Woke is officially dead. What comes next?

“Defunding police means defunding police. It does not mean budget tricks or funny math.”
AOC, 30/6/20

I have a local city councilman that has this saying, Woke One was crazy…

Especially during Covid, there was a huge opening of the Overton Window… I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place.

Of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today… I think that’s why so much of what we focus on is also making sure that we are providing for the majority of Americans, guaranteeing health care, raising wages, strengthening the right to a union.
AOC, 9/8/26

Hmmm. AOC ever-so-delicately Sister Souljahing her core constituency – university educated, overwhelmingly Caucasian, illiberally hyper-progressive, surplus elite types.

No real harm done by a decade-long cultural revolution that reduced the legacy media, academe and the scientific establishment to a laughing stock. The lockdowns were a strange time when we all went a bit overboard with the brainstorming sessions. I’ve put the Woke away and am now an economic populist focused on healthcare, wages and union rights. You certainly won’t hear anything about two-spirit gender fluidity during my upcoming presidential run!

There’s plenty more Sister Souljahing left to be done
Many a one-time Wokester would now like to discreetly crabwalk away from their social media posts and dinner-party dissertations from circa 2014-2024. Having already tidied up their digital footprint by removing preferred pronouns from their social media bios, some Leftists are now going a step further.

Albeit after many a ballot-box rejection of Woke policies – especially open borders and racial spoils systems – the more self-aware and/or ambitious progressives are now issuing foot-shuffling AOC-esque statements to the effect that, yes, Woke was crazy.

But I suspect heavily qualified statements of regret won’t be nearly enough.

The wages of Woke
Here’s the NYT’s token conservative columnist, Bret Stephens:

Good for A.O.C. for acknowledging mistakes. Now can we have some accountability for the vast damage that Woke 1.0 did, not to mention the damage that Woke 2.0 continues to do?

Wokeness, as it commonly came to be known at the start of this decade, wasn’t just an Orwellian linguistic fad or a tedious set of corporate training sessions in cultural sensitivity or wacky policy ideas about addressing racial and socioeconomic inequities. As it was experienced by those on the wrong end of it, it was a system of enforced ideological conformity, policed by social bullying and institutional coercion (or cravenness), which damaged and sometimes even ended reputations, careers and at least one man’s life.

Here’s centrist Coleman Hughes:

This tragedy was enabled by the psychological need among liberal elites for a black avatar of their guilt. Arday’s death should be a call for liberals and progressives to look inward. Not to expunge the supposed demon of white supremacy that lives inside their hearts, but to look at the nature of white guilt itself. Because, ultimately, white guilt is a virus which leads its victims to prioritize their own need for catharsis over the public’s need for truth.

And here’s Marxist Freddie DeBoer on his eponymous Substack:

Some progressive people, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are expressing measured regrets about their past embrace of the most extreme expressions of social justice insanity…

Meanwhile this tragic, absurd Jason Arday situation is thrusting the incredibly unhealthy culture of our university system into the public spotlight…

We never had the woke postmortem, in media or anywhere else; we never actually had the conversation about how a majority of people who work in media had a sudden and massive ideological transformation that most have now quietly walked back without admitting to doing so.

But the absurdities of the peak woke era were indeed many and were indeed corrosive. Some of them were just absurd; some were more actively destructive.

I suspect those disfavoured demographics targeted by the social justice warriors – not least that Great Satan of the progressive imagination, the straight white man – won’t soon forget the, ahem, ‘progressive overreach’ of recent times.

I certainly won’t. But I’m going to heroically resist the temptation to indulge in schadenfreude at the discomfiture of the sanctimonious, purse-lipped scolds and attempt to answer the logical question that arises from Woke having been officially declared dead.

By its one-time poster girl, no less.

What comes after Woke?
As was often noted in 2024, Trumpism was essentially anti-Wokeism (Kamala is for they/them, etc). A critical mass of Americans voted for Orange Hitler precisely because he campaigned on ending social justice extremism.

Trump delivered, eviscerating DEI and shutting the border immediately after taking power.

But then Trump didn’t deliver, starting another Middle Eastern war after campaigning on not starting any more Middle Eastern wars.

So, as the 2028 presidential election heaves into view, not only has Woke One failed, but so has Trump Two.

So, down which road does Anglosphere politics veer now?

Inevitably, the Left is going to move in the same economically populist direction the Trumpified GOP did a decade ago and ease up on the men-can-get-pregnant-too nuttiness. Social hyperliberalism remains catnip to the professional-managerial class (PMC), but even the most delusional progressives seem to have now accepted that it is electoral poison.

But aside from greater focus on bread-and-butter issues, what does the political future hold?

Technocracy, neo-socialism, populism?
Aaron Renn recently pondered whether the post-Trump era will deliver “a durable governing majority” or “just another oscillation in a deeply polarized, nearly 50/50 nation?”

The tl;dr is that, using a left-right, populist-institutionalist matrix, Renn suggests four possible outcomes post-2028.

Given the US is the sun around which the rest of the Anglosphere revolves, I’d expect nations such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada to follow the US’s political lead. As they did with, first, post-war social democracy and, later, neoliberalism. The UK is a special case given its parlous state, but it’s also likely to be influenced by American political developments.

Let me summarise Renn’s thoughts, then add my own.

Neo-socialism (aka left populism)

How it happens: A charismatic but somewhat moderate figure, say, the 2026 version of AOC, runs in 2028 and attracts enough voters desperate for change to win. Many of these voters will have previously voted for both Obama and Trump, hoping to disrupt the post-1980 neoliberal settlement.

What happens then: Dashed hopes, most likely. Populists are better at campaigning than governing, and the recent track record of deep blue US cities doesn’t inspire confidence.

Do I think it could happen? Absolutely, especially if Trump has now trashed the Republican brand to such an extent that voters who experimented with right-wing populism will now be ideologically flexible enough to give the left-wing variety a go. That noted, the PMC-dominated Left would need to remain laser-focused on pocketbook issues, which is a big ask. Membership of the Democratic Socialists of America is 80 per cent college-educated and 85 per cent white.

Left-Neoliberal Technocracy

How it happens: I’m not sure it does, but Renn suggests it involves Americans having fond enough memories of ’90s Clintonism to give the professional-managerial class a chance to redeem itself by delivering strong economic growth. A Rahm Emanuel candidacy attracts some previously Republican-voting PMCers and maintains the support – albeit lukewarm – of traditional Democrat constituencies.

What happens then: Presumably, it’s a return to the pre-Trump, uniparty status quo ante, except with added China scepticism, a touch of reindustrialisation, plenty of legal immigration, and a wide berth given to divisive social engineering projects.

There’s more likelihood of sensible, effective policy emerging from a technocratic regime than a populist one. The catch is the benefits of those policies are likely to flow disproportionately to technocrats and plutocrats, rather than Joe Sixpack.

Do I think it could happen? I have my doubts. The pandemic lockdowns were a Chernobyl-level delegitimisation event for the West’s expert class. More generally, the PMC throughout the Anglosphere has spent the last decade making itself look not just imperious (which is potentially forgivable) but ridiculous (which is not).

MAGA Popularism (right-institutionalist)

How it happens: This is basically the centre-right version of left-neoliberal technocracy, helmed by a figure such as Marco Rubio.

What happens then: As with left-neoliberal technocracy, it’s a return to the pre-Trump status quo ante, with a few sops to the disaffected masses. Such as a little less immigration, free trade and military interventionism.

Do I think it could happen? I suspect right-coded technocracy will be as on the nose with voters in 2028 as the left-coded variety and for much the same reasons.

Trumpless Trumpism (right-populist)

How it happens: A Trumpian figure – presumably JD Vance – advocating Trumpian policies gets over the line, as the OG did in 2016 and 2024.

What happens then: In a perfect world, all the good parts of Trumpism without any of the bad.

Do I think it could happen? I don’t think you can have Trumpism without Trump, who is – whatever else he is – a once-in-a-generation political figure. I’m also not quite sure how Trumpless Trumpism will differ much from MAGA Popularism, aside from the former being more hardline on issues such as immigration.

As an aside, both the Left and Right face a dual-constituency headache with both axes of the political matrix. The policies that will appeal to the parties’ core constituencies, be it university professors or small business owners, are exactly the tired old neoliberal policies the swinging-voter masses object to.

The AI wildcard
If AI doesn’t significantly disrupt the labour market between now and November 7 2028, my guess is the Democrats win the next presidential election. In that scenario, I’d predict the Democratic candidate will attempt to thread the needle between left populism and left-neoliberal technocracy. This was, more or less, the approach taken by Biden, Obama and Clinton and, more recently, advocated by ‘Abundance Liberals’ like Ezra Klein.

However, I’m near certain AI will significantly disrupt the labour market over the next couple of years. That being the case, I suspect we are in for a dose of full-blooded, anti-PMC, anti-plutocrat left or right populism. My fear is that the world will look a lot more 1930ish than 1970ish if jobs start evaporating in earnest as AI becomes more powerful and widely deployed over the next couple of years.

I can’t quite believe I’m typing these words, but it’s entirely possible the febrile, cancel-others-before-they-cancel-you Woke era may look like the calm before the storm in retrospect.