Woke 2.0 Is Worse Than Woke 1.0

“Woke 1.0 was crazy” is how Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recalls the leftist fervor that gripped the Democratic Party during the first Trump Administration and into Covid. The lawmaker known as AOC was quoting a leftist local lawmaker, Chi Ossé. The New York Times reckons that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was, herself, “a symbol of Woke 1.0” but that “Some on the left now see the rhetoric of that time as ineffective and divisive.”The leftism of the present — call it Woke 2.0 — is hardly an improvement, even if the previous edition was plenty obnoxious. Writing in our pages David Harsanyi calls Woke 1.0 an “unhinged cultural revolution” and a “high-tech progressive jihad that relied on intimidation, public shaming, and economic ruin.” He cites the Black Lives Matter riots, obsessions with pronouns and “gender affirming care,” and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.Mr. Harsanyi reckons that the leftism emerging today is “probably worse” than what came before. He asks “what kind of crazy awaits us when Woke Two gets its hands on state power?” The Democratic Socialists of America, who are the tip of the ideological spear, call for abolishing the presidency and the Supreme Court — as well as prison. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is a member, as is Mayor Mamdani. On Thursday, the group honored Fidel Castro.Woke 2.0’s house philosopher is the streamer Hasan Piker. He insists that Hamas is “a thousand times better than the fascist settler colonial apartheid state” of Israel and has declared that “America deserved 9/11.” He has also called Chairman Mao “one of the great leaders of this world” who “changed the entire universe.” Mr. Piker has become a coveted campaign accessory for the likes of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan. What has emerged as the defining hallmark of Woke 2.0 is an obsessive antagonism toward Israel. Josh Krashauer writes in Jewish Insider that “Bashing Israel and a tolerance for antisemitism wasn’t really part of the woke equation in the first iteration of the left’s social justice activism. It’s now a litmus test in this new era.” Whereas Woke 1.0 largely eschewed foreign policy, the current crop of Democratic candidates is focused on the Middle East.Mr. Mamdani offered a preview of this strategy in 2023, when he declared on a DSA panel that “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” Earlier this month Dr. El-Sayed told the New Yorker’s David Remnick that he will refuse to “allow the money that should be spent taking care of our kids to be sent to a military that has done a genocide.” Anti-Israel politics is emerging as the glue of the new Democratic dispensation.For a sense of the cultural dimension of Woke 2.0, look no further than this week’s edition of New York Magazine, which touted the rise of “Habibi City,” an imagined metropolis with Mr. Mamdani as presiding spirit but with no space for what the magazine names as the “land mass called Israel.” A politics built around antagonism toward Israel elicits revolutionary fervor here at home directed at a distant land. Could AOC’s faction be someday thought of as the conservatives?Correction: David Harsanyi is the author who calls Woke 1.0 an “unhinged cultural revolution.” An earlier version misspelled his last name.

Woke 2.0 Is Worse Than Woke 1.0

Woke 2.0 Is Worse Than Woke 1.0

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