the time, I only found out about the film last year and ordered the DVD. Despite an A-list British cast, the film seems to have been buried. Well worth watching, in my opinion.
horseshoe theory.
Excellent analysis, and very much needed. One comment: please drop the hyphen, it is antizionism. Adam Louis-Klein explains this, what it boils down to is that antizionism is its own ideaology.
In the piece I’ve kept “anti-Zionism” in quotes to show how the term is used rhetorically, but I see what you’re saying. I’m looking at the Adam Louis-Klein site now, which I’ll add here in case others are interested. Thanks for pointing it out.
https://www.movementagainstantizionism.org/