Understanding "Woke Right" and It's Propagandic Origins

Word-play is not an argument, despite being argumentative.

Propaganda has universally negative connotations, which means it solicits an emotional response partially divorced from its literal definition. In this, the term propaganda is almost self-defining. Hear me out.

Propaganda is merely biased information that promotes a particular perspective. In this sense, a sermon is propaganda. Textbooks are propaganda. The news is entirely propaganda. Wikipedia is propaganda. Peer-reviewed medical findings are propaganda. Almost everything is propaganda except truly neutral things, and as Van Til taught us (and Jesus before him in Matthew 12:30), there really is no neutrality.

Despite the cognitive conjuring of Nazi recruitment posters, propaganda is neither serious nor dangerous unless people believe it is not, in fact, propaganda. For example, if someone believes that the Axis powers engaged in propaganda, but the Allied powers only engaged in accurate story-telling, then propaganda becomes a dangerous mind-drug for the masses.

Of course, the Japanese were not going to carry off naked white women from Peoria and Hitler was burning gay grooming material and not the Bible. Both sides obviously engaged in this practice. You get the point.

It’s not the message that gives propaganda is negative connotations, or else we’d be upset about it. For example, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to be outraged at mid-century outrageous anti-cannabis propaganda despite it having bordered on the absurd. The famous 1936 Reefer Madness film depicted absurdly exaggerated (and altogether silly) consequences of the drug.

As a footnote, while the U.S. government was funding anti-drug propaganda mid-20th Century, it was also funding the creation of drugs like LSD and literally trafficking Cocaine to the United States. Nonetheless, few get upset about propaganda when they agree with the purpose of it. After all, the worst that could happen with propaganda like Reefer Madness is that kids avoid a bad habit and the Taco Bell late night drive-thru gets less business.

WOKE, AT FIRST, WAS NOT PROPAGANDIC AT ALL

Propaganda is something that is designed to turn opinion. When Tim Hurd asked me, some years ago on the Bible Thumping Wingnut, my goal for the next year, I told him I was going to use “polemics” to describe our work instead of “discernment” and that my goal was for it to catch on. “Discernment” had become a by-word of disrespect, and I knew that “polemics” would garner our field of theology more respect. I was out for a rebranding, and it worked splendidly.

In a sense, that was propagandic of me.

“Let’s Go Brandon” was a term devoid of propagandic undertones. No political scientist or campaign consultant thought up that phrase, for had they, they would would have been laughed out of the board room. How would that even make sense, as an insult to Joe Biden? Rather, it came about organically because the crowd at the Talladega Speedway in 2001 chanted, “F*** Joe Biden” and NBC reporter, Kelli Stavast, told the cameras that they were shouting, “Let’s go, Brandon” for race car driver, Brandon Brown. The rest was history.

“Woke” was like the latter example, and not the former.

If you research the beginning of the term, the eggheads call it a “black amalgamation or black past-tense of awakened,” as though black people are entitled to their own grammar rules. Whatever. The point is, it’s poor English. And the term indeed started in the black community in the 1940s and was popularized in a 1971 play by Barry Windham, when he wrote the line, “I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon’ stay woke. And I’m gon’ help him wake up other black folk.”

From there, it became a word associated with Black Liberation, the never-ending quest for black people to become freed from their bonds and shackles of whatever holds them back from their best life now, except for personal responsibility. And eventually it spread to the entire leftist revolution, an intersectional coalition of gays, feminists, Communists, and fat people who use black folk as dark-skinned mascots for their movement.

When the term reached maximum velocity around 2020, conservatives widely caught on and started using it to refer to the intersectional coalition’s list of never ending demands, ranging from toddlers riding drag queen’s laps at libraries like a coin-operated pony ride, to putting tampon dispensers in the boys’ room.

In other words, conservatives used a term the way that self-confessed “woke” people created the term created the term to be used, according to those who use it. Granted, conservatives used it is a pejorative, but it was an accurate pejorative.

THE ORIGINS OF ‘WOKE RIGHT’

Although some might accuse James Lindsay of creating the term, I’m pretty sure he stole it from arch-NeoCon, Dan Crenshaw.* In a 2022 interview, Crenshaw used the term to castigate conservatives who don’t buy into never-ending wars, the shameless enrichment of the Military Industrial Complex, or those who complain about Republican Benedict Arnolds like Crenshaw who primarily exist to bankrupt the United States taxpayer by increasing the size of government, all the while campaigning while invoking the name of Ronald Reagan.

Don’t get me started on Crenshaw. With Republicans like that, who needs Democrats?

What Crenshaw was engaging in was propaganda. The term was not organic. He took an already existent term, widely viewed as negative, and then retroactively applied the negative connotations to conservatives who - unlike Crenshaw - are actually conservative.

I presume that millions of dollars from defense lobbyists and AIPAC help him sleep at night. He’s basically Liz Cheney with an eye patch.

As others have explained, the term “woke right” came to be used to describe the dissident right. In other words, those who are anti-establishment (like Crenshaw and Cheney). So let me be clear: Woke Right is not a clever term. It is not a sophisticated term. It is a dumb term, and of the same intellectual acumen as Peewee Herman’s, “I know you are, but what am I?”

Since then, the evangelical establishment picked up the term. Early progenitors included Kevin DeYoung, and then Joe Ringey and Douglas Wilson about eight months ago.

It’s important to note that those using the term “woke right” are using it in the same way that Dan Crenshaw and the politicos use it; as a means for the establishment to attack dissidents. You might be thinking that Douglas Wilson is hardly establishment. But he is now, and that’s what stepping on the throat of his right-wing followers was about; it was an initiation ritual to join the boys’ club. It’s like joining the Crips, but first you have to go out and shoot an innocent person to prove your loyalty (Kyle J. Howard told me this, so it must be correct).

James Lindsay, a rather bright person so far as God-haters go, would like to take credit. But try as I might, I can’t find that he developed the term at all. He has, of course, been constant in taking credit.

Lindsay was very helpful in formulating a pushback against Marxism during the early days of our resistance. He was particularly helpful because his involvement demonstrated that even atheists and pagans have a valid reason to be concerned about the way thought-fascism is consuming Western Civilization like the Great Nothing. I listened to his rooftop interview with Michael O’Fallon, as he described wokism swallowing up even quilting circles whole (or whatever example he gave) with interest and curiosity.

Lindsay’s greatest contribution, however, was demonstrating the painful limits of Intersectionality. But no, I don’t mean the way he criticized intersectional coalitions on the left (although he did that, too). I mean that Lindsay has demonstrated for us, in his recent blatherings, the limits of intersectional coalitions between Christians and pagans. We might sojourn together for a while, but sooner or later, it will lead to a fracture and divorce is soon imminent.

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IS ‘WOKE RIGHT’ REALLY WOKE, OR IS IT JUST NAKED PROPAGANDA?

To understand wokeness, you have to first understand leftism. This term, leftist, is more helpful than the term liberal, which is not really synonymous despite it often being used as though it is.

Liberalism, you see, is far more virtuous than leftism. There are classical liberals, for starters, who include me and most of my readers. We believe in more liberty and more freedom. I suppose, some Christian Nationalists might disagree on that.

LEFTISM AS STRATEGY

But liberalism, at its heart, is ideological. Liberalism believes something. It has a goal. It is, in general, a belief system. Whether or not liberal beliefs are good, is an altogether different matter. But there are principled liberals, and there are many of them. And these days, anyone with principles - even if, for example, we’re talking about Robert F. Kennedy - is easy to be admired. I have to admit, even the principled stances of Bernie Sanders - despite his principles being utter hogwash - I find admirable if I catch myself grading on the curve of most leftists, who are as easy to nail down on an issue as Douglas Wilson.

I realize the profundity of just claiming to admire Bernie Sanders more than Douglas Wilson, so far as not being wishy-washy on your beliefs go, and immediately I want off this timeline. These are weird days. Maranatha.

Anyway, the point is, leftism is not an ideology, it is a strategy. Progressivism is not a goal, but a direction. Conservatism has an object, and the object is the status quo. Conservatives want to maintain what we have, or get back what we have lost (hence the slogans, like the 2016 and 2024 Make American Great Again or the 2020 Keep America Great Again. But progressivism has no object. Progress to what? Progress to where? Nobody really knows. It’s just “onward,” whether or not it’s toward a cliff or a pit of quick sand.

To put in Biblical terms, a progressive would be a wandering Hebrew from the time of their wilderness sojourn, who made it to the Promised Land but then just kept going. It would not have been enough to have made it to Canaan, but they would have wandered until Jesus came in both the first and second Advent.

Rather, Leftism is a strategy for control, not an ideology. It is a means by which power can be obtained.

You might have noticed, for example, that Democrats lie about being conservatives frequently. Whether Evangelicals for Harris or Evangelical Democrats or Tim Keller, they have no qualms about telling you they’re pro-life and good, honest conservatives who just can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump this one and only time. David French certainly exemplifies this, but so does Thabiti Anyabwile, Dwight McKissic, Russell Moore, and many others.

Why don’t conservatives do this? Where are the groups of conservatives arguing, “We are actually very committed liberals, but in this particular election, we just can’t bring ourself to vote for Kamala Harris?” Where are the conservatives who dye their hair blue - like Democrat soybois threw on their Tim Walz camo hats - and pretend to be liberals for the street cred?

I surmise that conservatives can’t bring ourselves to pretend to be something we are not, because it’s not so easy to shirk principles. If we were sold out to a strategy to win, but not the principles we were winning, we too could limp our wrist and sashay gay-ville in Trump gear. But we don’t.

Sure, there are homos for Trump. But they’re legit gay. On the other hand, you’ll find an army of effeminate men pretending to be rednecks every four years to benefit the Democrat party.

WOKISM IS LEFTISM

There is no discernible difference between wokism and leftism. It’s quite literally the same thing. If there was a difference, one might argue the woke are a tad more insufferably prideful in their supposed moral superiority but even that, provides little distinction.

Wokism, like leftism, is an attempt to grow the power of government by casting off the current power structure consisting of job-creators, institution-builders, and economy-sustainers. And they happen to be mostly white men.

It’s here you see the Cultural Marxist undergirding of leftism and wokism. Building coalitions of misfits (sodomites, “transgender” folks, people pretending to be animals, fat-pride porkers, polyamorous cuckolds, perpetual victims, and then whatever racial group considers itself a disadvantaged), they intend to unite the minorities against the majority.

And that’s Intersectionality in a nutshell. It’s a parade of multi-colored weirdos, building like a snowball headed down hill, with the people that make the world rich and efficient at the bottom of the hill to be eventually smashed.

To accomplish this goal, propagandic narratives must be built and sustained. Chiefly, the main propagandic tool is name-calling and guilt-throwing. Accusing their opponents of racism, sexism, misogyny, anti-semitism, fat-phobia, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and mass bigotry in general, they threaten their opponents to submit or else face more name-calling. And because their opponents are generally good people (because productive people are usually good people), the strategy often works. Nobody wants to be castigated as an anti-Eskimo midget-hater at the country club.

After all, nobody wants to be called a Nazi.

WOKENESS HAS NO SOUL, BUT IT HAS A STRATEGY

The goal of James Lindsay and Dan Crenshaw is to apply the term “woke” to those who want less institutional authority, or perhaps, want different institutional authority than those currently in charge.

For Lindsay, it’s about preserving the global free market and capitalist complex that benefits him directly. For this reason, the post-war consensus can absolutely not be questioned. The liberal notion of Open Society that came about as a result of WWII must be protected at all cost. The foundations of our current world must be preserved. Narratives must not be questioned.

The simple fact as I’ve noticed it, is that the closer someone is to institutional power, the more they resist the so-called “dissidents.” And that goes for both evangelicalism and within politics. This is why someone like Owen Strachan, who’s only worked for parachurch institutions funded by the endowments of dead men, opposes the dissidents so strongly. The institutions simply cannot be threatened. The current power structure must be maintained.

Of course, capitalism is good and even godly. Marxism, is devilish. And Christian institutions are good (at least in theory). But what you’re seeing in attacks on the “woke right” is an over-reaction by those feeling threatened.

For this reason, in their mind, the comparison between the woke left and the woke right, makes sense. Both sides feel attacked by rabble-rousers who, if they came to power, would just wreck everything.

But in reality, wokeness is a tactic. It’s not a belief system.

The tactic, or strategy, of the woke is to shriek insults at contrarians. The tactic is to shout “racist, bigot, misogynist, homophobe, transphobe, fat-phobe, ableist” - or better yet - “Hitler, Nazi, and fascist,” at those who threaten them. When they do so, it’s an appeal for other misfits to swoop in and defend the victimized.

The tactic, or strategy, of the woke is not to debate ideas, but to avoid debates. They attempt to censor their opponents, to blacklist them, to ban them, or at the very least, to shame them into silence. For politcos, this means firing someone from Fox News. For evangelicals, this means writing declarations about them.

In this light, it becomes painfully obvious that the woke right is actually James Lindsay, Douglas Wilson, and Owen Strachan. The main point of the Antioch Statement is to declare the topic of post-war analysis to be verboten. Even questioning the current state of things is tantamount to Nazi apologetics. And for the love of gosh, whatever you do, don’t point out disparities or differences in ethnic groups. And as of the last few days, it’s “don’t question the validity or necessity of HB1 work visas; that would be mighty xenophobic of you.”

The accusation that the woke right - like the woke left - is caught up on race, ignores the fact that unlike the left, the dissident right is trying to have actual conversations. They’re trying to provide substantive arguments. They are not shriekers just shouting “Nazis!” into the dark like the blue-haired snout-ring lesbians.

In fact, that’s Doug Wilson and James Lindsay.

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PS: I have friends who are very fond of the term, ‘woke right.’ If you perceive this in any way of being a personal slight to them, or lack of loyalty to them, or discarding of their friendship, you are very mistaken.

*After this article was published, Lindsay denied from his X account that he knew Crenshaw had first used the term, and says he acquired it from evangelical critics of Christian Nationalism, and not from Crenshaw.