The great wokeism paradox

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the term ‘wokeism’ has featured prominently in political, academic and media debates. Originally an African American slang term, in the 1940s ‘woke’ described a state of vigilance toward racial injustice and the diverse forms of discrimination that stemmed from it, particularly in the segregationist USA. In the 1960s the concept became more widely known in the wake of the civil rights struggle. Black activists, but also feminist and pacifist movements, embraced the vigilant stance. Initially an activist slogan, the term was gradually transformed into an organized ideology.

In France, Régis Debray’s A Modest Contribution to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Tenth Anniversary1 anticipated this shift, denouncing ‘the white man’s rights’ as a universalist fiction that served to obscure Western domination. The new ideology of wokeism challenged the abstract universalism of the Enlightenment in favour of militant particularism. In the 2000s the expression ‘stay woke’ was revived on social networks, especially after 2013 and the Black Lives Matter movement. The American intellectual sphere has since then been permeated by a euphoric wokeism that has become the alpha and omega of the new intellectual society.

But what was originally intended as an instrument of emancipation will paradoxically end up harming minorities themselves. The nascent phenomenon of anti-wokeism, far from merely critiquing wokeism’s excesses, is being radicalized and turned into a political weapon to stigmatize minorities.

From reaction to political weapon

The heyday of French deconstructionist philosophy, known as French Theory, in the 1960s, the birth of Cultural Studies in the 1980s, and the introduction of affirmative action policies in the 2000s punctuated the slow shift in progressive circles from a defensive stance (protecting minorities from discrimination) to the offensive goal of overthrowing the inherited social structures that perpetuate injustice (normative heterosexuality, colonial heritages). But the social impacts of globalization and rising inequality in most Western societies exacerbated divisions around wokeism; it may have provided the educated upper classes with a new moral grammar, but a growing number of working-class people saw it as an elite-imposed ideology that was dismissive of their culture and traditions. The British author David Goodhart conceptualized this fracture through the opposition between the ‘Anywheres’ – mobile, university-educated, globalized cosmopolitan elites – and the ‘Somewheres’ – people with local roots, attached to their area, often denigrated.2 It did not take long for this resentment to be instrumentalized for political purposes. In the 2020s figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos denounce the woke worldview as stifling, inefficient and hostile to innovation. Their ‘about-face’ testifies to the movement’s instability while fuelling working-class anger.

The Heritage Foundation, a MAGA3 think tank run by Kevin Roberts, has devised a strategy of cultural reconquest.4 Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former advisor, has radicalized discourse by championing an identity-based nationalism. Project 2025, spearheaded by conservatives, announced the dismantlement of DEI policies (diversity, equity and inclusion) and the restoration of traditional values.5 The appointment of JD Vance as US Vice President symbolizes this shift: with his white, working-class background he epitomizes locally rooted America in its confrontation with the cosmopolitan elite.6 His Catholic integralist views7 are likely to play an important role in the MAGA intellectual universe from now on.

In France, Michel Onfray – no doubt inspired by Tocqueville – popularized the idea of the ‘dictatorship of minorities’.8 But it is above all social issues – the Gilets jaunes crisis, farmers’ protests – that have galvanized a silent majority in opposition to wokeism. The politicians François-Xavier Bellamy, Éric Ciotti, Laurent Wauquiez and Marion Maréchal exploit such events as ideological glue. The ideas of reactionary francophone Catholic intellectuals are being rehabilitated: Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald and Charles Maurras. Think tanks like the Thomas More Institute and the Institut de formation politique are providing the doctrinal framework for this campaign. Certain media outlets are playing a key role: CNews, Causeur, Omerta and Radio Courtoisie serve to amplify critiques of wokeism.

In Europe more generally, anti-wokeism is more than just a defensive posture. It is becoming a strategic lever in its own right. With woke discourse firmly rooted in the academic and media spheres, conservative groups have grasped the benefits of uniting their electorates around a common rejection of its ideology. Although anti-wokeism was initially focused on questions of gender, it is now ethnic and cultural groups (e.g., immigrants, Romani) who have become the primary target in Europe. The European Conservative, a magazine published in Budapest by the Center for European Renewal, helps to spread ideas developed in the US to an international audience. For Central Europe’s illiberal governments, such as those experienced under Victor Orbán in Hungary or the Law and Justice Party in Poland, it is a useful tool for legitimizing identity-based politics.

Two seminal texts typify this convergence: the Paris Statement, signed by numerous conservative intellectuals in 2017, and the manifesto National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles from 2022. These two documents put forward a civilizational vision of a Europe defined by its Christian roots and its direct opposition to progressive cosmopolitanism. In France, the polemical journalist and co-founder of Omerta, Charles d’Anjou , presents wokeism as a threat to civilization, even suggesting that it represents a concerted strategy to destabilize the West. The Périclès project, funded by the Catholic billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin, aims to bring together the right and the far right, under the ideological banner of the latter, by placing the fight against wokeism at the heart of a national narrative. Inspired by Philippe de Villiers’s theme park, Le Puy du Fou, a growing number of spectacular multimedia shows are disseminating a reactionary historical narrative. Anti-wokeism is thus gradually becoming an effective political weapon used to rally previously scattered forces and legitimize the dominant identity-based discourse.

The ordeal of minority groups

This is the culmination of the paradox. Intended to defend minorities, wokeism is now fuelling an ideological wave that has turned fully against them. In the US in 2025, Donald Trump wrote a letter to various large European companies threatening to exclude them from the American market if they continued to run their DEI programmes. Harvard University has been forbidden from enrolling foreign students unless it abandons such policies. These decisions have the effect of institutionalizing anti-wokeism, transferring it from the ideological to the normative sphere.

A similar dynamic is at work in Europe. Far-right parties like Vox in Spain, Golden Dawn in Greece, Vlaams Belang in Belgium and AfD in Germany all denounce wokeism as a threat to national identity. Real people belonging to minority groups in Europe (immigrants, Muslims, Romani, LGBTQIA+ individuals) are now facing rejection due to the ideological critique of these political movements.

The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) announced in 2021 that the French Ministry of the Interior recorded more than 12,000 complaints of racism, xenophobia and antireligious acts that year, 19% more than in 2019. The entire world is facing a ‘frightening proliferation of racist violence and hate crimes’, cautioned the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, in March 2025, adding that ‘racism and white supremacy continue to poison our communities, politics, media and online platforms’.9 International NGOs, including Amnesty International, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) and Survival International, regularly issue warnings about the consequences of this phenomenon, with minorities becoming the collateral victims of an ideological conflict in which they play no part. This trend has been reinforced by the fact that the number of conflicts raging around the world has skyrocketed in recent years; wars are widely known to be one of the primary drivers of the mistreatment of minorities.

In Europe, Romani were among the first victims of this development. Latent anti-Romani racism in European societies was suddenly emboldened and Europe’s municipal authorities were seemingly gripped by rage against the ‘traveller community’. Encouraged by parties like Rassemblement National (RN), Vlaams Belang and AfD, as well as websites like Résistance Républicaine in France, local councils became ever more aggressive and creative in their efforts to track down Romani in caravans and make life impossible for them. At the legislative elections in Portugal on 18 May 2025, the far right, represented by André Ventura, the Chega party candidate, won a remarkable number of votes (22.56%) thanks to its rhetoric against immigrants, but especially Romani, who were portrayed as outsiders to the nation – a surprising angle in a country that has always lived peacefully alongside its small Romani community. The election marked the resurrection of a whole array of old prejudices. In Ukrainian Transcarpathia the Romani, particularly those who have fled the Donbas, are now frequently the victims of veritable pogroms.

Immigrants from outside Europe have become the second target; Muslims have been particularly impacted due to Islamic terrorism. Racist attacks and manhunts have become more common. The ‘great replacement’ theory popularized by Renaud Camus, and its corollary, the myth of ‘remigration’, have captured people’s minds. Europe’s Muslim communities (Turkish in Germany, Maghrebi in France) are now living in a climate of fear.

But one of the most recent consequences of this dissolution of taboos is the wave of antisemitism that is currently spreading around the world, especially in the West, in connection with events in the Middle East. It is no longer possible to wear a kippah in certain neighbourhoods in French cities, which have been described as ‘the Republic’s lost territories’. For the first time since the Second World War, Jews no longer feel safe in France. The problem is an American one too, as shown by the murder of Jewish diplomats in Washington on 21 May 2025.

A recent shift has taken place in relation to what are known as national minorities, such as the Russophone minority groups in the Baltic states. Between 1995 and 2015, these Russian speakers enjoyed extensive support from the Council of Europe and the High Commissioner on National Minorities at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). In the last few years, however, the topic seems to have dropped off the radar of European intergovernmental bodies. Even the recent abolition of Russian-language education in Estonian and Latvian schools has provoked virtually no reaction. The war in Ukraine is, of course, in no way sufficient justification for such indifference.

Another example from the US: after improving dramatically under the presidency of Richard Nixon, to the point that Native Americans became global champions of the cause of indigenous peoples, the situation has deteriorated again under Donald Trump. The latter has revived the anti-Native policy of his distant predecessor Andrew Jackson, who was responsible for the Cherokee removal around 1830, by drastically reducing the funding allocated to a community that makes up just 2% of the nation’s population and feels itself in an increasingly precarious situation.

At the same time, Trump, inspired by his crony Stephen Miller, feels entitled to ‘invent’ oppressed minorities to justify his vision of the world. Washington, having halted USAID to South Africa and expelled its ambassador, recently welcomed a group of Afrikaner farmers who had come to the US as ‘refugees’ from supposed anti-white racism, or even a genocide against Afrikaners in South Africa. There is, of course, no evidence to support these claims: indeed, while South Africa’s white minority represents around 7% of the country’s population, it still owns 72% of the land, and the average income of white households is almost five times higher than that of black households.

Outside the West the situation is even worse. In Syria, the Alawite people are still paying for their loyalty to the Assad clan, while the Kurdish people in Rojava to the north are watching their hopes of independence evaporate and even their autonomy under threat. The country’s Orthodox Christians and Druzes suffered deadly attacks in June 2025. In Afghanistan, the Hazara people are regularly victims of targeted attacks, murders, forced displacement and sexual violence. Kurdish, Baloch, Arab and Azerbaijani people in Iran are frequently subject to extrajudicial execution, arbitrary arrest, torture and political and economic discrimination. Finally, with more than 72,500 people killed in Gaza by Israeli bombs to date, the Palestinian minority is suffering more than ever. As for South Asia, the situation has continued to deteriorate. More than a thousand attacks were carried out on Hindu households and businesses in Bangladesh in August 2024. Neighbouring India saw a 74% rise in anti-minority hate speech in 2024. Christians and Muslims face particular abuse, ranging all the way to murder.

In Southeast Asia the Muslim Rohingya population, originally from Myanmar but expelled from that country, are enduring an endless ordeal. In their horrifying saga’s most recent episode in May 2025, a group of refugees arrested in New Delhi were thrown overboard wearing life jackets into the Andaman Sea by units of the Indian Navy. In Myanmar, the army continues to hunt down minority groups (Karen and Chin peoples). In China, although ostensibly protected by a Confucian human rights policy, Tibetans and Uyghurs are subject to ethnocide under the guise of an official policy to modernize society. The identities of the country’s several hundred other ‘small’ minority groups suffer a policy of folklorization inspired, in the worst sense, by the korenizatsiia (roots policy) implemented in the Soviet Union in the period before hard Stalinism.

Public opinion in the West is increasingly indifferent to these events. Weary of conflicts around identity and the economic and environmental crisis, people are less concerned with the struggles of minorities. International institutions, meanwhile, seem impotent: the UN is paralyzed by vetoes, the European Union divided by national interests. Wokeism, in attempting to defend minorities, has paradoxically laid the foundations for a systematic campaign against them.

A dangerous situation

The danger is reflected in the proliferation and increasing power of populist and authoritarian regimes. With Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and their autocratic emulators, the world has undeniably entered a new ‘iron age’ in which might beats right. In this new world, at the mercy of the whims of tyrants, international treaties and conventions – traditionally the ‘strength of the weak’ – are losing power. Vulnerable by nature, minorities are prime targets. In this context, regional and local minorities are also under threat. In Europe, for example, the Alsatians, Bretons and Sardinians are seeing their identities exploited or negated.10 In the Americas, the Inuit, in Africa, the Pygmies and the indigenous peoples of Central America are subject to marginalization and forced assimilation.

The paradox of wokeism is clear: born to protect minorities, it is now making them increasingly vulnerable. As it became more radical, it transformed into the ideal adversary for populism. The populists, in turn, use anti-wokeism to impose authoritarian policies. What can we do to avoid handing the initiative to those who want to spread chaos? There seems to be three possible ways to overcome this impasse. The first is to restore democratic universalism. It is not about denying differences but embedding them in a common framework based on equal recognition of rights. The second is to strengthen international institutions: without enforceable mechanisms, minorities will remain vulnerable to the identitarian agendas of majorities. The third and final way is to teach people to appreciate complexity: democracy cannot survive ideological simplification. We must relearn how to grapple with contradictions, nuances and irreducible tensions.

The future of Western democracies depends on their ability to escape this sterile opposition between wokeism and anti-wokeism. If they fail, they risk being plunged into a prolonged period of identitarian conflict, with minorities the first victims. If they succeed, they will be able to look forward to the restoration of a clear and inclusive universalism that can reconcile equal rights with the recognition of differences. The battle around wokeism is, thus, not just a simple cultural debate. It is a decisive test of democratic vitality in the twenty-first century.