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One of the problems is that some people just seem to use "woke" as a synonym for "authoritarian" or "illiberal" - usually authoritarian and illiberal leftism (chiefly forms that aren't Soviet communism), but in case of people talking about "woke right" it's obvious that they're liberal types who first got frightened of authoritarian tendencies in leftist communities, moved sharply to the right and then noted similar authoritarian and illiberal strains in their new right-wing communities.
Of course the problem here is that liberalism is taken as something of a given when the vast majority of people ever living in the world during the history of humanity have believed in authoritarian ideologies, it takes genuine work to make people truly believe in things like "you should let people speak even if they're wrong" or "people have the right to advance religious ideals even if you think they are rank heresy or mere superstition" or "innocent until proven guilty even if they really really seem shifty in an obviously guilty way" or a dozen other basic things underpinning liberal democracy.
When it comes to "woke" itself beyond the whole authoritarianism thing, it's really a combination of multiple things and ideologies, within the US chiefly progressive African-American nationalism (and other ethnic minority nationalisms usually deriving from the ideological work already done by progressive African-American nationalists, with "progressive" separating this ideological straing from non-progressive African-American nationalisms variously advanced by Marcus Garvey, NOI/Black Hebrewites/other cults or these days by black manosphere types like Tariq Nasheed), second- and third-wave feminism, and to some degree the sexual revolution and the related groups.
The whole "intersectionalism" things is an attempt to tie these, particularly progressive African-American nationalism and feminism, together to a coherent combination, but since there still is friction related to the importances of various causes, the coalition is straining all the time and wokeness doesn't seem to have that much staying power, as shown by the developments after Trump's election.
The "woke right" doesn't exist. It doesn't make sense. It's incoherent. It's an enemy anti-concept designed to derail the conversation.
The left noticed how useful it was for the right to be able to name their political project and has been fighting tooth and nail to destroy the word "woke", whether by endless isolated demands for rigor asking for a perfect definition (as in the OP) or by embracing, extending, and extinguishing the term into uselessness (as in "woke right").
Don't fall for it.
Everyone I've seen using the term "woke right" has belonged to the right-oriented anti-woke group themselves.
It makes plenty enough sense if one just interprets "woke" to mean authoritarianism. There certainly are plenty of authoritarian right-wingers.
I'd pick a few nits over authoritarianism being to focal point, while there are some authoritarians under the "woke-right" umbrella, being authoritarian seems neither necessary nor sufficient to be "woke right". "Illiberal" seems like it's hitting the nail on the head, as it's a label I would answer to, and something I could fully understand the anti-woke liberals turning on me over, since I am, after all, opposing their core values.
However what's driving me insane about the deployment of the label is either it's laziness, or if you want to be more cynical, it's deliberate use to obscure the nature of the conflict. "Woke Right" implies something like "these right-wingers are substantially the same as the left-wingers we've just finished fighting", and so there's no need to investigate what they want and where are they coming from. My contention is that we're not, that we have criticisms that the liberals have no good answer for, and I'd further say that the liberals know this. It can be easily observed in the approach to debate between various factions. Back when it was the woke left vs. the liberals, the liberals were itching for a debate, while the woke left employed various methods of avoiding it, or even trying to delegitimatize the very idea of debate. Now that it's liberals vs the "woke right", it's the "woke right" itching for a debate, while the liberals are trying to avoid, or delegitimize it. In fact from where I sit, it feels like avoiding and delegitimizing debate is the very purpose of using the "woke right" label.
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That's not what happened. We've been on a years, if not decades, long loop of Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand, until progressives started using "woke" in a self a descriptive manner, when they were feeling particularly strong. Their opponents pounced, as they say, figuring they won't be able to wriggle out of a term they unironically used themselves, which they tried to do anyway.
Now that the liberals feel they were mostly done with progressives they're trying to redirect some of the anti-woke momentum against the illiberal right.
I don't think this is what happened either. I don't see "woke" as being particularly different in kind compared to its predecessors like "SJW," "identity politics," "political correctness," or "CRT." These were all used unironically to describe oneself and one's in-group, often in a way meant to invoke pride - I both partook in and observed this happening all the time within progressive leftist circles about 10-20 years ago. Even "political correctness," which was a derogatory term in most of the 90s, was being reclaimed during the late 2000s/early 2010s as simply what any decent human just considers as "correct."
Thing is, as Shakespeare might put it, shit by any other name will stink just as foul, and so people figured out that the ideological projects described by these mostly innocuous-sounding terms were actually quite foul, and so these terms became foul, necessitating the shift to a different label. What sets "woke" apart, I think, is that it was the term in use when shit really hit the fan in the mainstream, when the naked power and demands of the "woke" were too large and too extreme for a large part of the mainstream to accept everything just on vibes, but rather compelled people to look under the hood and properly connect all the dots. So it's become difficult, if not impossible, for the SJWs, idpol-types, PC-types of yesteryear to slide into some other, as-of-yet untarnished label. It's sort of happening with "DEI" becoming "BRIDGE," but, I mean, those same 3 letters are still in the latter, and I think the overall awareness of these types of politics is just too high for the sleight of hand to work nearly as well this time.
The term "woke right" seems to be trying to get at a subset of rightwingers who follow a similar sort of resentment- and identity-based thinking when it comes to society as the "woke." And I can why people like James Lindsay - who's the person responsible for like 95% of the usage of the phrase "woke right" that I've seen in the wild - would want to do this; there are few things rightists hate more than "woke," and it's not unreasonable to believe that the dangers of right-wing identity politics could be a blind spot for many anti-woke rightists. But in terms of the meaning of the term, it just seems unnecessary, since it's just describing plain old racism.
The "woke" way of thinking involves justifying discrimination against individuals of race X and in favor of individuals of race Y because, in the past, society was structured to favor race X over race Y, and modern society still suffers from downstream effects of such structures such that individuals of race X today are advantaged over individuals of race Y. This is equivalent to the stereotypical classical racist rationale that, due to a difference in the grace of God/genes/essence/intelligence/etc. race X is intrinsically inferior to race Y, it's just a version that's been adapted not just to be palatable but to be delicious to people who want to consider themselves non-racist.
So whatever cluster of people the "woke right" is describing, it just seems to me to be describing classical racists among the right-wing, just using a label that's meant to provoke a greater disgust response (interesting that, again, since a rose by any other name smells just a sweet, it seems that "racist" has become a less nasty thing to be associated with than "woke").
"CRT" post-dated the use of "woke" and "SJW" and "identity politics" always were terms of derision from what I remember. The only one that could plausibly contradict what I said is "political correctness", maybe was used self-descriptively back in 90's, but that was before my time. The rest of what you said fits perfectly well with what I think happened to these terms.
That's the motte. The bailey is that any right-winger who departs from liberalism in any significant way is "woke right". You think collective identity is important, but don't build your politics around resentment? Woke right. You think the separation of church and state is an unworkable utopian idea that will lead to the birth of quasi-religions like wokeness? Woke right. You think that sometimes society does have a right to get between a man and his means of self-gratification, even though any particular instance affects only the individual in question? Woke right.
Like I said in the other comment, I wouldn't even mind people like Lindsay criticizing these beliefs, it's normal and good for liberals to attack threats to liberalism. The problem is he's doing it in a fundamentally dishonest manner.
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I think they have a coherence by, as you say, deriving from the same ideological work. How would you think this is only among the ethnic movements? And while there are questions of priorities, committed activists for one are still generally positive about the others. Thats more than you can say about the "dissident right", and noone seems to have much of a problem acknowleding that as a thing that exists.
Every movement looks more coherent from the outside than from the inside.
But yes, there is some coherence, but it's still not enough to make it a fully coherent ideology.
edit: I think that actually one of the biggest friction points is not as much ideological as aesthetic and rhetorical - progressive African-American nationalism was traditionally a fairly masculine movement (fiery mustacchioed preachers, Black Panthers with their leather jackets, "the only position of women in the movement is prone" etc.), and feminism obviously chafes with that, not only directly but also generally leading to a more feminine aesthetic and rhetoric being adopted - which in turn makes young men, in particular, disaffected, leading them to manosphere guys or recently even Trumpism.
I think "wokism" is about as real as "the hippies" or "the dissident right", a bit more so from the institutional connections. I think this is sufficient for most complaints about wokeness.
But why would that be a conflict? Oh no, this terrible point of friction, weve adopted two styles that were literally made for each other. You just have the guys rioting and the (white) women shrieking at the monsters who dare stop them.
It seems like wokeness isn’t super popular among African American men- if they’re running left they’re going to prefer things like NOI or the black Hebrew Israelites. Conversely African American women are mostly woke.
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I'm not sure there were many people calling it that. In fact a large part of it's criticism consisted of pointing out it's incoherence and inner tensions.
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In this context, and being a believer in the concept of "ideologies are born to facilitate political struggles", wokism for me is the synthesis of black nationalism, third worldism and feminism that was created to improve the electoral odds and power of the Democratic Party, and then was wielded by the US Empire as an imperial ideology in order to make it easier to control the satellite states.
If we follow this definition of wokism, it is clear that it will lose importance the moment it will not be useful anymore to the US Empire (so never, for now)
It's more complicated than that. Progressive African-American nationalism, due to its status of as the main political expression of the largest minority of the most powerful country of the world (and an expression, moreover, that is well-suited for coalition building and forming a template for others), has had enormous cachet globally generally, with minorities all around the world considering their struggle to be equivalent to that of the African-Americans (including white minorities. Progressive African-American leaders, like Dubois and MLK, have been aware of the effect of publicizing repression against the movement on America's soft power and have utilized that to their advantage, so that American policies have at least as much had to do with navigating this threat as with any conscious imperial ideological designs.
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