Lately leftists online (such as Logo Daedalus) have been speculating about a possible return to 2010s HR individualist managerial political correctness (a.k.a., woke) in light of Trump’s falling popularity polls over the Epstein files and his failure to rebound the US economy as well as his second administration being overall more fascist and extreme than the first one both rhetorically (see the DHS’s Twitter account which seems to be ran by a wignat) and in practice (e.g., expansion of ICE under the current regime).
Maybe this will age like milk, but personally I don’t think the woke will ever come back, primarily due to the fact that it arose during a period in American history that can’t be replicated in the foreseeable future as well as because it got heavily exhausted to its fullest potential by 2024, something else will form instead but I can’t put my fingers on it. Let me elaborate…
Yes, there may be backlash to Trump in the form of:
- greater tolerance for immigration,
- renewed talk about abolishing ICE (which isn’t actually necessary for border security and overlaps with existing agencies),
- less willingness to tolerate soft white nationalism or openly white-nationalist speech now that the Trump project has made its racial character explicit.
But I don’t think that means a return to the specific ideological package of the 2010s.
The elite liberal factions that promoted “wokeness” as a substitute for social democracy feel politically exhausted. Their compromises — with Trumpism, with Zionism, with capital more broadly — are remembered, and they’ve already pivoted to new projects like “abundance,” technocratic managerialism, or vibes-based productivity politics.
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