Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - The Radicalization Pipeline Nobody Sees Coming

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

SUPPORT ME ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/taylorlorenz     Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co Lately, growing swaths of the online left have embraced a messaging strategy known broadly as Dark Woke. While traditional Democrats still try to reach across the aisle and find common ground with conservatives, more on the left are becoming comfortable embracing outright bigotry, slurs, hateful rhetoric, dunking on conservatives, and going full "dark woke."   Twitch streamer SeanDaBlack has been covering the rise of this culture, and he joined me to talk about the rise of "woke" culture in America, how social justice movements have been warped by the internet, what Dark Woke really means and whether it's a winning strategy to counter Trump's online dominance. Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz           https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0           https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz  

They are totally fine with throwing marginalized people under the bus so long as they get to an avenue of potentially helping them out. As liberals struggle with how to respond to rising fascism and Trump's popularity online, growing swaths of the left have embraced a messaging strategy broadly known as dark woke. While traditional Democrats are still often pushing the idea of civility in politics and finding common ground with conservatives, more people on the left are becoming comfortable in. embracing outright bigotry, slurs, hateful rhetoric, dunking on conservatives, and going full, dark woke. Twitch streamer Sean DeBlack has been talking a lot about this on his stream.

And today he's joining me to discuss the rise of woke culture in American politics, how social justice movements have been warped by the internet, and break down what dark woke really means and whether it's actually a winning strategy to counter Trump's dominance online and off. Hi, Sean. Welcome. Thank you. Well, I'm so excited to chat with you today. Before we dive into dark woke today, I want to kind of take people back to the origins of like woke culture, woke 1.0, if you will. When do you think this sort of idea of like wokeism

arose? So I think from my perspective, because I'm younger, what I saw was more of like during like Trump one, that era is where you saw like a lot of like resistance liberalism in like reaction to Trump one. So you saw like a very wide back swing from that in conjunction with a lot of the stuff that I saw with like Black Lives Matter and like the like, you know, anti-police brutality movement and like starting in 2014, going until like 2020 with that it was the big resurgence of that movement as well. Yeah, I feel like this idea of like woke and certainly the first time I heard the term woke, even though I know it predates this was 2017, was the beginning of Trump 1.0.

In that era you saw a rise of like anti-SJW culture. And so when Trump won, you saw like a lot of like bravado from those sex of, uh, individuals or like you know like the bench appurals and Stephen Crowders and then you saw a huge reaction to them i think resistance is honestly kind of the best word for it because that kind of felt like we kind of peaked like we are at the the height of fascism trump's in office and like what do we do and there was a lot of energy behind it wait i love the idea that like that was the height of fascism i mean we are like it couldn't get any worse than this it's 2016 it's so i mean 2017 it's so bad like we're cooked it's over we did not know we had no idea you had like right-wingers using that term

as like a pejorative but then it became like a reclamation thing like we would reclaim that we're already like, yeah, maybe we are woke. Maybe being woke is good. Maybe that's a good thing to be woke. It became like a positive symbol of resistance. It'd be like to be woke, to be aware. I think like the idea of being woke, as you said, it hadn't like yet been as stigmatized as it is now.

And it's like, it's hard to remember. But like being like a resistor person was like cool online. This was 10 years ago almost. I mean, look, those people were always cringy. And there was always the sort of like counter more leftist like element that hated them, myself included. But like, it was this like, you know, the pink hat, the girl boss, the like hashtag, you know, Me Too activism. And I think of just how quickly, too, there was like merchandise that commodified the idea of being woke and how like resistance in that era of resistance was also so intertwined with like capitalism.

I was looking back at some of the merch from that era and you had like stay woke in like the Coca-Cola logo t-shirts. And you had t-shirts that were like, I'm a proud member of the woke mob. like all of this stuff that was like being sold in like pop culture like girl boss feminist stores that like I cannot imagine anyone wearing that kind of merchandise today unless it's like a right wing or pretending like mock it like Matt Walsh like mocking a progressive person. I think it's pretty interesting because it kind of aligns with rainbow capitalism because you saw a very big back squamous because the Democratic Party didn't used to be as like well as we describe it now especially when it comes to like gay rights and like gay marriages and stuff like that and so when Trump took office it allowed the Democratic Party to take up more of the Democratic Party to take up more of. of a veneer of progressivism when it came to social issues. And so because of that being the case, and you saw the Democrats actually, you know, absorbing those progressive values. You saw companies then chasing the dollars from the base who were anti-Trump

to then put like, you know, rainbow merchant side of their, their stores and to sell that kind of merchandise alongside with like the stay woke and the be aware and like the resistance merchandise, even though like they were also like they were pro-Trump regardless. Anyway, when I think of like woke 1.0 as well, I guess, I think of like Michelle Obama's, when they go low, we go high, which was this like framework that she had used and Hillary Clinton sort of embodied this idea of like, honestly moral superiority almost where like that sort of era of like woke, it felt like a lot of people leveraging social

justice or leveraging this idea of like, I'm above this, like, I don't buy into the hate. Even though like Taylor Swift's, you need to calm down video was going viral again recently as like peak woke. And it is kind of crazy just like how mainstream progress. was in culture. Like there's a trans person. There's trans people in that video. There's the entire cast of queer eye for the straight guy. Like it was just sort of like so pervasive. And I think it kind of perfectly exemplified how during Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016 or she tried to like lean further into that that I think a lot of the establishment was ready for when she called them

deplorables. The establishment was like, well, maybe that's a little bit too far because like then the Republicans started pro clutching being like, well, how dare she say that about us? How how they call like Americans, true Americans deplorables or whatever. It's very weird because she had to like, you know, walk that back. You'd be like, oh, no, I wasn't talking about, you know, all the MAGA base or whatever. Like, it was a whole thing. But like, it kind of showed that like even then at that time where awokeness was so pervasive, the establishment was still very like resistant to that, like actual true form of like,

you know, calling fascism like it is and standing up for marginalized people in a meaningful way. Yeah. I mean, so much of it was just all like deeply performative. And they wanted to ultimately preserve the system. I mean, there was this idea of like, bring back decency to politics and like, you know, let's get back. And that was also, I feel like the era of the never Trump Republicans that were like, let's preserve order. Like, I don't always agree with, you know, the far right of my party, but we can always go out to dinner after or whatever. And it was very like elitist.

And I feel like it obviously like sort of co-opted the idea of woke, which is like more radical and just kind of like tried to like mainstream it into this like movement for. profit ultimately. And I made a whole video on sort of like the death of like resistance culture. And I think like part of it was just that it got so kind of like parody level and also really focused, I think almost too heavily on identity. And I don't want to say that because I hate the way that people put like identity politics against class politics when they're completely together. But I covered the Bernie campaign for the first three months in 2016 before he dropped out. And I remember going to Bernie speeches and then covering that same election and going to like Hillary speeches. And you know, you did have this more like left wing part of the party that really

wanted to go hard and really wanted to talk about economic inequality and actually was a very diverse coalition, but they were sort of so effectively silenced by the Hillary Clinton, like, I'm the first female president and representation matters and like this sort of like fake version of progress. 100%. Okay. So to move through time, we have like woke culture pervading American life. It's all going great.

All these resistance influencers are making millions of dollars. And then we have 2020. And I feel like 2020 is definitely when a lot of people describe as like peak woke, where especially when COVID hit, like, you saw this like levels of solidarity and people actually engaging in like record levels of mutual aid and Black Lives Matter protest that summer. And also just like feeling like we could all take Trump down. I think definitely there was a lot of energy there, especially from from my advantage point, a lot of young people have that energy because a lot of people my age couldn't even vote in 2016. And so they, they grew up in 2016 and 2020. with that now we can actually change something. The election's coming up.

Black light matters popping off. COVID hit in the pandemic and started. So like we're all like trapped inside. And so we have nothing about time on our hands. And we're getting this information from this new form of media that's popping up on TikTok. And so this energy's kind of like spurred us on to like be more politically active.

And we wanna put this energy towards something. And so that's where you really see like young people applying woke to themselves as to be like, we are the actual resistance. We saw what happened in 2016. We saw what failed in 2016. and we want to be better than that in 2020. Yeah, I feel like so much of that progressive activism, too,

was happening on TikTok in 2020. Like, this is what led Trump to initially want to ban an app, was that there were all these people, you know, like messing with his Tulsa rally, like, registration or leading sort of climate resistance movements. And as you said, so many people sort of got involved in activism. I do think, though, ultimately, of course, Joe Biden wins. And, like, very quickly put the kibosh on all of that.

Like, and also, I think Biden himself moving everybody to the right It's like he took that like peak woke and instead of leveraging it and being like, yes, by the way, let's expand the social safety act. It was like, okay, everyone back to normal. That happened before even he was even elected. On the campaign trail, he was calling out like looters and rioters alongside like hand in hand with like Obama telling people to tone down the temperature even though like this was a massive amount of energy that you can utilize to, you know, to serve a certain end.

And to be fair, they did. They got Joe Biden elected, but to them that's the end of it. They don't need to worry about like actually changing. something within the system or, you know, overhauling the system as a whole, they got, you know, their preferred candidate elected and that's all that they needed. So that energy is now a waste to them. So they want it to like, fizzle out. They don't want it to exist anymore because then it can be weaponized against them. I want to talk about sort of like how like wokeism or whatever was expressed online in 2020 because I do think that there was this certain discourse that year especially

where like there seems to be this collective belief now that like it went too far where people will like pull, I don't know, some cancellation attempt or something like these days and be like, it's not 2020 anymore. Something that I saw when I was on TikTok was like, you had some silly stuff. Like you had people like painting like the blackface on their face and like doing TikToks to the, the McLemore song. So it was like silly stuff like that. But a lot of stuff that I did see on TikTok was actually like, you know, people like in

blackface getting caught off from doing blackface and be like, hey, that's not acceptable anymore. And there being like a huge reaction to that. And there would be like people who got caught out for for saying slurs, not being recorded. And that stuff was stuff that was like kind of normalized. Like it was something that was like, obviously like, you know, people knew that they probably shouldn't do it. There were never any consequences for those actions. And so they thought they're like, oh, even if I do that, it's fine, it's whatever.

But then in 2020, you saw people, especially when people got a lot of power on TikTok because now you have collective voices coming together on a specific platform actually utilizing that power for something. That something was like simultaneously we're trying to get a Joe Biden elected. We're also going to try to hold this person accountable or this influence or accountable and do this and this and this and this. And so there was some like, you know, silliness around like wokeness or like activism at the time. Because there always is performative activism. That's always going to exist. But a lot of it was young people trying in the best way that they knew how to actually affect change in the society that they saw. I know.

I kind of miss that level of accountability. Like in some sense, I do think that it got perverted where like you had especially other like white people just kind of being like, what is the meme? It's like, I'm a non-binary teen or I'm a 14 year old like non-biased. like non-binary minor or something, like, you can't bully me or something. Of course, there was some of that. But as you mentioned, it was this sort of like collective effort to hold people accountable. And it sucks that I feel like a lot of it ended up, like, this idea of progressivism, awogism, got wrapped up in conservatives kind of mischaracterizing that as like cancel culture. Because when I think of 2020, I also think of like peak like cancel culture.

And really what so much of quote unquote cancel culture was was actually people for the first time ever being held accountable for like really abhorrent behavior and actions. Yeah. Not even just people. It was like brands and corporations because that never happened. People sometimes would be called out, especially during the Me Too era of 2017. Like there were people being held accountable or trying to be held accountable. But brands almost never face accountability for the actions that they cause.

I think a good example that is like H&M when they had like a black kid wearing like a monkey on their shirt and people were like, that's weird. Why is this even happening? And so you saw a lot of backlash with H&M for even doing that in the first place. And I think like a lot of people saw that. that and contribute that to like cancel culture as well. Even though like that was like, that's positive. Like you have a, you know, a multi-million dollar brand who is, you know, doing what is

essentially a microaggression or macroaggression to some extent, which is like, you know, they should, they should, you know, at least apologize or take down this, this advertisement or clothing listing. And I think a lot of people kind of miss the actual good parts of what they consider cancel culture because they view themselves in the people who are getting canceled. Because you don't see marginalized people by and large being like, oh, 2020 went too far. They may be like, you know, cancer culture is dumb because of like what cancer culture

the term has become, but you don't see them talking about how 2020 went too far. But that comes from people who may potentially have been the subjects of the cancellation in 2020 if it was that time again. Yeah, it's so true of just like, I don't know, the rewriting of history. Like one thing that I also think of when I think of of 2020 sort of peak, woke resistance era was a lot of leftists actually having solidarity with like marginal people for the first time. Like, I do think there was that faction of the left, the dirtbag left, whatever you want to call it, where like, that was so focused on sort of just economic

populism. And they did have to acknowledge misogyny, racism, like, all of these things that I think some of those people on the left have traditionally not wanted to acknowledge. And there was just so many, like, infographics educating people on like the concept of intersectionality and things like this that I do think was valuable. Yeah. Leftists like to oftentimes have a very class-focused mindset, which I do agree with in general concept, but a lot of times that kind of leads them to think that fighting against, like, racism or fighting against misogyny is not like their fight specifically. And so I think in 2017 and 2020, that time period allowed them to like, you know, stand in solidarity with, you know, with women, with black people to like, you know, go to protest

and like fighting against police brutality and say like, hey, this is an issue that affects predominantly black people or black and brown people or women. And I will stand in solidarity with them instead of just being like, how can I turn this issue into something that affects me and how can I benefit from it? And so I felt like there was a perfect time where people were actually being centered, like marginalized people were being centered in the conversation, instead of being like the afterthought, the secondary, maybe this will help them down the line in the future. So we have kind of like 2020, all these people are being centered for the first time. Also, I think a lot of leftists had not yet broken solidarity with like COVID and they were still masking, taking precautions. Like, you know, they hadn't sort of drunk up all this right wing propaganda where they're like, actually, screw disabled people.

We love capitalism now and like we're just all going to force everyone back to work. I feel like things started to go off the rails in 2021, really, and then 2022. When Biden took office, the first year of his presidency was so dominated by undoing all of the social safety net that had expanded in 2020, forcing everyone back to work. And just encouraging also everybody to like think of themselves as the main character and like not have solidarity. Yeah, I definitely think that that's a huge part of it because I think with COVID, everybody kind of going through the same, you know, situation.

Like, everybody knew that, like, they were all, you know, either off from work or off for school. When they went out, they knew that other people were going through the same thing as them. And so I think people kind of crave the normalcy of being back to, like, how things were in the past. And so that craving for normalcy caused them to crave the same normalcy that caused the, you know, anti-SJW backlash that happened under Trump One. Like, I think people kind of culpled the two together. They coupled COVID with wokeness and then anti-SJWB, behavior with normalcy. And they were getting tired of COVID and they wanted COVID gone. So they

wanted wokeness gone. And they wanted normalcy back, which means that they kind of crave, even subconsciously, the same anti-SJW sentiment that existed pre-COVID. Yeah, I think that's such a perfect way to put it. And you saw Biden kind of like lean into this a lot and lean into this idea of like return. I mean, he's such an old evil man. Like his whole thing, obviously, it wasn't exactly make America great again. But it was about sort of like returning politics to this earlier time, you know, when he could pass the crime. bill, I guess, without any sort of backlash. And it wasn't a forward-looking campaign at all.

And so much of it was also just about like taking things away, forcing people back to work, taking away benefits. In 2021, we also saw the rise of the phrase, let's go Brandon. In September 2021, there was this sporting event when this guy and many others were chanting Joe Biden. But when TV news covered it, a local station misinterpreted this as let's go Brandon, which was essentially they were claiming was in support of Joe Biden. This immediately became a meme online.

And very quickly, like, Biden and sort of mainstream centrist Democrats tried to leverage this phrase, where they sort of started to like take this maga phrase and repurpose it and almost like sort of like lean into it and reappropriating this idea of like dark Brandon or Biden sort of like being this kind of like badass figure, kind of like Trump. I remember seeing all the memes because I used to work with,

we're very much into like the dark brand and stuff. They were like, you know, Photoshop, Joe Biden, with like the laser eyes and like they try to portray him as like strong man that you know magas portrayed trump but it doesn't really work because biden his whole persona was like an old feeble man who was already holding on by a thread and so it's very hard to sell that to people as like a you know a scary figure which also democrats don't really want a scary figure they kind of want just status quo normalcy and so it was a very hard sell for people but then that was kind of picked up by like the the the left wing part of the democratic party or the leftist as like a i i

ironic posting about those liberals who are doing that as well. I think of these social posts celebrating Biden passing the Inflation Reduction Act, where they were posting the image with the laser eyes saying, you know, another W for Dark Brandon, Dark Brandon, you know, crushing it and posting these memes of him saying, your malarkey has been going on for long enough, kiddo, which is ironic. Because like you said, it's like he's not badass. He doesn't buck the system. He's like the definition of establishment power.

And you even had like also senators engaging in this type of stuff like Chris Murphy of Connecticut, like just posting the meme without even a caption. And I don't know, trying to embrace the sort of like dark MAGA aesthetic, but like repurpose it. And I feel like this was the Democrats like trying to leverage this growing reactionary sentiment online. We're like, I mean, these memes were initially like the whole idea of Brandon and that like calling Joe Biden, Brandon. Like that was initially the far right. That was pioneering that. And I feel like this is one of the earlier attempts that I, saw the sort of like mainstream democratic establishment try to take something from the far right

and be like, oh, maybe we can use this. Like, isn't this what Trump does? Like, doesn't he take bad things and like use them? So like maybe we can do the same thing. And like you said, it just like didn't hit. Yeah, because it's, it's exactly that. But they didn't understand that the reason why it worked when Trump did it is because Trump is racist.

Like he's, his party is built on doing the actual bad thing. They're built on being bad. And so like them taking the things that you tell, call him and like reclaiming that into something that they actually like works because they're fine with being bad. So if you call them bad, they're like, yeah, we are bad, what now? And so it doesn't really work when they call you bad. And you're just like, well, we don't want to be bad. We're supposed to be the good guys.

It's not really for anybody because the people who like the bad stuff are, they're going to vote for the Republicans anyway. And the people your base want the good stuff. They want like the actual policies to actually help their lives. They don't want the aesthetics of like, you know, scary politician. Yeah. And also Biden himself, like, couldn't pull it off. Like, he, I mean, he tried to joke about it.

at the White House Correspondence Center. His social team, I imagine, it's not him because he could barely use the phone at this point, but in early 2024, like, posted the meme after the Chiefs win and tweeted, like, just like we drew it up as if, like, he's some mastermind. And like he said, it just falls so flat because he's actually the definition of the people

that are pulling the strings behind this power structure. So you did start to see the beginnings of this idea of like dark woke, where it's like, let's lean into MAGA aesthetics or MAGA language or sort of to take things from these right wing spaces and try to like leverage them. The first posts that really used dark woke and sort of mainstreamed the meme was back in 2022.

This guy, Professor Roy Hinkley, who's a PhD, posted, we turned the hashtag maggot and Q&ON on use of Brandon around with dark Brandon. Suddenly the phrase, let's go Brandon seems to have disappeared from all but huge four by four trucks. Let's do it again. I'm not only woke, I'm hashtag dark woke. First of all, like, even

the hashtag MAGAT, which like, I feel weird even saying because it sounds so close to an actual slur feels weird. And like that appearing in like the first post that really went viral like mainstreaming this idea of dark woke, like it's like they're already basically trying to say slurs. I think people were already kind of there because you did have a again, a third back left, like a small subject of the left that were okay with like towing the line between reactionary sentiment and like economic populism and like, but that was like a fringe side of like the like left wing movement, even in like leftist circles, like the people who engaged with that

content were already considered fringe, but now it's like kind of sitting into the mainstream by liberals now being like, oh, this was a thing that people did. Let's just keep doing this again. And that kind of explodes into what we see now as like dark woke. Yeah, I feel like, I mean, this is back in 2022. I feel like it's sort of escalate. Maybe falls back a little bit down when like Joe Biden is sidelined and then Kamala Harris comes around and we had like coconut pilled, you know, DNC memes like leaning into that

for a while. But then Trump wins. And I feel like Trump's win, especially because he won the popular vote, was seen as this like affirmation of reactionary culture where it was like, you saw even like the New York Mag like cruel kids cover and the media talking about like, okay, the right has achieved cultural dominance. Like we're back. Everybody can say slurs again. We've undone all the past several years of progress, decade of progress and like made America great again or whatever. And I feel like this is when you start to see like liberals and leftists like really kind of not know how to navigate. navigate it. And I mean, I started to see a lot of the dark woke hashtag really emerge first in like representatives responding critically and sort of like honestly fighting back. Like I think people were so desperate for anybody to fight back because the Democratic Party is so impotent that like when AOC replied to lives of TikTok, lives of TikTok was reposting something about like Trump and this and stuff. And AOC replied like cry more and that went really viral or Jasmine Crockett who is sort of known for like these clapbacks online and like people would be like, dark, woke, like, we're done with civility politics, you know, like we're, we're sort of, quote,

treating MAGA the same way that they've been treating everyone else. There is one tweet from an account called Dark Wokeness that became popular posted right after the election last year that said, for a moment, wokeness was beautiful. We almost did it. Oppression for oppressors. But we're all oppressors. It's in our species DNA. So naive wokeness could never work.

Only dark wokeness could work. It always comes down to the same thing. millions must die. Just like, what? I've never seen that before. That's insane. According to know your meme, this was like a pivotal, like, tweet, I guess. But I did definitely see a lot more like accounts that I would say are of dubious origins

leveraging dark woke. Like these sort of no name accounts that I believe are probably right winged posters leaning into it. And just democratic establishment people, I think wanting to be a little bit more reactionary. Yeah. I think what you hit on a nail on the head when you said that like people just didn't really know what to do after Trump won. I think for the establishment of Democrats,

the problem is that they just didn't have an answer. They don't have an answer to the rising of fascism because they enabled it. And so when Trump won, like, they're like, oh, our toolbox is empty. We don't really have anything to do. And so they started chasing young white men and they're like, how do we get that? They started throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. They tried clapping back. They tried throwing trans people under the bus.

They tried doing all of this during the election cycle as well. And like none of it really stuck. And so now they're kind of like floating lost in what do we do under Trump. Just when you see a lot of Democrats throwing their hands up being like, we lost. Like, even Hakeem Jeffries a few weeks ago was like, no, he has all the power. Like, Trump's going to do what he's going to do. Like, what do we do, you know? It's like, dog, you're the guy. You're the person who's supposed to know what to do. But they just didn't have an answer to Trump. Because they don't have an answer.

They're just like, you know what, why not just do what bad guys do it? Why not just adhere to reactionary sense of it? Why not just go back to like the name calling and the the yelling and stuff that worked for them because it will work for us? Which is just like, for like the leftist side of it, I understand that the leftists don't really have that much power. But like, the establishment Democrats, you have the money, you have the backing. You could just offer policies to people. that gets them to actually, you know, want to vote for you and support you. And then you would, like, win elections and then it wouldn't be a problem anyway,

but they don't want to do that. So they need another answer. And that other answer is, like, dark woke. Which is just reactionary politics sort of reframed. I mean, when I think of, like, the most quote, unquote, dark woke politician, obviously, I think Gavin Newsom, like, he has the one that has really embraced this online strategy and, like, really leaned into it. And then, of course, there's other big YouTubers like Kyle Kulinski and others.

But in terms of, like, people with institutional political power, like, Gavin Newsom, I think, has really embraced it. I mean, he's been doing all this, like, AI posting. He shared some sort of like dark woke music video trolling Trump and J.D. Vance. And as you said, it just like rings really hollow. He could present policies. But at the same time, I don't know. I mean, his social team seems to be doing well. He seems to be popular online. So, like, is it resonating with some audience? Like, do you think this is the way to reach young men? I mean, I think it's resonating with the people who want to say slurs. Like, I think the people who, like are already reactionary and don't feel the need that they want to change anything.

I think it does resonate with them. But I don't think it has the material like benefit that I think a lot of people want to pretend that it does. And so I think people, I have this conversation about Gavin Newsom a lot because people are just like, he's actually fighting back. And I'm like, not really. No, he's not. Like Gavin Newsom was like hiding in his office when ICE was like patrol on the streets of

LA. But Alex Padilla, who was like the senator in California, actually went and interrupted Christine Ome's press conference and got himself like handcuffed. And so like that's like more than Gavin Newsom was doing. But he's not seen as a fighter in the same way because he's not like tweeting at all caps on Twitter and posting like AI memes about why Trump is bad. And so I think people like the aesthetics of a fighter instead of actually people who are making material change. And I think it's because people are they're lost. They don't have any guidance because our leaders are posting AI memes instead of actually being on the ground.

Well, it's weird because even like when people do fight back, it's sort of seen as cringe. Like, I mean, I see these people that are like activists that are still trying to do legitimate social justice work in 2025. and people will be like, we left that in 2020. Like, we're dark woke now, you know, which is so depressing because it's like, okay, but you're just adopting the language and the aesthetics of fascism and reactionary politics to do what?

Like, to what? To amass power. And then you're going to be woke again? Like, what? Like, it seems like such a backwards, circular, ridiculous logic. Yeah, I think it's because people like that just don't have any intellectual curiosity. They can't imagine, like,

building a better world outside of electoralism. And so when the Democrats lost election in 2024, They were like, well, that's nothing we can do. That's it. And so I think that was frustrating to them. And so they've essentially given up. Even though people are doing work on the ground right now in their communities, there are community resources, their community centers where people are actually

meeting with each other and doing mutual aid and providing resources to each other. But like, they're not there. They're on Twitter. And they're crying about how there's nothing we can do. We must post memes because that's how we end fascism. Because they don't have that same sort of like community centered approach. Yeah. It's interesting to me.

quickly, like, people on the left, like actual leftists and centrist, like, sort of are expressing this same ideology of, like, throwing marginalized people under the bus where, like, mainstream centrist Democrats are like, yeah, you know, we just have to ignore these divisive trans issues and whatever, as Rukline said, like, you know, run anti-choice candidates, forget abortion, you know, to win. And then people on even further to the left, I think, have embraced that too, where they're like, yeah, yeah, it's actually lame to have solidarity, you know, with marginalized people. That's corny. and we should be able to say slurs because, you know, I want to say that online and you're a triggered lib if you care about that sort of thing. Where it's like in both cases across the political spectrum on the left, it's like basically all of that resistance is predicated on fucking over marginalized people.

Yeah. I think the base sees what happened 2020. Like they got Joe Biden elected and then Joe Biden kind of abandoned them. They were like, oh, so we did the woke stuff and the woke stuff led to nothing happening. So therefore the woke stuff is bad. We must have a new strategy now. And they don't understand that in doing what they're doing now, they're leaving behind those marginalized people. And they're not fighting for them in the way that they should be.

Because at the end of the day, they weren't affected by really any of it. They used BLM and Me Too and trans rights as a avenue to push for policies that would help them specifically. And when that didn't come from fruition, because nobody was helped because the Democrats don't care by any of that. They were like, okay, well, fighting for marginalized people didn't help me. So let's just try the racism. Let's just try the reactionary sentiment. because maybe that will help me. Maybe that will benefit my life in the way that I wanted to be benefited.

And so they are totally fine with throwing marginalized people under the bus so long as they get to an avenue of potentially helping them out in the future. Yeah. I think also what you said is so true of like people associating that activism in 2020 culture with early COVID and like the trauma that people experienced during the early days of the pandemic and kind of just like wanting to reject all of it. I mean, I think this is why you see so much anger when people wear masks like from leftists where like they're like, oh, you know, you fucking cuck, loser, triggered, live, whatever.

And it's like, what? Like, clearly there's some sort of like emotional, like, sort of resistance to it. And I do think a lot of these people never had solidarity to begin with. Like, if you are that eager to say slurs, that the minute there's sort of some vague, like, conservatism, like, resurgence in culture that you're like immediately just like, great, I can say the R word again or I can say that N word again even using a soft A. Like, you kind of probably didn't have that much solidarity to begin with. Honestly, I don't think they had solidarity to begin with.

I think a lot of them, a lot of people forgot this because COVID was a lot of stuff going on. A lot of people even left this were partying early COVID. Like, COVID was a thing that we all understood now for the first like, you know, four months, like, this is probably not good. We should probably fix this pretty soon. They were out partying. And they were defending people who were partying by being like, oh, well, you can't get in the way of people's living their lives. You know, like people were called puritanical for saying, hey, maybe you should mask and social distance

and stay six feet away from people. Like, that was called like puritanical culture. and I think a lot of people kind of pretend like they weren't doing that at the time. And so the people who were doing that at the time are the same people who are now okay with like saying slurs because it's like, oh, I'm saying slurs to dunk on a black conservative. I get to call them, you know, whatever slur I want to call them because they're a conservative. So they should be okay with that.

I can say slur is talking about like a trans conservative because they're trans with also conservative, so who cares? And so I think that these are the same contentious of people that have just not been forced to record with the fact that they actually don't care about marginalized people the way that they claim to, and they've just kind of just been elevated to, like, the voices in the space without having to interrogate their own beliefs. Yeah, and this dark woke politics, too, it's like assuming these people get power. Say Gavin Newsom gets power with his dark woke bullshund or whatever, which,

hopefully not, but whatever. I don't think that he's going to turn around and have solidarity with these groups. Like, I think that, like, that tradeoff will be seen as a success where people will be like, see, look, you know, trading off and saying slurs and, like, leveraging this more sort of conservative reactionary culture is good. And really, you've just made the left more conservative and reactionary. I kind of like what you're saying before. It's like now you've moved the left further towards conservatism instead of trying to move people away from reactionary politics and conservatism.

Yeah, but they're hoping that that conservatism that they move people towards or that reactionary, like, sentiment is just a class-focused reactionary sentiment as opposed to like one that actually benefits marginalized people. So they're like, if we get universal health care by somebody who's like dark, woke intending power, that's good for me. Even if that comes at the back of like trans issues or black issues, like, well, we have universal health care. So like that helps everybody. This we have a conversation about universality. Like, okay, well, like, if we do these things and if we sell out these communities, but we also do things that help those communities and help them, they don't say that part,

but they and help them, then like it's all for the best. So they think that like the ends justify the means, even if those ends don't serve the people who it's supposed to serve and the means actively harm those same communities. I mean, I just think, and I guess maybe this is the argument of like, is it successful or not, I don't think that that's successful and I don't think that you have to do that. And I mean, a lot of people have pointed to Zoran as an example of this, right? Like, Zoran is not saying slurs. Zoran is not throwing people under the bus.

He's done multiple, you know, ads and videos and stuff all about trans rights. He's not as great on disability justice as I would like. But like, you know, he's not going to take away our health care or like ban masks or do things like this. And like, and he has enormous cultural relevance, you know, by not being a complete out of online. Yeah. And he's actually going to, I think Zeran is a good example of like what you should be doing by like not. selling out the communities that you claim to care about in order to garner power. Like he went and he's talked and spoken to these communities directly and he's not saying,

hey, your issues are going to go on the back burner so that we can focus on getting health care or even like, you know, making groceries free or buses free or whatever. He said like your issues do matter, so I want to speak to your issues and speak these other issues as well. It was not an either or is not a zero-sum game for him, but a lot of people do view it as a zero-sum game because they view helping marginalized people as losing like the way. white populist vote. If they're like, oh, if we give black people stuff, then the white races are going to be mad at us and we won't be able to garner power because they view

power as like a structure or a contingent of whiteness. And so they are fine with selling out black people or black and brown people or women or marginalized people in general to garner that power. And they're just telling us marginalized people like, hey, just wait a second. And once I get the power, I promise I'll help you out. You know, historically, that has never been the case. Yeah. I also think of just like the harm that like, like, saying slurs or doing reactionary things like engaging in this reactionary politics does, like, which is material harm. Like I'm thinking of the reaction from a lot of leftists and even people in like liberal spaces

to about this account thing on Twitter, which rolled out a couple weeks ago where like basically they showed that a lot of these right wing MAGA accounts were based in India or Southeast Asia or Africa, basically poor countries where people are just trying to make a buck by like promoting, you know, right wing rhetoric to Americans. And you saw people just openly posting the most racist. like 4chan memes about it because it's dunking on MAGA. And it's like, okay, but now we've like normalized like really racist like 4chan memes all over. And that is harmful.

Like that does harm to, I think, to our discourse. I think a lot of people don't understand that they're doing the exact same thing that they're criticizing those accounts for doing, which is weaponizing reactionary sentiment to garner the support of the MAGA base and hopefully somehow profit off of them or convert them to be leftist or whatever. They're doing the exact same thing, which is both, the problem with both of them is not that like, the accounts are making people more right wing. That's part of the problem,

but it's also because it's the normalization of that sentiment. And something that we see often is you see right wingers who are converted to being leftists, and so technically they're leftists, but they get to the left and they're still saying slurs. They're still, you know, hard and marginalized people. They still hold harmful beliefs about marginalized people. And now that they're a leftist,

there's no reason to convert them or change their mind because if you do that, you're doing wokeness, right? You're a wrecker. You are standing in the way of progress, because the progress of them is just how many, numbers is next to like the left symbol in the census or whatever. It's not about actually helping or solving the problems of marginalized people. It's just more people calling themselves leftists.

Even if those leftists are still being racist. Yeah, exactly. It's like, okay, we have more people labeling themselves as leftists, but fewer and fewer people espousing actual leftist ideology or doing anything to help, yeah, as you said, marginalized people. What you would understand is you're going to see marginalized people who are supposed to be in community with like the white leftists leave the leftist space. because the leftist space becomes more hostile to them.

And now you see an issue with people being like, why are like black people less progressive or why are the less black people in the DSA? Or why are these leftist spaces more white-centric and less diverse, right? But we don't see the lead up to that, which is like making the space directly hostile to them without actually converting the people who are coming in from like the, the, the MAGA base, which is why I think that that's a, that shouldn't be our focus regardless. Yeah. Do you think like the concept of like woke and like wokeism and I mean obviously we've talked about the problems of like dark woke but like do you see progressivism coming back or like do you think it has been so sort of conflated with the trauma of the early days of COVID and the like rainbow capitalism of Trump 1.0 that like progressive sort of ideology is done like do you see a path forward. I mean obviously we talked about Zoran but like aside from that like I don't know if there's tons of political leaders. I do see people sometimes saying that they miss woke on Twitter.

But what do you think that sort of like the future holds for the progressive movement and the idea of like wokeism? I do foresee woke coming back just because like I think a lot, I got a lot of hope from the pro-Palestine movement, especially on like online, on TikTok on online spaces. You saw like a lot of pro-Pasline. It's still around. And so I think that shows me that I think people do care about solidarity and staying in solidarity with marginalized people. What I think it requires is for the people who actually have the influence in the space who are overwhelmingly white. That's just because that's just how the internet is. Need to be better in directing that solidarity in a valid and justifiable way,

as opposed to selling out the people who are supposed to be fighting for to only care about converting, like, right-wing bag of it. I think that's been the focus right now. But if we just, you know, take a step back and realize what is our overarching goal here? We want to make the world better for all people, including marginalized people. Maybe we should focus on centering their voices and sattering their needs, instead of like chasing after the crumbs that Trump is leaving. And if we do that,

we can build a better coalition that is to replace the Democrats that can actually fight for marginalized people from whatever the next Trump is. I think it's also just like weeding people out that are responding to marginalized people like, oh, you're a wrecker. Oh, you're the problem with sort of like progress is like the idea that these like marginalized communities

are what's holding like progress back or holding like the leftist movement back because it's like, what are you doing it for then? What are you doing it for? That's the middle of them in the battle that I've been fighting for months. People get very mad at me for saying this. But I think a lot of people have realized in the space that I am in that maybe they do have blind spots and maybe taking a step back and understanding that like marginalized people do have a different perspective and understanding that perspective is important. Because a lot of people think that like the power is held in like the reactionary white right wing base and that the marginalized people don't have any power just why they're not speaking to them.

But also the marginalized people are powerful enough. to push away, you know, entire groups of people is like, is simultaneously the most weak subset of the population, but also strong enough to like kill the progressive movement. And so I think it's a very silly thing, but I think it's more about just like talking to marginalized people where they are and building in communities instead of just like the loudest voices online.

Because those voices online are not going to be represented of like what people actually think and who like actually votes and who actually is in those communities. So like leaving the online space, and going out and actually talking to people is like how you build power. I just hope we can leave dark woke in like 2025. I think it's like a losing game.

The funniest thing is that in 2030, if you have like marginal people who are like yelling at conservatives, you're gonna have the same people yelling at those marginalized people being like, we left yelling at conservatives in 2025. Now it's time to be nice to them. Now you have to love them and hug them because we left that dark woke stuff at 2025. So it's gonna come back again.

Yeah, everything is a circle. I do hope we get woke 2.0 something, something better. I have like some, some hope. And I also hope that a lot of these people that are like all about economic populism realize how intertwined. Like you cannot separate the idea of economic equality from systemic inequality around like race and gender and disability and things like that. They will try, but I agree. Well, Sean, thank you so much for chatting with me today.

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