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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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his isn't really happening with "woke", especially now.

This is patently false. You could spend a few seconds and go to wiki page for Woke to see that unlike neoliberalism, woke as a term was used since 2010 as

Beginning in the 2010s, it came to be used by activists themselves to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBTQ rights.

You have a photo of United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development holding the T-Shirt "stay Woke". Also from the top of my head I remember a story of how Elon Musk discovered Stay Woke T-Shirts after he took over Twitter. The reason why woke was used by activists is that it actually relates to concept of critical consciousness, meaning that this person is awoken to various injustuces especially related to race, sex, sexuality, gender, body types etc. It perfectly encapsulates what the ideology is about.

Paradoxically changing history and usurping power of how words are defined is one of the hallmarks of the ideology. As an example after DEI god a bad rap, many people just rename themselves to something like belonging or community management. I do not see a reason why anybody should tolerate this. People know what woke is as a general term, there is no need to stop using the term just because woke people want to make a PR rebranding. For instance given your example, please stop using the term neoliberalism, it is just a slur. Just use a new term such as promoting prosperity.