The Sean McDowell Show - Is “The Woke Right” Even a Real Thing?

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

Is there really a “woke right” or is that label creating more confusion than clarity? In this conversation, Dr. Corey Miller argues that what’s happening in America is downstream from what’s been happening on college campuses for decades. Ideas move from campus to culture, and if we don’t name the problem accurately, we won’t be able to respond wisely. READ: The Progressive Miseducation of America, by Corey Miller (https://amzn.to/49dKaf5) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org   Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

For over 30 years, Point of Grace has shared music, faith, and friendship with listeners across the country. Now Denise Lee and Shelley are inviting you into their circle. Welcome to Circle of Friends. The podcast is Point of Grace. Each week they're talking real life, current events, stories of true friendship, wisdom from God's Word, and all their favorite things. If you're looking for a little company, a few laughs and a lot of Jesus to hold it together. Circle of Friends. The podcast is waiting for you.

Subscribe now wherever you listen or watch podcasts. And Circle Up with Point of Grace. Life Audio What's happening in America is because of what happened on the campuses. Everything moves from campus to culture. It comes from upstream and moves downstream. And so what we're seeing in this cultural revolution has already been embedded in the campuses for a long, long, long time. Why does it matter?

Whether we call something woke left or woke right, why do you think the terms that we use really matter? Because if we don't have an adequate diagnosis, we can't offer an adequate prescription. Is there really a woke right? And why is this question so important and timely today? According to our guest today, it is a big mistake to compare what's called the woke left with the woke right. Dr. Corey Miller is the author of the progressive miseducation of America. And he's here to make his case why the term woke right is a misnomer and why it deeply matters. Corey, welcome back to the show. We had you on telling your story how you grew up in a LDS faith and then became an evangelical, which is amazing.

You and I went to school together way back in the day with our master's program, so it's always fun to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Yeah, so good to be back, Sean. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm super intrigued. You sent me an email and you said, hey, here's a thought for a story. What do you think?

And in the back of my mind, I've wanted to talk about what's called the woke right, because there's been a. ton of attention that we've paid, maybe not enough attention, but certainly some attention to the woke left. And this term has bubbled up. And you brought a perspective to it that I haven't really thought about it. So I'm actually hoping you can help me and my audience think through what this woke right means, why it's growing in popularity, how concerned we should be, and how it's similar and or different from what's called the woke left. But to start with, what interests you in this topic. What's the background that has made you pay so much attention to this? Well, you know, many years ago, after you and I had class together, I moved away, stayed in

philosophy of religion, arguments for and against God's existence for, you know, 10 or 15 years when I went off to Purdue University for my doctorate, faced some hardships there, didn't complete the doctorate because I was told I had too much of a faith perspective. Right at the beginning, I'm taking classes on Marxism from a distinguished. professor of philosophy there. And I saw my classmates and I saw where they went. And I had congressmen calling me up asking for character assessments on some of these guys. These were radicals. And I saw, wow, this is really coming. I studied liberation theology many years before in seminary, but I never thought we would actually encounter it much in America. When I got to Purdue,

and it wasn't just analytic philosophy, but I'm in continental philosophy now, a place where most evangelical Christians don't, you know, focus their attention, I saw something significant was coming down the pipeline. And my interest began to change, in part because of my new position with Rashi-O. Christie and all of the litigation that we are involved with constantly to be on campus across America, to have freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and so forth. But, you know, with that and my understanding more of cultural Marxism, it started to open up a vista of an almost untapped area in Christian apologetics. And then I ran into a guy who was my sort of doppelganger opposite. And that was an activist Peter Bogogian who wrote the book, A Manual for Creating Atheist.

That's right. Forward by Richard Dawkins and endorsed by Michael Shermer or vice versa. He invites me to his atheism seminar at Portland State University to give a two-hour lecture on God's existence and then allows his students to try to take me down. And then we went and had lunch together. It was great. That's awesome. He proposed an alliance. And I thought, okay, this is odd. I wasn't expecting this. But I did know that we both had a similar background and a similar vista in our trajectory. And he said, we need you and you need us. He said, if we go, you go, and if you go, we go. In fact, you're already gone from the universities.

And I remember telling him at that time, I said, okay, I see the sense of what you're talking about. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. We had to partner with Stalin in the early days of World War II. And then at the same time, keeping our eye open on the other person. And he later admitted that, yes, we ruined things. We, him, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and so forth, we always talked and wondered, if we destroy the God of the West, some other God or gods are going to replace it, but they had no idea how bad it would become.

And so when I walked him to his office, I said, Peter, why is your office the only office in the Portland State Police Department? He said, I think it's for my safety from Antifa, the anti-fascists, the Marxists, that are doxing him and endangering him and his family. So a lot of people know the story of him and James Limsey and other people on the grievance studies and how they put forth these fake published papers in leftist peer review journals and had half of them accepted by simply overlaying. contemporary woke or Marxist or new left thought on the surface layer. And it passed muster until someone blew the whistle from the Wall Street Journal and said it's all fake. And so from that time forth, he was now running from the new left.

He being a new atheist trying to destroy Christianity, being a total liberal himself. Now, that liberal atheist and me, a conservative Christian, are now going on a speaking tour together. And we began at Utah State University. Hey, let me jump in here before I talk where he began, because you've probably heard Justin Breyerly, of course, UK apologist, who wrote the book, The Surprising Rebirth of God. In 2018 or the surprising rebirth of belief in God, yeah. So in 2018 or 2019, he hosted a conversation in. Portland. And I ended up being the Christian side of that. And he originally went to Peter Bogosian asking him to be the atheist kind of interlocutor for this dialogue. And Peter at that point,

he said, I'm not so interested in this atheist-theist conversation as I was. I'm concerned with something new. And he started talking about cultural Marxism. So he's the same one who woke up, so to speak, for lack of a better term and shifted the narrative for Justin Browley to go, wait a minute, maybe times are changing from what you referred to earlier, just to give context to people. When you mentioned Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and names like Christopher Hitchens, for the first 10 years of the 20th century, roughly, dominated conversations about God in this group called the new atheists. And the idea was that religion is false and it's bad. It's ran out of justifications. If we just get rid of it, we'll have a blissful, wonderful state. But the way you

frame that, Corey, is so interesting that Peter would say, I'm not sure if Sam or Richard would agree with this or not, but that he said, we actually opened up the door for a lot of this, trying to knock down the Christian God, not realizing what worldview would come in and take its place. That is such a fascinating point you made. So you're going on this speaking tour with Peter, pick up where we left off. Yeah, so we started at the university where Charlie Kirk's alleged assassin began his college career. And we hit four universities in two days. And we got canceled by a Christian campus ministry, ironically, and he couldn't get the atheist groups to attend either because he said they wouldn't lift a hand to help me and Richard Dawkins now. They've all gone

woke. And I followed up with them because I didn't know if he was telling the truth. And he was absolutely right. So we were like this, this odd couple coming together. Our own camps wouldn't show up at the events. And we were just going to be talking about viewpoint diversity and the death of intellectual diversity in the universities. Now, he lost his first PhD attempt. I lost my first PhD attempt. I got told I had too much of a faith perspective and the Marxist professor put a permanent note in my file that I was delusional and schizophrenic. And then when I went on for the second PhD attempt, I defended before a guy who claims to be the first trans UK philosopher in the entire British Isles. And I talked to Justin Breyerly at that time and said, could you get all three of us on?

Peter Bogosian and this guy who is now a gal, right? But anyway, we only made it a weekend. We were going to hit Texas next and hit other states after that. But then shortly after that, COVID hit, George Floyd died, and all of a sudden all hell broke loose across the nation. And the university we ended our lecture at was Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Wow.

for giving viewpoint, diversity, and dialogue, right? And so I just talked with Peter this morning, actually. We were talking about a possible new book on freedom because of where we began and how much things have changed ever since then. So finding allies in the strangest places now is just, it's a really weird thing. You know, we're in a cultural revolution, and that's why you get people like Richard Dawkins claiming to be a cultural Christian, and Elon Musk, a cultural Christian, and Jordan Peterson, an existentialist Christian, and Democratic presidential candidates now on the Republican platform with Trump and Caitlin Jenner, Bruce Jenner, running for the RNC, you know, the Republican governor in California. I mean, this is just crazy.

Our world is different now. We are in a cultural revolution. And so I wanted to figure out what in the world is going on, what kind of revolution is this? And that's where I really set into this trajectory in social political philosophy and thinking from a distinctly Christian position. How do we navigate this now? And we understood what the woke left was. And I was trying to spend a lot of time educating our own people and our own audiences on this. And suddenly this thing, after Charlie Kirk died, it's almost like it burst on the scene. It was already there. Who was?

But now, you know, with people asking questions about whether Charlie Kirk's tactics were sufficient, Gen Z boys, for example. I was interviewed by Fox News and they talked about this resurgence of Gen Z boys coming back to church and back to conservatism. And I said, I don't know. Are they coming back following Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, who are knocking at the door of the churches? Or is it Andrew Tate with his wife beaters? shirt or Nick Fuentes and the Groopers? Or is it the late Charlie Kirk who's now deceased and who knows what's going to happen with that movement? But he was already struggling for what he called

the Lost Boys of the West. Where are they going to land? And the jury is still out on that one. Because the woke right is now a term, but whether or not we should use that term is another question entirely. Okay, that gets us to the heart of what we're in talk about. One of the reasons I wanted in particular to have you on is last week I talked about concerns from the left. And Scott Ray and I from Talbot, one of my colleagues, we reviewed a book about why Christians should be leftists and what he meant was socialist. So we critique that and made a case for capitalism, not that it's perfect, but a positive case that it works as an economic system because so many people have been taken in by socialism for reasons we don't have to.

to go into here. But what I wanted to do is also have a critique of ideas on the right or what's called the woke right that also concern me. And that's why your email was absolutely perfect. Now, remind us maybe briefly before we come to the woke right. This will help set us up. What do we even mean by woke left? Because this term has changed and also can mean different things to different people. And I know you talk about this in your book, but maybe just remind us some of the key ideas of what we mean by kind of wokeism and how that relates to the work left. Sure. And the book title is called the Progressive Miseducation of America. It wasn't the title that I originally chose. The publisher forced that one on me. I had the third revolution from the

campus to the culture and a vision forward. I wanted to show people what's happening in America is because of what happened on the campuses. Everything moves from campus to culture. It comes from upstream and moves downstream. And so what we're seeing in this cultural revolution has already been embedded in the campuses for a long, long, long time. I was talking, though, not about a violent revolution.

I was talking about an ideological revolution and primarily focused on the universities, which is the waters that I swim in. and the publisher decided to change it, so it makes me look now a bit more like my book is about politics. It's not. It's more about ideology and what's happening from the ideas up in the campus are coming down in culture such that today we now live on campus. And so I'm trying to explain to people what is it that this revolution is about? Where did it come from? How did this happen and what can we do about it. And so I basically show that there were two major ideological

revolutions that took over our universities, that we Christians started. The first was scientific naturalism. I won't go into that. A lot of people understand what that is. But that laid the groundwork. The apex of the scientific naturalist experiment after about a century was Richard Dawkins and Peter Bogosian and things like that. And I look at Dawkins as sort of like the Robespierre of the French Revolution who created the guillotine for his enemies, and then he got guillotined by his own guillotine, and now he wants to be friends. This month, on the Salvation Army's weekly podcast, Words of Life, join a panel of believers as they share how scripture has shaped their lives and deepened their walk with God. We pray this

series inspires you to make 2026 the year you dive into God's Word like never before. For me, the Bible has been God's presence around me, giving me strength when I didn't feel that I could have a future, have a path. The Bible has been God's presence right next to me. People refer to the Bible as God's love letter to us. God's Word is not just a book with a lot of stories, but it is our faith. It's our foundation. It's why we live the way we live. It's a singular collection of texts that has made,

more of an impact on plant earth than any other. Listen to Words of Life when your favorite podcast store or visit Words of Lifepodcast.org. So what was coming behind them has done the same thing that they did to the founders of the universities, to the Christians.

And right at the time when the dust was settling in America in the 1930s, and we had to go start our new universities like the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, like Calvin College, and Wheaton and other places. Over in Germany, once again, was this nefarious thing happening, and now we know it was critical theory,

which was a Freudian Marxist sort of synthesis that eventually their leaders came over and they taught in our brightest universities. And then within about 15 years, the founders of postmodernism began, and that was in France. We hear names like Leotard or Derridaugh or Deconstrued, or deconstructionism or Foucault.

All of these guys, when we think postmodernism, maybe we think relativism, skepticism toward a meta-narrative or whatever. But if they're relativists, then it means that their politics ought to be everything from far left to far right. But the surprising fact is that they weren't. They were all Uber left. They were called the new left. They were card-carrying members of the French Communist Party or sympathizers with it.

And so they were taking off from the scientific naturalism, moving in now to the neo-Marxist synthesis, the Freudian Marxist, adding to it this new postmodern witch's brew. So we can go into that or not, but it is this new phenomenon that eventually came over to our universities, and they went into the humanities and social sciences, whereas the first revolution went into the hard sciences. And these guys eventually decades into it started making their move and started kicking out the first guard. And by the mid-1990s, you know, the ratio of liberal to conservative professor was 2.3 to 1. In the last 25 years, it's now 23 to 1 or 27 to 1 for the Ivy Leagues. In some places, it's 70 to 1. at Yale at 78 to 1. And so these are not viewpoint diversity academies at all.

So we need to be preparing and understanding what's coming from upstream is coming downstream. And this is what's pushed out the Richard Dawkinses and the Peter Bogosians and the Elon Musk's and the RFK and Tulsi Gabbards and everybody else into this cultural revolution. we are in an ideological revolution. And so rather than just a simple definition of woke, what I like to do is I like to layer it for you and I as trained philosophers, helping everybody else to see that philosophy is, it's kind of simple. It's three branches. It's what is real.

How do we know what is real? How should we then live based on what we know about reality? Woke is part of epistemology. It's part of knowledge. So it fits right in there. But this whole woke worldview, part of the critical race theory or the postmodern cultural Marxism, it's got a metaphysic, an epistemology, and an ethic, or what is real, how do I know what is real, how should I then live based on what I know about reality?

And so I choose not to define this popular slogan of DEI in that way. I do it D-I, because the D fits in metaphysics. What is real in human relations? The I fits in epistemology, inclusivity, and the E fits in ethics, equity. And it goes in that order. And this will help us understand what woke really is. And eventually, why I think it's a misnomer to be applied to the right. In as much as we've got problems there, we need to use terms accurately and be clear about what we're saying.

because we can't provide an adequate prescription if we don't have an adequate diagnosis. So. Okay, super fair. There's been a lot of books written on this. I actually just got in the mail today, Post-Woke by Neil Shenby, one of my favorite kind of popular level books on this. I know you guys, Roshio, Chrissy did a great pamphlet with him, some of the rudimentary ideas of this.

That's really, really well done. So we talked about what kind of wokeism is here and in the culture, but we had a haven't talked about it on the woke right. And I'm totally up for you persuading me and convincing me not to use the term woke right. I've somewhat adopted it because I've heard it used, didn't really see the harm in it. So before we talk about what's meant by that, why does it matter? Why does it, whether we call something woke left or woke right? Why do you think the terms that we use really matter? As I just said, because if we don't have an adequate diagnosis, we can't offer an adequate prescription.

And the words we use matter. We want it to be accurate. We want it to be truthful. We want it to be helpful. And already it's taken a lot of effort to try to get people to understand what woke itself is. And now if we start applying it in the wrong area, we understand. We understand. up running into a couple of problems. One is this both-sidism narrative. Right after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, there was a lot of sympathy in the country for about 24 hours. And then you started seeing some really nasty language coming out from people who thought of him poorly and thought of conservatives poorly. And the temperature started to raise with all of that. And it was after that that people started to choose sides and push away from where Charlie Kirk was going. And they

wanted to adopt this name that had been given to them called the woke right. But something required a pause. This both sidesism that was happening. was that, you know, assassinations happen on both sides. We have extremists on both sides. Violence is both sides. In fact, political violence happens more on the right than it happens on the left. So you started seeing data sets coming out in the social media showing that on the right, political violence is far worse. Most people aren't going to look that up. They're just going to wonder about it. until you start to open up the hood and see what's under there, they're considering neo-Nazis on the right. And you might think Nazism as a kind of socialism, maybe it should be left.

They've got the KKK on the right. Well, the Democratic Party invented the KKK. They have Islamists on the right. They don't account for a lot of the trans shooters in this category and so forth. So you started to see cherry picking happening with the data and the effect of the both sidesism is that, wow, we've got problems on both sides. Everybody's got extremists. Let's just all beware of the extremists. Now, the reality is that people on the right, not everybody, but those that are conservatives and more deeply, what are they trying to conserve?

And that is their deeply held religious beliefs beginning with Genesis 1-26. people we are made in God's image that's why black lives matter that's why all lives matter that's why liberals conservatives lives matter everyone's matters because god is the sanctifier of human life and um and so you would think it predictable that you're not going to have as much violence on the right um forget just the abortion question is violence even political violence and you start to look at the left and you start to see most atheists vote left they feel most comfortable in that camp. Republican and Democrat, that's superficial. Below that is conservative and liberal or Marxist now. And below that is secularism or religion. Well, those things

should have consequences in the behaviors. And so I think when we have this both sidesism, what happened then is it sort of neutralized the conversation and that there's just bad violence on the left in the right. Well, that's true, but if we can't really diagnose the problem, we can't offer a prescription. And I contend that the violence is predominantly on the left. We have, you know, this notion of, what's it called, an assassination culture now came out of the Washington Post. And when Luigi Mangione assassinated Brian Thomas Thompson of United Health Care, What was amazing wasn't just that he came from University of Pennsylvania as a graduate student and so forth. But how many people in Gen Z were lauding him as a hero?

Yeah. And so you started to see, and then out of Rutgers came this study that showed that 50, 56% of those who claim to be on the left think it justifiable to assassinate president. Trump. And so you're finding all of these other studies that that counterbalance the other side. So that said, the both sidesism, I think is an effect we want to avoid if it is inaccurate, just throwing terms around. The other thing is- Hang on. Hang on before I come to second one. I just want to make sure I'm tracking with you because there's multiple questions at play here. There's the question of like, is the left more violent than the right? Who do we characterize as the left, who do we characterize as the right? And there's the question of should we even call what's on the right, woke right, and the way we call something on the woke left?

Your concern, just to make sure I understand, is you think if we just call woke left and woke right, it leads to kind of a relativistic or a neutral playing field where you say, well, there's just problems on the left and the right and it's all equal. And we fail to show where the problem really lies. That's your concern. Did I capture that fairly? Yeah. Yeah, that's correct. Okay. And there is a distinction. You've seen it made on social media between the left and the new left. The new left is the Marxist left. It's the ill liberal left. Contrary to the old left, those who are liberal. So someone like Peter Bogosian would call himself a liberal. He's the old left, but the old left has been classically liberal, even if atheist. But they would,

would believe, and this is where Peter Bogosian and I, as allies, we adopted Voltaire's statement together, who is a deist. I may disagree with what you say, but I would defend it the death. You're right to say it. But Stalin comes along and says something more like ideas are more powerful than weapons. We don't allow our enemies to have weapons. So why should we let them have ideas? That's the heart of cancel culture. And it is primarily on the left, not just anecdotally in my experience, but according to data, where the cancel culture is rooted in. And it's not in the old left either. It's in primarily the new left. So there is something happening over on the left that has been infiltrated by this postmodern cultural Marxist zeitgeist. It's a worldview that started

outside of America and came into America. And it happened to infiltrate into the Democratic Party more so than into the Republican Party, probably because it was already leaning toward a secularist base. But now you've got this thing happening on the right, which is a reaction to their experienced, people's experiences, their lived experiences on the left. So let me explain that lived experience because that's where woke rests. Okay. So when we think about this in terms of what is real, how do I know what is real, how should should I then live based on what I know about reality, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics,

three branches of philosophy. Diversity in academia means you locate all of these, and you identify all of these identity politics groups, and you formulate them on the two sides of the haves and the have-nots, the oppressed and the oppressors, the victims and the victimizers. And you're either in one camp or the other and you might have multiple intersectional levels of this you might be black and not white woman and not man transgender and not cisgender whatever but everybody belongs to at least one and most people to multiple of these classes and what you do with that at this point is comes next but first this is important it's not just that you've divided a oppressor and oppressee camps, it's the nature, the definition of the oppression is not just

psychologized, but it's also embedded in an entire worldview. I've heard you say on one of your podcast quoting Thomas Sol, Jonathan Haidt says it a lot too, that disparate treatment does not entail disparate outcomes. In other words, inequality entails injustice. and they would say, no, it doesn't. But if you're part of the Marxist ideology, you believe absolutely it does. It's not just oppression and someone being oppressed by someone else. And so that claim being true of people on the right and that claim being true of people every year of... This month on the Salvation Army's weekly podcast, Words of Life, join a panel of believers as they share how scripture has shaped their life.

and deep into their walk with God. We pray this series inspires you to make 2026 the year you dive into God's Word like never before. For me, the Bible has been God's presence around me, giving me strength when I didn't feel that I could have a future, have a path. The Bible has been God's presence right next to me. People refer to the Bible as God's love letter to us. God's Word is not just a book with a lot of stories, but it is our faith. It's our foundation.

It's why we live the way we live. It's a singular collection of texts that has made more of an impact on plant earth than any other. Listen to Words of Life when your favorite podcast store or visit Words of Lifepodcast.org. Every earth year that we've existed, it's a particular philosophy that inequality entails injustice. Always. It's that kind of oppression.

And the epistemology then is that those people who are the oppressed, they have special insight. Once they have emerged with what is called critical consciousness in Marxist thought, it's part of what is called standpoint epistemology or standpoint theory started in second wave feminism by people like Sandra Harding. who applied it first in feminism, but she says she got it from Marx. And so you have a special esoteric knowledge based on your positionality or based on your social location. And you have special insight. So you were once blind, but now you see the other people, they could just listen, learn, and lament because they're blind. The best they can be is be less white or be less male or be less whatever.

But you have special insight. And so we should include, practice inclusivity only for those who are part of the oppressed camps. We should exalt them, promote them, give them platforms, and de-platform or exclude those who are the oppressors. And then what you do next in ethics is if the problem is social oppression, the solution is social. liberation, liberational consciousness, and it is equity, revenge, reparations, payback for however long. Now, what's going on here is these guys ultimately, at least this is what they say. They imagine, for the Beatles song, imagine this utopia, this communist utopia where we're all sharing things in common. There's no more competition. There's no haves and have-nots. It requires a little bloodshed, the, you know, the dictatorship of the proletariat. But after a while, they give it back to the people. The state just withers away.

And we've got this harmony across the land. Their ultimate goal is utopia and equality. It's egalitarian. None of those things in D-I-E are what we're seeing on those who are charged with being woke-right. These people who are, say, white Christian nationalists, if they are out there, and they are, they're not people who think that inequality entails injustice. They think inequality is the right way to go, but they're supremacists. They need to be on top.

Their ultimate goal is not equality, egalitarianism. Their ultimate goal is to have themselves on top and have perpetual, inequality. We don't call the Confederate soldiers woke. We don't call the Nazis woke. They're just white supremacists. And so what's going on here with these people on the woke right is being charged with, well, they're involved in identity politics, you know, white supremacy or Christian supremacy or male patriarchy and imposing their viewpoints on other people? Okay. Their tactics are similar, their methods might be similar, but they're metaphysics, their epistemology, and their ethic, they're not the same. And so while there are similarities, there aren't relevant similarities to provide necessary and sufficient conditions to defining what woke really is and what we've tried so hard to do to get people to understand what this revolution is and where it came from.

People on the so-called woke right don't believe those things. Okay, so let's take this one by one and break this down. I think I'm seeing the distinction that you're making, that you're saying woke left and woke right have maybe some similarities on the surface. But when you go beneath the surface, then those similarities fade, hence we shouldn't use the same terms. So let's start with what you call epistemology. Now, these are big fancy philosophical terms, but it basically just means knowledge. It's a study of how we know things through. testimony through intuition, through science. And when it comes to what's on the, what you call cultural Marxism, wokeism, the way to know something is through standpoint epistemology. That's the term that's used, that if you have certain intersections, so a certain economic status, a certain sexual orientation, a certain approach and understanding of your gender, if you're able-bodied, if you're certain religion. By the way, earlier, you said all of us have at least one.

Corey, I have none of them. I don't think I have a single one. I'm not sure you do either. When I show the chart of intersectionality and my students, I say, I'm actually the face of oppression. I'm not rich, but I live in Southern Orange County. I'm doing fine. So compared to the rest of the world, I guess on some level, I would maybe check that box, just living where I live.

but the point being based on a certain standpoint you have of a category or characteristic you belong to, you have special knowledge and insight because of that, because of my sexual orientation, because I'm male or female, because whatever it is, you're saying that doesn't carry over to the woke right. They don't have the same kind of epistemology. then what kind of epistemology does this group that we call the woke right have and how is it different from standpoint epistemology? The similarities, and I like I said at surface level, they are on the level of the same behaviors, imposing our ideologies maybe, de-platforming in some cases. they are fixated on certain identities, but I want to be careful with identity politics, because identity politics as such was rooted in this Marxist, new left understanding of group

identity being either in the oppressor or oppressed groups. They don't adopt that social binary metaphysics. They don't adopt the standpoint epistemology when it comes to knowledge, and they don't adopt the egalitarian ultimate goal because they might be supremacist in these whites. Okay, let me, let me, let me rudely jump in. I'm trying to grasp what your argument here. So let's come back to they don't adopt the egalitarian. You said they don't adopt identity politics oppressor and oppressed. What I hear coming from is people flipping it and saying, oh, it is the white Christian male who are those who are being oppressed.

and they'll give examples of how they think this is the case. So it seems to me, unless I'm missing something, they're kind of adopting the same kind of framework that's given to them from the woke left, but instead saying, no, it's not black people, it's not straight people, or I'm sorry, it's not gay people, it's not transgender, it's not poor people. It's white male Christians,

understood a certain way, who are the ones who are being oppressed? So why am I wrong in terms of them adopting the same framework, but just switching who is actually the oppressed versus the oppressor when it comes to this woke right? It's the necessity operator in logic. Inequality entails injustice or inequality might entail injustice. What caused the inequality? you know, some studies show, for example, and I've seen you use this, Neil has used this illustration in job employment. If you just give names and they sound like, say, African American or Hispanic names, they might get passed over for some more white sounding name.

Likewise, you could find things on the opposite side, where the Supreme Court needs to weigh in because clearly there was racist admissions hiring at Harvard and University of North Carolina and so forth. So we're not saying that these white males haven't been oppressed or that there isn't oppression among blacks or Hispanics or something like that. There may well be, but that's an empirical matter. We have to go investigate that. We have to look at the facts. But the facts are our hindsight. Those are our second most. If it doesn't fall into the theory, you push it out. The metaphysics simply is inequality entails injustice.

If there's an unequal outcome, it's because it's caused by injustice, full stop. And so someone like Ibrahim X. Kendi, he's not going to be interested in your stats. He's always just going to say there's an outcome, whether it's SAT scores or whatever. If blacks are always down here and whites are always up here, there must be, it's a must, it's a necessity operator. There must be some causal link of injustice, something nefarious going on. Thomas Sull comes along in his book on disparities. Right. And he shows that, no, there's awful, there's an awful lot of possible explanations for inequality.

Sometimes it's unjust and sometimes it's just because of the river. systems or the social policies or whatever. We don't know. All right. Let me, so let me jump in. I wouldn't normally do this to guess, but you and I have friends, we go way back and I'm really trying to understand the case that you're making here. You're saying, so the Wocleth, it's built into their ideology and the worldview from the ground up that these categories mean by definition that there is inequality built in and any sign of inequity, different outcome is proof of the inequalities. So they, so they, that's not a negotiable part. That's not something you have to prove by empirical evidence. That is a starting point. It's a priori. It's an a priori how they

know and understand the world. This woke right is flipping it on its head and saying, no, actually, we're the ones who are oppressed here, but not because they start with the same worldview saying by definition white Christian males, et cetera, are oppressed. They're saying in practice, this is what's happened. So it's reactionary against it. It's almost parasitic upon it rather than the same kind of built-in ideology from the bottom up. Is that fair? Right. That's right. And there are some people like James Lindsay, for example, who was part of the new atheists years ago. He's now a conservative. He's done a lot to educate even Christians and Christian movements. He's an atheist still, right? Isn't he also?

No, he's agnostic now and he's playing with the idea of God. Interesting. Peter Bogosian now wants to call himself a skeptic and not so much an atheist. Interesting. It's interesting to see what happens, you know, in this cultural revolutionary moment. Yeah. Where was I going with that? Oh, man, I cut you off.

Sorry, Corey. Shoot, you're making a point about James Lindsay. Oh, Lindsay, who is one of the biggest educators on this. A year ago, when I was looking at his stuff, he was the one who sort of popularized this notion, woke right. And now every blogger is starting to use it. But even he said back then, I'm not comfortable with the term. And then two months ago, I saw him again using the term. and he said, I use it loosely of the right.

And then today, when I'm reading his material, once again, he's applying it on the surface level of behavior, of tactics, of methodology. He's not going to the deeper philosophical issues. One of my other friends that we've mentioned, Neil Shenvi, is also very careful as a scholar, and he gets in many of the essential ingredients, but he misses certain aspects that I've just pointed out that need to be packed in because they're baked into the philosophy of the identity politic on the left that can't be on the right.

Once anyone does accept that, they're automatically on the left. It's a Marxist left. It's a new left. And so even Neil Shenvey says, if you don't like the term, I understand, maybe use a different term like dissident right or the new right. And so I say, okay, so that we don't confuse things, let's do it. Now, there is another major thinker who's got a book out there called The Case for Christian Nationalism. And that is Stephen Wolfe. He's part of the Reformed Movement.

Not everybody in that movement likes what he's doing. Some people like theologian Kevin D. Young first challenged him on it and asked whether his idea of imposing this Christian nationalism, this white Christian. Christian nationalism. What does it do with the First Amendment, for example? Was the First Amendment a mistake? You know, what are we going to do with the Muslims? What are we going to do with the Mormons? What do we do with the Baptists? And what do we do with the Catholics? Nick Fuentes, who's often said to be one of those on the woke right. Well, he's a Catholic, and America's founding was largely Protestant. So there's a lot of messiness there, but even Stephen Wolfe. He's one who actually says explicitly, I'm going to advocate that we take the principles of critical theory and we make them work for us with a different

starting point to give us the wanted, desirable conclusion. The problem is when you start to read his comments on it, he doesn't understand the essential ingredients going into, again, the metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics either. So we need clarity philosophically from the three branches of philosophy. What do we mean by these social binaries? This month on the Salvation Army's weekly podcast, Words of Life, join a panel of believers as they share how scripture has shaped their lives and deepened their walk with God. We pray this series inspires you to make 2026 the year you dive into God's word like never before. For me, the Bible has been God's presence around me, giving me strength when I didn't feel that I could have a future, have a path.

The Bible has been God's presence right next to me. People refer to the Bible as God's love letter to us. God's Word is not just a book with a lot of stories, but it is our faith. It's our foundation. It's why we live the way we live. It's a singular collection of texts that has made more of it. an impact on plant earth than any other. Listen to Words of Life when your favorite podcast store or visit Words of Life

Podcast.org. What is packed in in the woke left is not what the right is appealing to. Stephen Wolfe is not going to embrace that view on the reality of social binaries. He's not going to embrace the next category or the final category either. So we can call it that, as Lindsay says loosely. we can say we're uncomfortable with it. We can come up with a different term for it. And I laud that and I say, I think we do need a different term because it only confuses an already confusing issue.

Okay, so who falls in this category of what we would call the woke right? And is it similar on the surface? When we say the woke left, there's a lot of different people that kind of fall into that category. Some would identify as Christian. Some would identify more as materialists, even though I know you would argue that the worldview behind it is more materialist with its Marxist roots. But who would be some of the key figures, whatever we call aside for now, the new right, the dissident right, some still referred to the woke right. We've talked about issues of that. Who would be some of the key people that you would place in that category?

I think you would consider someone like Stephen Wolfe, who is reformed Protestant. and you would consider someone like Nick Fuentes, who is Catholic, and he has the followers that are now called the Groyper's. And he's the hottest thing now in social media. Almost no one knew of him. He started out with Daily Wire, trying to get in there. And Ben Shapiro just went scorched earth on him a couple of weeks ago, because when you're speaking to conservatives,

and you use the term woke and you stick that on someone like a dirty sock, immediately amongst a conservative audience there is a visceral effect. And that's the intent is to stick someone like Fuentes. Right or wrong, you stick them with this notion woke that already has a, you know, a negative term, a negative connotation to it. And you get rid of your enemies. And there is a lot going on there with, we could get into this, the whole issue of anti-Semitism, Israel. Israel is actually somewhat central to many of these people that are charged with being on the woke right.

Okay, so let me jump in here. I want to come back to some of Fuentes' beliefs and the appeal, because I think he by far represents what's called, again, the woke. right and it does concern me and I want to come back to your level of concern with that. But let's maybe just let's maybe take us step back and compare and contrast. You said we want to make this simple. There's ethics how we live. There's epistemology how we know. And there's metaphysics what is real. So presumably on the woke side, you would say the woke left what is real is more materialism with its Marxist root. There might be exceptions. but it's more of an atheist, materialist, worldview.

Would you agree with that? Is that what you would argue for wokeism? That's most consistent for it, but yes, it has, as Antonio Gramsci envisioned, you must infiltrate the long march through the institutions, which were academia, media, and ecclesia. Until we get into the churches, the seminaries, the Christian academic societies, campus ministries, we haven't done our job yet. So while it's grounded historically on naturalism, it can be

divorced from that. And that's, I think, what has happened with progressive Christians. Okay, got it, which is a whole other conversation. That's fair. I don't want to put everybody who embraces a kind of woke belief in the atheist camp. That'd be far too simplistic. But its roots, that makes sense. Epistemology, how we know stuff, literally. experience and ethics how we should live you talked about we should if you're not in one of those categories wake up to your contribution to the oppression and become an ally to those who are fighting against oppression that's how we should live let's shift to that to this new dissident right is it possible to put it in similar categories or is it just so broad and

different that we can't simplify it in that same way You can put them in identity categories, but the identity politic or identity power is not going to be the same. Remember, the end goal for someone like a, let's say Nick Fuentes, let's just say he was actually a white supremacist. There might be more reason to think that Stephen Wolfe is than Nick Fuentes is when you get down to their real views and not just their performative actions. in any case, let's say he is really a white supremacist. Well, we don't call the Confederate soldiers woke just because they're white supremacists. They weren't Marxists. They were theists, at least on paper, and they didn't have this idea of egalitarian utopia in the future.

Their idea was that, and they would cite as much Darwinian science, and Confederate theology as it took to convince people that they were superior to blacks, right? So you can have an identity power in this new movement on the right, but it doesn't connote the same thing as the wokeness on the left, which has the necessity operator, inequality entails injustice. Dysperate outcomes always must entail disparate treatment. they're saying we we agree that there should be unequal outcomes that's fully just we're superior they're not they're not in the same category and to complicate things even more you have

foentes for example befriending others that are in the black community that are black supremacists and so talk about the identity politic uh like say a lewis ferrican or you know think about anyone who's a member of the black supremacist movement. It might be smaller than the white supremacist movement, but neither of those supremacists are egalitarian. So they can't technically be classified as woke falling under the categories of D, I, and E once we define the terms in philosophy. Okay, so you don't like the term woke, and I think you've made your case that there's similar practices, there's similar maybe strategies, but the belief system underlying it is fundamentally different. And that makes sense to me. I think I'm with you on that. What would you say to somebody who just

said, okay, or actually, let me reframe that. So maybe we shouldn't use the term woke, but you still are okay with the term right. So we've got kind of the woke left. We've got the dissing it right, the new right. The problematic right. Whatever we want to call them. And, you know, I haven't done a deep dive on violence on the left versus violence on the right, how concern I am with the left, concern I am with the right. I just, I have not personally done a deep dive on that.

But I can tell you some of the stuff I'm hearing Fuentes say and talking with young people on campuses, you know, I teach it, Tao, but I teach a bio, but I'm out speaking on campuses all the time. This is bubbling up and it concerns me. It concerns me a lot. Tell me what you're seen on college campuses in terms of this dissident, right? And what do you think the attraction is for it? Yeah. So first of all, the final chapter in my book is called MAGA and the morning after. And I ask the question, can America be made great again if America is not made good again? And I say, no, America's greatness comes from her goodness. And if we don't reestablish that revolutionary foundation, we're not going to be able to politicize this without violence.

And this is the concern of some of those on the right because they are saying, and the younger generation, and I'm talking to Gen Zier saying this, they say, we thought Charlie Kirk may have been the way. but they killed him. It's not the way. It's ineffective. Not even Trump is the way. The whole thing needs to burn down. Some of them are just anti-GOP. So they're right, but it's not necessarily Republican. As far as they're concerned, let the whole thing burn down and start all over. But their vision tends to be more political. In my estimation, I'm thinking it needs to be more transformation. we need to be thinking about soul-saving, but we also need to think about institutional recapture because the institutions are critical. James Davis and Hunter, who wrote the book to Change the World, says that even when you look back at many of the Christian revivals that were substantial

or cultural revolutions or movements, they may start out among the masses, but they never ever really get traction until they're baptized by the elite. And so my claim is, and the original title of the book, is the third revolution from the campus to the culture and a vision forward. As goes the campus, so goes the culture. As goes the U.S. campus, so goes the world. It's that influential. You can't escape it because everything is coming from campus down into the corporate world, into the churches, into the seminaries, into your closets even. You've got yourself, phones there, and everybody, even if they're not called to go back on campus, needs to prepare for this false, poisonous ideology coming from the campuses because you can no longer escape it.

So when we look at where the statistics are going right now with the young men and the young women on the campuses, the young women are going more progressive. And there is a demographic feminization of academia across the board. Yeah. More young girls are enrolled in college, more girls in graduate school, in PhD programs, more assistant professorships. And within the next decade, more university presidents and full professors, the whole thing will be demographically feminized. That's not even talking about ideological feminization and all that it entails and implications that it'll have for the church. For example, if you're going to college to get graduate degrees, you're going to want to go get a job. for a while and that's going to put off you know baby making and if the women are getting the higher degrees and the higher degrees you have translates into higher paychecks the woman is going to be the breadwinner going forward including in Christian traditional homes what is that going to look like for everybody going forward the men do happen to have a a greater

zest for spirituality right now. But who are they going to? Again, are they following Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan, who perhaps haven't crossed over quite yet? They're not yet Christians, but very close. Are they following Andrew Tate, who's advocating red-pilling everybody, you know, pushing back against feminism in a very unhealthy non-Christian sort of a way? Or are they following someone like a Nick Fuentes. And even if you exonerate Nick Fuentes on his real views and not just the performative views or the clips that people take of him, nonetheless, he's got enough groopers who really are woman haters, haters of Jews, haters of blacks. I've met many of them too. The men, ironically, on college campuses, in our college campuses anyway,

Our groups are dominated by men over women. Men flock to engineering programs. Women flock to nursing programs. Men flock to apologetics more than the women do. So we have an opportunity for these men who are now reacting to a culture that they are so sick of being battered by as toxic, masculine males. The best hope you could ever be is Homer Simpson. And so they are coming back to some conservative routes, but where they're landing, it's competitive right now.

We need to go after them. They're open. There's a crisis of belief that Justin Breyerle might talk about. And it's an opportune moment for us to capture the men. And when the men convert and when the men have families and they take their families to church, the statistics show the kids come to church more often if the dad comes than if the mom comes. So this is a good thing that these men, these young men are open right now. But Nick Fuentes is after Charlie Kirk's young men, and he says, expletive, expletive,

we effed TPUSA. Your young men are following us. They're going in his direction. How many? I don't know yet. None of us do. The young women? We need to, in the field of Christian apologetics and evangelism, we need to find a better way

to reach them, especially on the campuses. And it might be, through a new developing field, we could talk about as rhetorical apologetics. Yeah, we definitely could. But they're the ones that are the majoritarians now. This month on the Salvation Army's weekly podcast, Words of Life. Join a panel of believers as they share how scripture has shaped their lives and deepened their walk with God.

We pray this series inspires you to make 2026 the year you dive into God, God's word like never before. For me, the Bible has been God's presence around me, giving me strength when I didn't feel that I could have a future, have a path. The Bible has been God's presence right next to me. People refer to the Bible as God's love letter to us. God's word is not just a book with a lot of stories, but it is our faith. It's our foundation.

It's why we live the way we live. It's a singular collection of text. that has made more of an impact on planet earth than any other. Listen to Words of Life when your favorite podcast store or visit Words of Lifepodcast.org. In critical race theory, they're not talking about just numeric majority. They're talking about minoritization or majoritarian, the positions of power.

So now women are ascending to, and within the decade, they will be at the top positions of power in all of these universities. And that will have implications. It definitely will. Let me ask you. I have so many questions for you about this. You help me kind of work this out real time.

But part of me, and I know a skeptic would say something like, Corey, why are we putting so much emphasis in the long-term institution of the university? Even Charlie Kirk wrote a book on like the scam of college. Yeah. And you can self-educate today. It would make sense in the early part of the 20th century that the university would be so significant. But now things aren't moving out from the university. They're moving from influencers.

And they're moving from podcasters and YouTubers and, you know, TikTokers, et cetera. So what's the big deal about the university? What would you say to that? It's true, but prestige still matters. The name of where you hail from, where you graduated from, where you work matters. The New York Times has less subscribers than, say, the USA Today. But the New York Times is still the paper of record. That's true.

Harvard, as conservatives, we might disdain Harvard right now. But we still think Harvard is the top university in terms of prestige. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, it still has that kind of cultural cash value. And moreover, it's a chance to change the world. Right now, one in every three world leaders, whether they be prime ministers, presidents, dictators, or whatever, one in three earned an academic degree from a U.S. university. And right now, even with the lower numbers, perhaps going to the university, and maybe the boys are looking at trades more and so forth. Nonetheless, the average of churchgoing attendance today is about 30% weekly.

If you say almost weekly, it's I think 39%, 37 or 39%. But exactly 37 to 39% of people that are age 18 to 24 are enrolled in college. If you go to church every week, you get 52, sermons a year. You get 60 sermons in your first month as a freshman. So who has the ear of the future? And so last month I was with Dr. James Torr, one of the top 10 chemists in the world, top 50 most influential scientists. And on the podcast that I did with him and then in the Sunday school teaching class we did, he said it both times. This guy was crazy. I mean, he came from Purdue. He did his PhD under a Nobel Prize winning Japanese chemist here.

And he went to the same church that I go to now. And so we had a great conversation about this. He knocked on every single apartment door and did door knocking evangelism when he was here. That's the kind of guy he is. When he had kids, he used to wake up every morning at 5.30 a.m. And wake his kids up and do family devotionals. That's the kind of father he is. And he's a super scientist.

but he said this in the podcast. He says, I used to tell people, train your child in the way they should go and when they get older, they won't depart from it. I will not tell people that proverb anymore. When all four of my kids went off to college, two of the four had their worldviews rocked and one has not returned yet. The philosophical subtlety that's going on in the university when the ratio is 23 to 1, 2070, 77 to 1, 70 to 1, 70 to 1 or 78 to 1. no one can compete with that unless we adequately train them. And this is why I say in the end of the book, it's all hands on deck, it's the university stupid, it's still the paper of record. It's still the place of prestige. And whatever comes in the future with AI, with technology, wherever the education

source is located, that's where we want to be. So you're right in terms of podcasting or whatever. because we want to be upstream where the ideas come downstream and have consequences. Good ideas, bad ideas have consequences that make victims. Good ideas have the kind of consequences that transform lives for good and civilizations as well. So wherever that sources, we want to be there, but right now, it's still at the university. And so Peter Bogosian, for example, he joined and he said, let all the universities burn down. And I said, I don't think so. And he said, you know, he started with Stephen Pinker and a number of other people,

groups of people, the University of Austin that was modeled after Grove City and Patrick Henry College in Hillsdale, where they don't accept any government funding. And now certain ones of them have left. It's still pursuing accreditation. But think about it. You start over all over again. And what are you going to have at 10,000? thousand dollar endowment with an Atari computer, you're behind 250 years from Harvard. So I'm saying, yes, let's throw

multiple socks against the walls. Let's do what you're doing, social media presence. Let's do what I'm doing the campus. But I'm also doing something else that I'm trying to build a coalition around. And that is the Malik Academic Fellowship. We are trying to learn from the Marxists about the long marks through the institutions. And we're pumping PhD students getting into top one. hundred institutes. Their whole job is to land a credible, sustainable, durable PhD student-only chapter that after 40 or 50 years, we will be reclaiming through institutional recapture ground at the universities. Al Mueller, I interviewed him. He took over a liberal university. It's now conservative. Al planninga, he went into philosophy and behind him was a beach.

head and awake that transformed the entire discipline of philosophy of religion. The fact that this ideological revolution, number one and number two, have happened two times, shows that it can happen again. So is it uphill? It is. Do we have our work cut out for us? We do. But regardless, everybody must either go back into the universities for institutional recapture or prepare for the poisonous ideology coming out of it because you can no longer escape it. Well, that feels like a mic drop moment to end on, Corey. You've been thinking about this a lot, your book, The Progressive Miseducation of America. I endorsed it. John Stone Street endorsed it. You had a few other people endorse it. Very thoughtful, very compelling, especially somebody

working at a university and a theological school that cares deeply about my university, resonate with so much of what you have written there. I got a ton more questions for you about the woke, right? I'd love to know what folks. listening, what do you think? Do you agree with the assessment here about the woke right? Would you differ and say, no, the worldview doesn't matter if the tactics and the strategy is the same. We should call it the woke right. I'd love to know what people think about this. So comment, put your two cents below. Would be interesting to know. You help me think this through, Corey. It's not often that I bring somebody on and I'm kind of live processing these ideas,

but I think I'm compelled to not use the term woke right, at least in the same way. or without serious qualification as to some of the differences. Over that said, folks watching, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other conversations coming up. You will not want to miss. And if you thought about studying apologetics, we are doing cultural apologetics, which is a lot of what you heard here, and also classical apologetics in our program about the Bible, science and faith, philosophical evidences, et cetera.

Information is that is down below. Corey, as always, enjoyed it, my friend. Thanks for coming on. Same, Sean. Take care. Go team, go God. Hey, friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app.

Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet, and it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, where we have on campus and online programs in apologetic, spiritual formation, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more.

We would love to train you to more effectively live, teach, and defend the Christian faith today. And we will see you when the next episode drops. For over 30 years, Point of Grace has shared music, faith, and friendship with listeners across the country. Now Denise Lee and Shelley are inviting you into their circle. Welcome to Circle of Friends. The podcast. It's Point of Grace. Each week they're talking real life, current events, stories of true friendship, wisdom from God's Word,

and all their favorite things. If you're looking for a little company, a few laughs, and a lot of Jesus to hold it together, circle of friends. The podcast is waiting for you. Subscribe now wherever you listen or watch podcasts. And circle up with Point of Grace.