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It goes without saying that the Left is a uniquely dangerous force — unstable and revolutionary. Leftists flaunted their joy over Charlie Kirk’s murder, posting videos of themselves singing and dancing on social media. So many participated that legacy media called the backlash a revival of “cancel culture” — a phenomenon that, by definition, requires a critical mass of “victims.”
The display was chilling but unsurprising. These were, after all, the same people who’d spent the previous decade vowing to “smash” and “dismantle” Western civilization, which they condemned as the product of an oppressive patriarchy.
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Conservatives must do everything in their power to defeat the Left in the political realm. However, they must resist the temptation to adopt the Left’s tactics, namely embracing identitarianism, weaponizing victimhood, and falsifying history. In short, they must not go “woke.” The precipitous downfall of the Democratic Party in recent years offers a cautionary tale.
Cultural dominance
Several contradictions marked the woke movement from its outset. It purported to combat racism by amplifying racial differences, it promoted diversity and inclusion through discrimination and exclusion, and it held that women and men were fundamentally the same while simultaneously insisting that men could become women and vice versa by adopting stereotypical characteristics of the opposite sex.
Yet the Left successfully installed wokeness as the nation’s default moral system through a sprawling regime of social coercion and censorship, made possible by its domination of cultural institutions.
The machine operated with awesome precision. Social media exercised aggressive content moderation, legacy news media amplified preferred narratives, and universities established powerful DEI bureaucracies. Corporate executives, sports leagues, and the entertainment industry aligned their brands and content with Woke messaging. This total institutional dominance carried the aura of invincibility, leading many to believe the Woke had won a decisive victory.
But a fatal flaw had been built into the worldview from the beginning: an all-consuming drive for moral purity that led to its eventual self-destruction.
No enemies to my left
Many have likened wokeness to fundamentalist religion, citing its missionary-like efforts to convert unbelievers, its ritualistic confessions of privilege and performative activism, its strict adherence to language, and its excommunication rituals for heretics.
But wokeness’s commitment to binary thinking provides the strongest link. The rigid dualism that casts all people as either racists or anti-racists, allies or adversaries, oppressors or oppressed, leaves little room for nuance, complexity, or good-faith disagreement. Woke dogma simply places everyone within two mutually exclusive categories: those who reside on “the right side of history,” and those who don’t.
While a powerful tool for control, binary thinking blocks critical self-examination. Whereas true religion encourages introspection and humility, fundamentalist religion equates criticism with disloyalty and allows extremism to thrive under the guise of righteousness. In fundamentalist groups, extreme views are taken as evidence of commitment and subsequently rewarded.
This mindset influenced the Left to adopt a “no enemies to my left” political footing during the Woke takeover of the Democratic Party. Extremism became a badge of moral purity, fostering a competitive environment among leftists to see who could champion the most radical stance, outshine rivals in performative outrage, and signal the deepest allegiance.
Rioting and violent destruction of property, such as the nation witnessed in major cities following the death of George Floyd, were reframed as righteous catharsis. Redistributive economic policies and anti-capitalist rhetoric became atonement for historical theft, with the wealthy vilified and markets condemned. Aggressive sex change measures for confused children became a sacred rite of liberation, with any hesitation branded as hate. The phrases “defund the police” and “abolish ICE” were elevated by party leaders as moral imperatives. Abortion was no longer tolerated as “safe, legal, and rare” but shouted and celebrated.
Nothing was out of bounds nor deemed “too far.” And no one spoke out, either out of enthusiasm for the cause or fear of being accused of standing on “the wrong side of history.”
Meanwhile, the public grew steadily more defiant in response to these increasingly extreme positions. The Democratic platform became so absurd that normal people — parents, workers, lifelong liberals — could no longer remain silent. The woke spell over the nation had broken.
With the aid of strong conservative leaders, especially Elon Musk, whose purchase of Twitter shattered the left’s monopoly on digital speech, the non-Woke rose up to overthrow the Woke regime, reelecting President Donald Trump with record levels of support from “oppressed” communities, especially Hispanics.
The Democrats’ “no enemies to my left” strategy worked powerfully for a time, but ultimately steered the party into the political wilderness, where it remains.
Resisting ‘unity’ with extremists
Elements of the ascendant New Right have drawn comparisons with the woke leftists who commandeered and ultimately destroyed the Democratic Party, with some using the term “woke” to describe the faction. It’s a useful catchall, but imperfect for a few reasons.
First, this New Right block holds nothing close to the institutional power held by the Left during its peak of dominance. The rightward vibe shift in our institutions following Trump’s reelection, though substantial, settled in the political middle.
While universities have responded to public backlash over rampant wokeism by scaling back DEI departments, they’ve largely retained leftist bias in curriculum content and faculty makeup. Legacy news outlets have only tacked to the middle in certain respects, such as the hiring of Bari Weiss at CBS News, and corporate advertising, while less gratingly woke, remains aligned with progressive social values. The cultural playing field is perhaps more even today, but not tilted toward conservatives in any meaningful sense.
Second, the descriptor “woke” is imprecise. Notably, the group’s radical insensitivity to racism is the inverse of the Left’s suffocating hyper-sensitivity. The ultimate aims of the Woke Left and so-called Woke Right are diametrically opposed, save their shared hostility toward Israel.
But the New Right’s open embrace of many woke tenets, including the embrace of identitarianism and grievance politics, and above all, its tendency toward binary thinking is a dark harbinger for a Republican Party hoping to retain power long enough to meaningfully reshape the nation.
A mid-October Politico article that exposed a group text message thread involving chapter leaders of the organization Young Republicans underscored the extent of the problem. The leaked chat’s blatant racism shocked the nation and sparked intense debate over whether it is ever acceptable for a conservative to disavow anyone on the Right.
Vice President JD Vance, a favorite of the New Right, wasted no time denouncing the denouncers, saying on Real America’s Voice that Republicans who condemned the chat, including Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), and the Young Republican National Federation itself, should “grow up” and “focus on the real issues.”
“Don’t focus on what kids say in group chats,” Vance continued. “ The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys — they tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do.”
No enemies to my right
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, another prominent New Right figure, praised Vance’s reaction, calling the vice president “typically excellent on this issue,” while complaining that “The Right doesn’t stick together. That’s our biggest problem by far. Conservatives are quick to denounce each other, jump on dogpiles, disavow, attack their allies.”
So who exactly would Walsh have preferred that conservatives “stick together” with? And what would Vance have had conservatives disregard as youthful folly?
Here are a few highlights among dozens of examples in the chat.
“Bro is at a chicken restaurant ordering his food. Would he like some watermelon and kool aid with that?” said William Hendrix, Kansas Young Republicans vice chairman, of a black person. He went on to use the N-word 12 times, and wrote that he was drawn to Missouri’s Young Republican organization because “Missouri doesn’t like f—-s.”
“I’d go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkey play ball,” said Peter Giunta, former chairman of the New York State Young Republicans, of the NBA. He also referred to black people as “watermelon people.”
Multiple members typed “1488,” a term combining the white supremacist slogan “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” with “Heil Hitler.”
But for Vance, Walsh, and other prominent New Right figures, denouncing this behavior was not an act of principle but a gesture of political weakness, signaling ideological disloyalty and playing according to the Left’s rules. Vance’s decision to excuse it as just “kids being kids” — Giunta is 31 and Hendrix is 24 — and Walsh’s attempt to characterize it as out-of-context sarcasm called to mind the Woke Left’s many rationalizations for poor behavior. Were these Young Republican leaders “mostly peaceful Nazis” one wonders?
Their defense of the indefensible breathed life into the Politico story, with backlash from the New Right against those who denounced the chat becoming a bigger story in itself. This dynamic seems likely to play out whenever right-wing extremism goes public in the future. The rising influence of extremist figures and their rhetoric (from Nick Fuentes to that promoted by Tucker Carlson) means GOP-sympathetic voters will often be forced to choose between condemning extremism and maintaining political loyalty.
Just this week, Carlson interviewed avowed Hitler enthusiast Fuentes on his massively popular podcast. During the interview, Carlson remarked that “Christian Zionists” such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Israeli Ambassador Mike Huckabee had fallen under the hypnotic spell of Jews.
“I’ve known people I’ve known personally I’ve seen be seized by this brain virus,” he said to a nodding Fuentes. “They’re not Jewish. They’re ‘Christian Zionists.’ I dislike them more than anyone.”
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Is this who Walsh expects conservatives to “unite” with under the threat of excommunication?
But conservatives should never unite with sentiments like those expressed by Carlson, who continues to headline Turning Point USA events, and Fuentes, who is among the most hateful figures to ever cross into the conservative mainstream. Because it’s wrong to unite with evil. And because doing so will lead to the ruin of the conservative movement and pave a direct path back to power for the Woke Left.
