Anti-Woke Publics

To illuminate the varied and sometimes contradictory modes of public engagement practiced by right and far-right publics, this forum contribution introduces a concept of anti-woke publics. Representing themselves as fair-minded occupants of a political middle ground, anti-woke publics characterize wokeness as a divisive and destructive leftist ideology. They draw on discursive strategies of abstraction, universalism, and ahistoricism that obscure their ideological orientation and divert public attention from the unequal, unjust, and anti-democratic consequences of their advocacy. Their public engagement exhibits a fundamental tension between professed commitments to equal opportunity and their public advocacy in defense of an unequal status quo. Anti-woke publics situate the individual as the primary social actor and champion colorblindness as the ethical orientation for engaging diverse public actors. Sharing advocacy networks with avowedly supremacist publics, anti-woke publics facilitate the wider circulation of supremacist discourses among influential and mainstream publics.