The leftist “news” media keep insisting that no one can define the term “woke” because it is a non-existent boogeyman made up by conservatives to vilify the Left.
Bullshit.
“Wokeness” is a real thing that can be readily defined. Here it is, once and for all. Save and share this whenever you see anyone make the absurd claim claim that “wokeness” doesn’t exist and can’t be defined.
A “woke” person is one who believes, like the vast majority of people, that it is morally wrong to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, but who goes further than the vast majority of people by sanctimoniously appointing themselves as the sole arbiters of exactly what constitutes discrimination and as the executioners of those whom they find guilty through the imposition of cancel culture.
“Woke” people also reserve to themselves the right to impose cancel culture on anyone who disagrees with them on literally anything, no matter how small or trivial. This includes other self-defined “woke” people.
To do these things, people who are “woke” appoint themselves as “social justice warriors” and members of the “Resistance,” and in that capacity, they impose cancel culture on anyone who asks them what they have in common with actual warriors or with actual Resistance fighters who opposed the Nazis in World War II.
“Woke” people see everything that occurs and has ever occurred in America in the past 500 years through the lens of an assumption of prejudice by a culture of “white privilege” and see everyone who is not a straight white male as an “oppressed” victim of straight white males in all aspects and activities of American society.
“Woke” ideology has no basis in logic or reason and is utterly unconcerned with intellectual honesty and consistency. In fact, “woke” people assert that the application of logic or reason to any of their arguments is a denial of every “oppressed” person’s (utterly subjective) “truth” and is therefore a reflection of “white privilege” or “white supremacy” deserving of the imposition of cancel culture.
“Woke” ideology is rooted entirely in emotion and is advanced primarily through virtue signaling the “woke” individual’s assertion of his or her moral superiority to literally everyone else based on that person’s belief that he or she is the only person anywhere who has “woke” to the cosmic Truth and that everyone else remains in a bigoted “sleep.”
“Woke” ideology also includes religious discrimination among the categories to be opposed, but only selectively. It does not include discrimination against Christianity and Judaism because it asserts that the world’s two great ethical monotheistic religions are the foundations of “white privilege” and “white supremacy” and the cause of oppression of all non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual “oppressed” people.
However, “woke” ideology does include opposing discrimination against Islam despite the fact that Islam expressly teaches and demands racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual discrimination by its adherents (differing in degree between various denominations of Islam and obviously not practiced by all Muslims). This is most likely because most American Muslims are racial and ethnic minorities and are seen by “woke” people exclusively through that lens. As discussed above, “woke” ideology is not concerned with logic, reason, or intellectual honesty and consistency.