Woke Isn’t Dead. The Battle To Root It Out Is Only Just Beginning

By Tyler O'Neil, The Daily Signal | December 01, 2024

Donald Trump, the once and future president, won not just the Electoral College but likely the popular vote. In doing so, he defeated the Democrats’ DEI hire candidate, the great intersectional hope Kamala Harris, in part by running on a platform of rooting woke ideology out of the federal government.

Trump’s triumph comes after a year of embarrassing scandals for the woke movement. University professors resigned amid accusations of plagiarism. Companies began rejecting the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. Democrats began to question whether transgender orthodoxy was costing them elections.

Some conservatives may get cocky and start to think that the woke movement is dying, or at least on its way out.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Sure, Woke Inc. suffered a couple of setbacks, but it still enjoys dominance of America’s cultural institutions, from Hollywood to academia to the entrenched federal bureaucrats who won’t just resign when Trump takes office again on Jan. 20.

The scattered conservative victories of 2024 are just that: minor plays that gain a few yards and maybe the occasional field goal.

Hold your touchdown dances, friends, we’re nowhere near the end zone.

Take former Harvard President Claudine Gay, for example. Sure, she stepped down amid a torrent of criticism over her flaccid response to antisemitism on her campus, and after a series of plagiarism scandals she could no longer deny.

Yet the legacy media initially leapt to Gay’s defense—downplaying plagiarism as an unserious problem. It took the heroic efforts of a Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Chris Rufo, and many other conservative journalists to expose Gay. And she had real skeletons in her closet.

The next woke leader of Harvard may be far more careful.

Harvard’s fundraising may be struggling, but it’s still Harvard. The Ivy League isn’t what it used to be, but it still carries tremendous prestige—and 91% of faculty at elite American universities are still leftist, according to the National Association of Scholars.

Gay’s resignation is an opening salvo in one long-running siege, not the victory march that comes at the end of the war. It’s American sailors surviving after the attack on Pearl Harbor, not the V-J Day celebration.

Similarly, some companies that had no business working with a far-left group like the Human Rights Campaign have finally woken up and realized their mistake.

Conservative activist Robby Starbuck deserves immense credit for pressuring brands such as Coors, Ford, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniels, and Lowe’s to cut ties with HRC. The Human Rights Campaign acts like an LGBTQ mafia, demanding companies genuflect to transgender causes and funnel cash to LGBTQ groups in exchange for high ratings on its Corporate Equality Score. Venture capitalists in the woke environmental, social, and governance movement use the score as a vetting tool.

While any company cutting off HRC represents a win for sanity and a neutral corporate America, these companies had right-leaning audiences to begin with. Sure, Lowe’s will cut off HRC, but how about Amazon? Harley-Davidson shouldn’t be bowing and scraping to drag queens, anyway. But good luck getting Lululemon, Forever21, Victoria’s Secret, or any of a thousand other more left-leaning brands to take a second look.

Finally, let’s talk about Kamala Harris and Trump’s masterful ad slamming her over transgender issues: “She’s for they/them. He’s for you.”

Trump tapped into popular sentiment against males competing in women’s sports (something 72% of Americans oppose) and opposition to sex changes for kids (which another 72% of Americans oppose). It is heartening to see these issues resonate with the American electorate, and some Democrats are indeed questioning whether they want to die on this hill.

Yet many talking heads, including White House press secretary-turned-MSNBC host Jen Psaki, are doubling down. The Left’s brief soul-searching on transgender issues seems likely to dissipate as Democrats find Rep. Tim McBride, a male who identifies as female and wishes to go by the name Sarah, a good person to turn into a victim on this issue.

Medical institutions still embrace “gender-affirming care,” despite overwhelming evidence that such medical interventions do more harm than good, especially to children. Make no mistake—the transgender issue isn’t going anywhere.

As Trump assembles his Cabinet, he needs to seriously consider how entrenched woke ideology is in the federal government.

My forthcoming book “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” reveals just how far the Left’s woke tentacles have penetrated the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.

Left-wing activists have touched a whole host of issues within the bureaucracy, from education to immigration to the rules that determine how Americans work. The woke influence runs so deep that the Department of Homeland Security told border agents not to refer to illegal aliens as “he” or “she” unless they know the illegals’ preferred pronouns.

Severing these tentacles is a gargantuan challenge, and I’d humbly suggest that my book may provide key insights into how the new Trump administration should go about it.

Don’t get me wrong: 2024 was a great year for conservatives, and it provides a road map for the future.

But let’s not kid ourselves: The mammoth task of eradicating woke ideology from America’s institutions isn’t over. In fact, it’s barely beginning.

Tyler O'Neil is managing editor of The Daily Signal and the author of two books: "Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center," and "The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government."

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