'Woke right' smear weaponized by liberal interlopers against MAGA conservatives, populists — and Arby's?
James Lindsay. Photo by DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty ImagesOn his website, he stated:
Woke Right refers to right-wing people who have adopted the characteristics and underlying worldview orientation of the Woke Left for putatively "right-wing," "conservative," or reactionary causes. They are, as reactionaries, the image of the Right projected by the Left made real by players claiming to be on the Right. That is, they’re right-wing people who act and think about the world like Woke Leftists.
Lindsay echoed this definition in his written responses to Blaze News, in which he suggested that woke right "means using critical theories or Marxian analysis for right-wing or anti-Left causes."
"It is very specific," Lindsay continued. "Most conservatives do not meet this definition."
A sizeable portion of the MAGA coalition does, however, supposedly meet this or one of Lindsay's other definitions. Right-wing populists, for example, are on the liberal's naughty list, as are those who subscribe to national conservatism, which he dubbed "the Woke Right final boss."
The application of "woke right" to national conservatives amounts to the more tactical smear, as it not only cuts through the MAGA coalition but deep into the Trump administration and the Republican Party.
Past speakers at the National Conservatism Conference, which is run by the Hazony-led Edmund Burke Foundation, include Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Michael Anton, another senior State Department official; Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby; White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller; Trump border czar Tom Homan; and Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.).
Of course, there's also JD Vance, who underscored in a NatCon speech — given just days before President Donald Trump chose him as his running mate — that while America was founded "on great ideas," it is not, as some have suggested, reducible to "just an idea."
James Lindsay and a bunch of his friends tried to pump the hatred higher because the term 'illiberal' — it just didn't succeed in sufficiently tainting and de-legitimizing conservatives.
While Lindsay has danced around labeling Vance "woke right" for daring to express such thoughts, stating in December, "I haven't called JD Vance Woke Right anywhere yet," he has implied as much — calling him a "post-liberal" with a predominantly woke right team, who not only entertains the woke right definition of "nation" but did the unspeakable: speak at a National Conservatism Conference.
In fairness to Vance and his fellow NatCon alumni, it is apparently easy to find oneself labeled "woke right." After all, even a fast-food chain has been tagged.
Lindsay recently indicated online that Arby's had veered into woke right territory with its post, "Unlike dad, our ham & swiss actually came back."
In the much ridiculed post, which he has since apologized for and walked back, Lindsay noted, "That's curtains for them. Cringe af."
When asked why national conservatives warrant their categorization as "woke right," Lindsay suggested that while "not all of National Conservatism is Woke Right ... the general thrust of the movement meets the basic definition."
Final boss
Hazony, the author of "The Virtue of Nationalism" whom Lindsay has repeatedly targeted with the “woke right” smear, explained to Blaze News that the strategy behind the term is not new.
"The main people who are behind this — and James Lindsay is the one who's most explicit, but I don't think that he's at all the only one — they've been doing the same thing for many years, long before the term 'woke right' came out; at least as far back as Donald Trump being elected, you know, so it's almost a decade ago," said Hazony. "There was this game of saying that in between liberals and Nazis or racialist fascists — in between, there is no legitimate position. That is a standard argument of the anti-nationalist liberal camp that has been used by many, many different people, and it's always the same."
"When people started using 'illiberal' ... in the mid-2000s, what they were doing was eliminating the legitimacy of the word 'conservative,' because 'illiberal' is anybody who's an authoritarian or a Nazi or a theocrat or a fascist, plus anybody else who's not a liberal," continued Hazony. "So that strategy, using the term 'illiberalism' as a way of saying, 'No, I'm not going to recognize that there are any legitimate conservatives or nationalists' — that's been around in that form for at least 15 years."
Hazony noted that more recently,
James Lindsay and a bunch of his friends tried to pump the hatred higher because the term "illiberal" — it just didn't succeed in sufficiently tainting and de-legitimizing conservatives. So they switched to "Christian nationalism," and it was the same kind of thing, where, you know, you pick the absolute least palatable people who can be called "Christian nationalists," you quote them, and then you say, "Well, everybody who's a nationalist and a Christian all the way right up to the borders of liberalism — that entire sphere of conservatives and nationalists who are basically normal but they have criticisms of liberalism — no, they're all illegitimate. They're all totalitarians. They all reject the American Constitution." And so they tried that; that peaked in 2023; and it failed. It petered out. They didn't succeed in convincing the average, intelligent person who's paying attention that the political spectrum is only liberals and fascists.
Whereas previous attempts failed, Hazony indicated that "this time, they have succeeded in drawing blood."
"This term [woke] was designed to be humiliating by taking the term that we were using for the Maoist-style cultural revolution that was taking over America and Britain and other countries. And now they say, 'Those of you who are fighting against this, you're exactly the same. You're the same exact thing.' And it upsets people."
'You got dogmatic, fanatic liberals who thought that the whole world simply could be brought under liberalism either by persuasion or, if not, then by conquest.'
Hazony further told Blaze News that "it's deeply insulting at a personal level for people who've devoted their time to trying to save America and the West from the woke, and at the same time, it's incredibly effective at destroying the coalition that was built — the anti-woke coalition — by making the different parties despise one another."
"The idea that liberalism is about toleration was just thrown out the window and you got dogmatic, fanatic liberals who thought that the whole world simply could be brought under liberalism either by persuasion or, if not, then by conquest."
Playing with fire
Lindsay has tried tarring Blaze Media with the same brush he has used on Hazony and others, characterizing it as "the first captured stronghold" in his imaginative woke right "takeover" narrative.
'The term has little meaning other than as a slur used by people trying desperately to gatekeep this intellectual, cultural, and commercial majority movement.'
Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson, whom Lindsay has implicated as a key player in this supposed takeover, said, "I know Lindsay and we had a decent relationship until he suddenly lumped me and my tenure here at Blaze Media with his slur."
"Obviously, we have a wide variety of people and opinions at Blaze Media. We represent the broad MAGA-MAHA majority coalition, and I take that role seriously," continued Peterson. "But I do not need to say for the record that we are not 'woke right' because the term has little meaning other than as a slur used by people trying desperately to gatekeep this intellectual, cultural, and commercial majority movement."
Peterson suggested that the term's capricious usage has helped empty it of meaning.
"What's puzzling and ultimately discrediting about the term is that Lindsay and others lump disparate people and groups together into a wild, grand conspiracy," continued Peterson. "He and his associates refer a lot to abstract -isms like hermeticism, communism, and gnosticism and call all kinds of people followers of various schools of thought: 'Nietzscheans' and 'Schmittians.'"
The "Schmittian" smear lobbed around evokes Carl Schmitt, a German political theorist who critiqued liberalism, defined politics as the distinction between the categories of friends and enemies, and lent intellectual support to the Nazi regime in Germany.
Peterson noted that he once tried to explain his thoughts on Schmitt to Lindsay over text.
"As a student of political thinkers who were taught by Leo Strauss, who fled Nazi Germany (as opposed to Schmitt, who became a Nazi), I think Schmitt's writings are important to anyone who wants to seriously consider the nature of executive power, which is why they are still studied by people of all kinds throughout the world," said Peterson. "But the idea that this makes me a Nazi or that I agree with everything Schmitt says or believed is ridiculous. James recently asked me to 'denounce Schmitt' on X at his command, which sounds a lot like he's trying to initiate the very 'struggle sessions' he often decries."
Peterson emphasized the range of people and institutions that Lindsay and his fellow travelers have lumped into his "grand conspiracy," noting, for instance, that "they throw in institutions from the Roman Catholic Church to the Claremont Institute, countries from Hungary to China, and individuals from General Michael Flynn to Yoram Hazony to Peter Thiel in the mix as part of whatever the 'woke right' is."
"It becomes silly pretty quick," said Peterson.
Threatened liberals
The host of BlazeTV's "The Auron MacIntyre Show" — one of Lindsay's frequent targets — said that when it comes to Lindsay, woke right "seems to be more of a branding exercise and a political weapon than it does anything with definitive content."
"I think that's the reason so many people have had difficulty when attempting to have even a basic discussion about the term," MacIntyre said. "The guy who is most famous for coining and popularizing it himself has admitted that it wasn't a great one, and it doesn't really have a lot of content besides its ability to be used as a political weapon."
'The only thing that seems to actually link any of these people together is their willingness to win.'
MacIntyre suggested that woke right's apparent transformation in the wild from a denigratory term for anti-Semites and identitarians into a strategic full-spectrum put-down is “the real trick of this term.”
"A lot of people assume that [anti-Semites and identitarians] were the original targets, and because of that, many people thought that perhaps there could be some value in it because, you know, not all of those groups are particularly ones that people enjoy being associated with," said MacIntyre. "That said, it's become quickly clear that the expansion of the term has now come to encompass Orthodox Jews like Hazony, guys who are big fans of Israel like Tim Pool, and others."
"He's included a large number of very well-respected people who are obviously well outside of this — guys like Matt Walsh."
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"The only thing that seems to actually link any of these people together is their willingness to win, their willingness to fight back against the left, their willingness to say, 'Actually, we're going to take affirmative steps. We're going to take power. We're going to use power to win political battles.' And that seems to be the main violation," continued MacIntyre.
'What they're finding is actually, no, conservatives would like to be in charge.'
When asked whether this campaign might be, at least in part, the early stages of an effort to politically neutralize JD Vance ahead of the next presidential election, MacIntyre answered in the affirmative.
"Not only is that the case, I think he's been pretty explicit about that," said the BlazeTV host.
MacIntyre suggested that Lindsay and other "new atheists, rational-centrist types" feel threatened by Vance and the national conservatives, given their willfulness and refusal to "be ruled by people who hate them, hate their values, hate their religion."
MacIntyre suspects that while the "salience" of the "woke right" term has risen, the credibility of those wielding it has "plummeted."
"[Lindsay has] made many enemies of pretty high-profile figures with good reputations by throwing around this term and attacking people who clearly don't hold any of the nefarious views he's attributing to them," said MacIntyre.
The attacks have also served to expose bad actors who "ultimately were hoping to undermine the conservative movement rather than be a productive part of it," said MacIntyre. "That's something that's critical to know at this juncture."
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