Future historians of this troubling decade will make good use of the neologism “Woke 1.0” – a term that has come to describe the political and moral extremities of 2020-2023, or “peak woke”. You know, when lives were destroyed at the altar of cancel culture and ordinary citizens were faced with constant accusations of racism – some fair, most probably not; when Americans called for police abolition and “non-progressive” academics were practically chased off campus. From the vantage point of 2026 it all looks ridiculous, erratic, swivel-eyed and cruel.
So of course the movement’s architects and propagators are distancing themselves now. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known as AOC, is a Democratic congresswoman and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She appeared on ABC at the weekend and was asked what she thought of Democratic midterm candidate Francesca Hong’s old comments – that Thanksgiving be cancelled (because it’s racist, or colonialist, or whatever-ist) and the police be abolished. “Woke 1.0 was crazy,” AOC said with a laugh.
Yes, that does all sound crazy and I am not particularly forgiving of AOC, or anyone who suggested the world would be better off without law enforcement, or those who tried to “cancel” great writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie amid accusations of “transphobia”, or see university staff lose their jobs for “right-wing” views. AOC’s wing of the Democratic Party was at the forefront of a movement that got totally out of hand. Now, in full realisation of how unelectable it makes them all sound, they’re backing off.
We must permit people – even politicians – the space to change their minds. Intellectual flexibility and mea culpas are usually the sign of good, not flimsy, character. But where is the mea culpa here? “Woke 1.0 was crazy” is a cowardly statement. It’s as though “woke” was something that happened to people by unfortunate surprise; as though it visited you in the night and made you behave in morally strange and intellectually thin ways; as though it forced you to wield a pitchfork and see that Emmanuel Cafferty – a Mexican-American truck driver mistaken for a white supremacist – was fired.
No. All of this came from people. Sure, the moment was charged – Covid, the death of George Floyd. But good judgment tends to prevent individuals from getting swept up in tidal waves of lunacy. AOC is looking to recoup political credibility, but might her involvement in the whole thing disqualify her in the first place? Who knows, it’ll depend on her skill as a politician. But I at least expect a full explanation for the Damascene conversion now, just five years on.
And it was not confined to America. Kate Clanchy wrote an Orwell-prize winning memoir about teaching refugee children (Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me). She was attacked and pilloried for her evocative descriptions of a child with “almond-shaped eyes” – used as evidence of her horrendous and sinful racism.
Meanwhile, at Trinity College Dublin the Hist cancelled an appearance by biologist Richard Dawkins in 2020 for his views on Islam. The organisers of the event explained that “the comfort of our membership is paramount” and therefore Dawkins was not welcome. This struck me at the time as a disposition rather incompatible with running a healthy debating society, but hey, “Woke 1.0 was crazy”.
On a much smaller scale, a few years later I suggested on a panel that #MeToo – for all its necessity and benefits – perhaps at moments overstepped. Judging by the expressions of the audience you might have presumed I said we should murder pensioners for sport.
[ What a shameful, disreputable clown Donald Trump isOpens in new window ]
It is easy enough to laugh at these absurdities now. But look how easily the ideas were adopted and then wielded by the intellectually unrigorous among us. And let’s remember what it did. It saw women lose their jobs for gender critical ideas. It saw any discussion of immigration labelled racist. It stifled academic freedom and made the Hist believe its obligations were to the comfort of its members and not the higher values of debate and speech. It harmed a lot of people and helped perhaps no one.
Participants will subtly try to distance themselves from their 2020-2023 behaviour, perhaps embarrassed for falling for it in the first instance. Fine, let them. But now we know how vulnerable Ireland is to the groupthink mindset, and how quickly politicians like AOC are to adopt and drop movements for personal expediency. Good riddance to “Woke 1.0”, but really, was any of that necessary?
