Is there a right-wing version of “woke”?

Earlier this week, Rod Dreher used the term “woke right” in a worthy essay for the Free Press warning against the emergence of a dangerously radical trend that inclines right-leaning young people toward overt racism and antisemitism.

Almost immediately, however, Dreher repented of his use of the term. He had not realized that it was also used by people like James Lindsay, Konstantin Kisin, and others to criticize his own political friends. He quickly clarified that all he meant to include in the category were “the new racialists and anti-Semites of the right, especially the very online right, who I regard as malicious would-be totalitarians.” Not National Conservatives, postliberals, or Matt Walsh. And definitely not J.D. Vance!

In Search of Woke

It’s certainly fine for Dreher to clarify his meaning, but it’s hard not to chuckle at the fact that he redefined the term simply to match his own prior assessment of who does and doesn’t seem to be a racist and a “malicious would-be totalitarian.”

The affair reveals a problem with the “woke right” discourse generally. Plenty of people seem to think there’s something there worth examining (even if they use different terminology), but most are just looking to find a new name to call a group of people they already dislike without having to undertake any broader assessment. While some, like Christian apologist Neil Shenvi, do seem genuinely interested in understanding a phenomenon, far more are merely looking to command an epithet. Instead of asking what is going on, they just ask who deserves my indignation.

If we focus on the phenomenon itself, we might find that the lines are less clear than Dreher suggests. “Woke” is a term that captures vague sentiments better than concrete meanings. It is also a phenomenon with several elements, which can then be organized in a number of different ways. And people may share certain qualities and tendencies, but not others. Dreher wants to boil it down to an essential characteristic that makes it easier to point a finger at some people without having to examine others that he’s already committed to. Others, like Lindsay perhaps, define it more broadly because they do want to point their finger at Dreher’s friends. For Dreher, the essence of woke is “racism” (possibly combined with a subjective assessment of malice). Others, though, could say it’s the use of critical methods. Or an oppressor/oppressed framework. Or its shutdown, bully tactics like cancel culture. Which is the defining woke value?

All of that is to say that there are significant problems with pretending “woke right” is an unambiguous category. There is, however, an interesting angle to the discourse that makes it worth pursuing. When applied to the left, “woke” has always evoked something beyond a set of political preferences, aims, or tactics. At its peak, at least, wokeness seemed to cut to the very being of its adherents. It seemed to define entirely their sense of self and their orientation to the social, ethical, and even spiritual order of the world. Thus, it has often appropriately been seen as having a quasi-religious character. The year 2020 saw public ceremonies with liturgies, confessions, creedal statements, etc. There was ecstatic emotionalism; a rigid and sometimes violent demand of conformity; a puritanical moralism that often accompanied a lack of basic personal morality and decency. Wokeness was an all-consuming Cause that gave people a sense of meaning that they had not found elsewhere in the world around them, which they believed to be evil beyond redemption.

Is there a similar tendency in pockets of the right? To treat their Cause not just as a worthy endeavor, but as existential? To believe that only in their Cause can they find personal meaning and, indeed, salvation? That was, according to the great political theorist Eric Voegelin, a key quality of modern ideology. And Voegelin may help enlighten us on the qualities of left-wing wokeness and the right-wing counterpart that so many have been trying to define.

Escape from the World

Somewhat controversially, Voegelin framed his critique of ideology in terms of its conceptual and historical linkage with the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. Regardless of how helpful the historical “gnostic” connection itself is, Voegelin’s use of it undoubtedly provides a powerful framework for understanding radical ideology—and it’s one that seems to have the “woke” phenomenon pegged.

Voegelin’s concept of gnostic political ideology is mostly associated with the utopian or semi-utopian end at which it aims—the attempt to “immanentize the eschaton,” in his memorable phrase.

But equally important—and particularly intriguing with wokeness in mind—is the way these ideologues confront the world in which they currently live and operate. All gnostic movements, he argued, start with a radical alienation from the actual order of the world as experienced, generally resulting from a sudden collapse of cultural and institutional authority. For the gnostic man, “the world has become a prison from which he wants to escape.”

This means the ideologue’s dissatisfaction is rooted in a belief in the complete “wickedness of the world” as it is experienced, rather than any flaw in himself or human nature. In contemporary terminology, he understands the world in terms of a “hegemonic” power that entirely imprisons the thoughts and actions of all except the few enlightened. It is thus something that must be entirely overcome and replaced, rather than something to be mitigated, sidelined, or worked through. In the modern context of political gnosticism, the structure of social order is so overpowering, that only a revolutionary (or counterrevolutionary?) movement can break through its spell.

This (dis)orientation of the human being to his moral context seems to capture the woke political phenomenon, which takes extreme forms of critical theory as its conceptual starting point. Racism, for instance, is redefined from being a personal fault to a “systemic” one that necessarily infuses all aspects of common life, even if no one is actually doing or saying directly racist things. In that sense, it is commanding—it infuses our reality so fully that even those who do not want to be racist and do not think themselves to be racist actually are. No one is capable of resisting its evil influence except those who have the “secret knowledge” (gnosis) and work to destroy it in favor of a different, equally closed system of values.

Many “alt-,” “dissident,” or “new” right thinkers also tend to speak in such terms. They often present the various maladies of the modern world not as discrete pathologies flowing from the flawed nature of human beings, but as closed, commanding systems—structures that trap modern men and warp their minds in unperceived ways.

The source of cultural renewal is precisely in this freedom of the human being to encounter, reflect on, and respond to his circumstances.

Consider the concepts and metaphors that are often deployed in online discourse. The “red” and “blue” pills of The Matrix offer the choice to continue to live in the false, constructed reality or to gain secret knowledge that reveals true reality; references to “the regime” (relying on a tortured reading of Aristotle) suggest that all societies are governed by a coherent and closed system of values backed by power, and that political conflict consists in titanic clashes over which closed system we shall adopt. Alt-right celebrity Curtis Yarvin speaks of “the cathedral,” and masculinity advocates use the “longhouse”—both architectural metaphors that suggest the horizon is utterly closed around us, except for those few who have escaped; everyone is unknowingly dominated by the system.

Most of these are revolving around the idea, also prevalent in more mainstream discourse, that “liberalism” (broadly construed to include classical and progressive forms) is a kind of essence that infuses our reality rather than a pattern of behavior or a set of concepts that—for both good and ill—have emerged in response to the Western experience. Thus, in the balance of partisan conflict hangs not only offices and policies, but our very state of being. If the hegemonic forces are not defeated and replaced, we are cut off from living the good life.

It seems to me that this belief—that the world as we experience it is utterly alien, all-powerful, and destructive of our ability to live a good life—does represent a kind of perverse common ground between some pockets of today’s right and the woke. Precisely how that vision manifests when it comes to race, “oppressor” categories, or precise political tactics are less essential questions. Both translate politics into a religious endeavor, with salvation depending on collective human action. It is not hard to see how such beliefs lead to rampant conspiracy-mongering, the impulse to rigorously police words and deeds, and the belief that political action ought to aim at a comprehensive control of private life and civil society, either by expanding government or by collective pressure campaigns. It also combines a rigid moralism when it comes to demands on others with a complete lack of self-reflection or self-restraint. Everything is permitted for me, since my Cause is just.

Whether or not such tendencies on the right amount to a “woke” right seems to me a trivial question of labels. But the mirror ideological approach is important and troubling.

The Freedom to Respond

This way of understanding the world has at its core a denial of human freedom—not freedom in a moralistic sense that demands everyone must be free to think or do this, that, or the other. Rather, the freedom being denied is the capacity human beings always have within them to respond to the world in which they operate in light of truths and traditions that may be widely denied. The imminent order in which we live—including social and political life—certainly has a powerful influence on the way we understand the world. We are historical beings who understand ourselves by engaging and reacting to the symbols of our time and place. But does the social and political framework around us entirely bind our moral and intellectual horizon?

Voegelin did not think so:

The spiritual disorder of our time, the civilizational crisis of which everyone so readily speaks, does not by any means have to be borne as an inevitable fate; [ ] on the contrary, everyone possesses the means of overcoming it in his own life. … No one is obliged to take part in the spiritual crisis of a society; on the contrary, everyone is obliged to avoid this folly and live his life in order. (emphasis added)

The source of cultural renewal is in this freedom of the human being to encounter, reflect on, and respond to his circumstances drawing on alternative cultural resources that can never be fully abolished. It is precisely such a response which indirectly produces new cultural symbols.

Nothing can ultimately separate us from our ability to live in truth, and to critique and unmask the errors of the present age.

That passage quoted above also speaks to a potential counterargument. Since the right-wing figures under consideration are precisely pointing to some version of modernity and modern ideologies as the hegemonic power to be unmasked, it might be argued, they must be exempted from falling into Voegelin’s category. Left-wing wokeness, progressivism, and critical theory are indeed dangerous and powerful forces in the world. So if these are seen as the cause of the disorder, then the right is only “woke” to a very real and present problem—the same one Voegelin himself diagnosed.

There may be something to this: many of the right-wing figures under consideration are at least somewhat aware of the destruction that left-wing ideologies have unleashed on modern society. But that recognition does not prevent them from falling into the same patterns of thought. By treating these ideological forces as hegemonic and commanding, the right-wing ideologue signals his agreement on the basic, servile condition of the human person and his agreement on the power that the revolutionary thinks he possesses. Cultures are built not by tradition or reflection, but by the will to power.

Voegelin was very clear that the ideologue, no matter how successful his Cause may be, does not actually have the ability to accomplish the full transformation of human life he seeks.

The gnostic revolution has for its purpose a change in the nature of man and the establishment of a transfigured society. Since this program cannot be carried out in historical reality, gnostic revolutionaries must inevitably institutionalize their partial or total success in the existential struggle by a compromise with reality; and whatever emerges from this compromise—it will not be the transfigured world envisaged by gnostic symbolism.

Those who are attuned to the errors and danger of left-wing ideology must contend with an essential question: what exactly is the consequence of such ideologies? Did they truly succeed? Are we now morally and spiritually trapped in a world created by them? Are we “blue-pilled” or living in a “longhouse”? If so, then we must acknowledge that their advocates were correct in their assessment of the human condition—that the will to power is indeed the guiding principle of our existence. A reasonable response would be for the enlightened few to learn from and mimic the revolutionary’s course of action.

Alternatively, are we living in an order that has been disturbed, confused, and partially transformed thanks to the destructive but ultimately futile efforts of the ideologues? In this case, we should be reassured that—whatever the revolutionary may think—nothing can ultimately separate us from our ability to live in truth, and to critique and unmask the errors of the present age. The most dangerous roadblock to cultural renewal, then, would be to accept the false premises about the human condition that ideologues like Marx, Gramsci, or Evola preached. Ultimately, their way of thinking about human beings is far more destructive of a healthy culture than their political advocacy.

Certainly, not everyone on the new right falls into such an extreme “gnostic” attitude, but some of its more “dissident” figures do. And certain terms, assumptions, and rhetorical devices that reflect this basic orientation often make their way into mainstream right-of-center discourse. Coming up with a list of who qualifies as “woke right” seems less important than recognizing the ideological tendencies. In interesting and disturbed times like these, labels and partisan coalitions aren’t as important as clear thinking and self-reflection.

Any opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of Liberty Fund.