Many Democratic Party candidates emerging on what one might call the populist left are finding success in primaries across the country. But most of them have a shared liability: they were fully on board with the worst excesses and abuses of the “peak wokeness” that emerged in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 killing, enduring and contaminating most of our institutions for several years after.
Most of these successful candidates are quite young for elected officials: they are now in their 30s or even late 20s. That means that most of them were indoctrinated and — since they were on the left — essentially forced to spout all the new “woke” jargon and convictions that were manufactured overnight by frenzied mobs.
One such candidate is Francesca Hong, a Democrat with a significant polling lead in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race. It is hard to overstate how much of a woke fanatic she was. Not even the most cringe and manifestly deranged views from that era evaded her advocacy. They are all there.
The one the national media has latched onto was various tweets and Zoom meetings where she seems to have expressed opposition to the beloved American holiday Thanksgiving, because it “makes some folks very uncomfortable.” (Just as a side note, one of the most abominable linguistic aberrations imposed by woke warriors is the seemingly amiable but in fact grating and aggressively ideological use of the word “folks” or “folx” to replace “people.”) That most of these movements were driven by legitimate or at least reasonable policy concerns does not excuse the resulting fanaticism, excesses, and authoritarian posture used to punish those who questioned them.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is one of this populist-left movement’s senior leaders, and she was also a driving force behind some of the worst woke excesses. She’s the one whom most of that movement wants to see run for president, and Kalshi’s predictive market consistently ranks her as a leading candidate:
AOC, on Sunday, went on ABC’s morning news program with Jonathan Karl, where she was asked about some of Hong’s statements, including her call for “abolishing prisons” and “[defunding] the police,” policies and phrases that have proven to be deeply unpopular. AOC, who herself aggressively advocated those policies, sought to laughingly dismiss this all as just some momentary, harmless frenzy of “craziness” that never really meant much and that everyone has all just agreed to move beyond:
It is, I suppose, a net positive that those who imposed extremist woke dogma are now too embarrassed to defend it. When they hear what they were saying and demanding at the time, it now sounds to them as unhinged and insane as it did to many of us back when they were earnestly and angrily spouting it.
But when AOC tries to giggle her way out of her behavior and the behavior of her allies, it actually is more offensive and cowardly than anything else. By invoking the lighthearted and playful terminology of the New York City Councilman whom she quotes — “Woke 1 was crazy!” — she seeks to depict this dark period as just a few oddball, zany moments that never really hurt anyone and thus need not be dwelled on or taken seriously.
But the woke extremism that AOC and her friends imposed on everyone else was anything but playful or frivolous. It was deeply authoritarian, mob-driven, sinister, coercive, and bloodthirsty. It sought to destroy anyone and everyone who did not immediately submit to and recite all of its new jargon and dictates. As was true for the similar hive-mind excesses of the #MeToo movement, the woke warriors — without batting an eye — destroyed careers, reputations, and institutions upon even the slightest transgression of their new dictates.
There are far too many examples of this to chronicle comprehensively. I will thus ask you to recall one particularly ugly and venomous event, which I am selecting in part because I had a front-row seat to witness it and thus recall it as if it were yesterday, and also because it so compellingly illustrates why this historical revisionism — dismissing “Woke 1” as if it were some trivial, harmless fun that went a bit awry — is so repellent.
When nationwide protests broke out over the killing of George Floyd, my long-time colleague at The Intercept, Lee Fang, did what journalists are supposed to do: he went to cover his local protests and interview multiple protesters about what motivated them. He then uploaded the interviews he conducted online.
Most of the ones he uploaded were ignored. But one was most definitely not ignored. The interviewee was a young, black protester. He told Lee that while he broadly supported the Black Lives Matter movement and believed that race-based police brutality was real and widespread, he did not understand why there was so little anger or concern when black lives were taken — murdered — by other black people. If, he asked, “black lives matter,” then why are there protests against only one type of killing while there is steadfast silence about the far more common way that black people in the U.S. die: at the hands of other black people?
Note that it was not Lee who was saying any of this. These words came from one of about a dozen people he interviewed who were participating in the protest. Lee offered no editorial comment on them at all. He simply uploaded the interview alongside all the others he conducted.
Because the view expressed by this young man was so off-key to the compelled consensus that had emerged in the wake of Floyd’s death, his mere posting of this interview sparked widespread and indescribably intense rage. And into that rage stepped a young Intercept reporter who — much to the surprise of many of her colleagues — apparently identified as black.
In response to Lee’s crime of posting that interview, she took to Twitter to denounce Lee as the single worst thing someone could be, especially at that moment: “a racist.” Within hours, tens of thousands of people had retweeted and liked her accusation, instantly branding Lee as a racist. Huge numbers of media cowards from the largest newspapers and TV outlets — ones who never knew anything about Lee or his work — quickly jumped on board, signaling to the mob demanding Lee’s head on a spike that they were on their side. That is always how mob justice works.
Virtually nobody with any sizable media platform was brave enough to stand up and even question the merits of these accusations, let alone defend Lee. Perhaps there were others, but the only one I can recall vehemently doing so was Michael Tracey in his characteristically elegant and restrained manner, prompting all sorts of media personalities to line up and denounce Michael for having the gall to question Lee’s black accuser. That included many of Lee’s own journalistic colleagues, who actually joined in the public denunciations against him.
Along with a couple of Lee’s allies, I spent countless hours inside The Intercept trying to save Lee’s job, knowing that if he got fired for “racism,” it would end not only his work there but possibly his career altogether. It is difficult to overstate what a climate of terror was ushered into every workplace, institution, and society in general.
Lee was ultimately forced to apologize. That gave The Intercept’s always-cowardly editors an excuse not to fire him. To this day, I feel a great deal of doubt about the role I played: not publicly defending him so that I would have more weight defending him internally; counseling him that a fake and unjustified apology would, at the very least, prevent him from being fired with a gigantic black mark on his name; not waging a more aggressive war on his behalf, etc.
But the climate that was created and imposed as a result of what AOC and her allies now want to laughingly wave away as “crazy” was no joke. Jobs, reputations, and careers were at stake. Many people unjustly had all of those things taken away from them — destroyed — based solely on the whims of mob justice. People were genuinely terrified of thought crimes, no matter how trivial or well-intentioned. I watched countless 45- to 55-year-old journalists and editors adopt a completely new way of speaking and thinking overnight, out of fear that they would attract the woke mob and lose their jobs with even one false step. People watched their every word, knowing – correctly – that a bloodthirsty mob was on the hunt for even the most unintentional deviations from the newly imposed norm.
It should be noted that AOC was not some bystander during all of this. As she has done for every similar moral panic of the left — the incalculably deranged Russiagate conspiracy theories, the life-destroying and due-process-free #MeToo persecutions, COVID censorship — AOC supported and participated in the most extreme woke excesses because she does not have an iota of courage to resist social and political pressures.
In June 2020, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio responded to the growing demands of “Defund the Police” by slashing $1 billion, or about one-sixth of its overall resources, from the NYPD budget. AOC was having none of it. “Defunding the police means defunding the police,” she insisted. That does not mean reducing budgets or shifting around resources, she argued. She wanted the NYPD defunded in full, and nothing short of that would be sufficient.
If AOC has now changed her mind about all of the brand-new woke dogma she vehemently defended and sought to impose, that would be welcome. But actual regret for past mistakes means taking responsibility for them and explaining what went wrong: whether it be support for the Iraq War, the policies that caused the 2008 financial crisis, Russiagate, COVID, etc. At the very least, it requires acknowledging the damage done to people and their lives, rather than minimizing it as just a benign and noble quest for justice that went a little too far.
If someone wants to stand up and say that they went along with and advocated a bunch of “crazy” ideas and demands because they simply got swept up in the hysteria of the moment — as AOC and her allies are now attempting to suggest — then that is a rather serious self-indictment. I can hardly think of a worse trait in a political leader, or a human being of any kind, than a lack of internal fortitude or personal courage to resist moral panics and accompanying demands for full submission by a gathered mob.
Just as was true when populist, anti-war sentiments seemed to emerge and find success on the right, I am happy to see those ideas once again being rediscovered by the left and finding success there. I vastly prefer both left- and right-wing populism and an anti-war ethos on the left and right if the alternative is the dreary, sociopathic, and self-serving bipartisan doctrines of the establishment wings of both parties.
But it is nonetheless vital to recall and keep focused on the tyrannical and authoritarian tendencies of all these factions. It is easy and thus unimpressive for AOC and her allies to now renounce all of the “woke” ideas they quite recently sought to impose on everyone else. Those ideas are deeply unpopular — embarrassing even — and renouncing them is just an act of political self-advancement and preservation.
What would take actual courage, and be meaningful, is some introspection about why they fell prey to the ideas they now call “crazy” — not just fell prey to, but ruined other people’s lives over. We are seeing none of that. And the refusal by parts of the American elite and their institutions to look in the mirror and ask why they so frequently have gone so wrong in exactly this manner is one of the worst pathologies plaguing our political and social culture.
1. When goodthink liberals say "Defund The Police!(R)" what they mean is "take money from the underserving (blue-collar cops, mostly less educated and famously unwoke) and give to the deserving (white collar degreed social workers who can be counted on if nothing else to uphold up-to-the-minute standards of Political Correctness.
2. Humans wave away such destructive craziness all the time. "What difference does it make?" even as their actions caused destruction that continues today.
High status humans get away with it. Low status, not so much.
AOC is not a politician, but she plays one on TV.