Woke is a catchall under which you can fit the most ridiculous, insignificant story. Everything is being labeled woke by republicans to make it seem like it’s apocalyptic, dystopian destruction of humanity. Even though nothing is happening, but a reasonable demand for equality, inclusion, and safety.
Woke serves as the bridge into every slippery slope fallacy and is the word that takes any topic and makes it dystopian. You see this from republican politicians and right-wing talking heads.
Elon Musk has taken this a step further, calling wokeness a mind virus and a mortal threat to civilization. Bill Maher spends an agonizing seven minutes pontificating about there being such a thing as a woke revolution.
Conservatives panic at any slight increase in the number of people who identify as LGBTQ+. Then jump to the conclusion that there is some sort of mass recruitment effort. When the reality is, there’s greater acceptance that makes it safer to come out than ever before.
Left Handers
The same thing happened with left-handed people. Once the stigma dissipated, more people became left-handed. No one accused left-handed teachers of indoctrinating kids to become left-handers. That would be ridiculous.
An increase in targeted and demonizing rhetoric is associated with a rise in hate crimes in a statistically significant way. And the same can be said of more extreme events like shootings.
Once the groundwork has been laid by republicans and right-wing propaganda that a queer person can be considered guilty until proven innocent, and that they’re part of a plot that could literally end civilization, only two things in conservative thinking are left to do:
- Convince your audience that this goes all the way to the top, and that the government won’t be there to stop it.
- That it is your responsibility to intervene, often in violent terms.
For someone who’s listening to all this, it’s the call to action they need. Media figures they trust have given them the green light to fight back. To make their home state the place where woke goes to die.
They are begging for someone to go and beat people up. Eventually, somebody will. So you get shootings and hate crimes, and armed far-right militias showing up at brunches to intimidate people back into the closet.