These would become mascots not only of the companies using them, but of the unchallenged neoliberal economic system with its socially unjust order itself. For the economically weak, the equality of these minorities would thus become indispensable to the maintenance of this economic system; the minorities would be seen responsible for the losses of this system. By 2025, conservative commentators such as Rod Dreher and James A. Lindsay had begun using the term “woke right” to characterize far-right beliefs as a mirror of the far left.
2019: Broadening usage
Political commentator Jonathan Chait has described paleoconservative commentator Pat Buchanan, who criticized the liberalism of the Obama era in a way that prefigured Trumpism, as the “godfather” of the “woke right”. Linguist John McWhorter writes that semantic broadening of the term “woke” resulted in a shift in its meaning to “a conspiracy-focused and punitive orientation to social change”, regardless of left–right orientation. The term “woke right” has also been used by pro-Israel sources to describe American conservatives who became increasingly critical of Israel during the Gaza war. Beginning in the first presidency of Donald Trump, commentators from the alt-right, religious right, moderate liberals, and libertarians have attacked “woke” ideas and the “woke mind virus”, a phrase popularized by Elon Musk, as existential threats to American society. Trump stated in 2021 that the Biden administration was “destroying” the country “with woke”, and Republican Missouri senator Josh Hawley used the term to promote his upcoming book by saying the “woke mob” was trying to suppress it. Following the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, the phrase stay woke was used by activists of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement to urge awareness of police abuses.
Woke is an adjective derived from African-American English used since the 1930s or earlier to refer to awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination, often in the construction stay woke. The term acquired political connotations by the 1970s and gained further popularity in the 2010s with the hashtag #staywoke. Over time, woke came to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism and denial of LGBTQ rights.
Within the decade of the 2010s, the word woke (the colloquial, passively voiced past participle of wake) obtained the meaning what does hawkish mean ‘politically and socially aware’ among BLM activists. Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, used the phrase “stay woke” as part of a spoken afterword to a 1938 recording of his song “Scottsboro Boys”, which tells the story of nine black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931. By 2019, the term was widely being used sarcastically as a pejorative by the political right and some centrists, to disparage leftist and progressive movements as superficial and insincere performative activism. The terms woke-washing and woke capitalism later emerged to criticize businesses and brands who use politically progressive messaging for financial gain.
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During the 2022 Australian federal election campaign, both Scott Morrison, then-prime minister and leader of the centre-right Liberal Party, and Anthony Albanese, the subsequently elected prime minister and leader of the centre-left Australian Labor Party, insisted they were not “woke”. During the run-up to the 2024 general election, the governing Conservative Party attracted criticism for attempting to create a culture war based on the woke concept. While promoting her book The Abuse of Power in 2023, former Conservative prime minister Theresa May declared herself to be woke, in the sense of “somebody who recognizes that discrimination takes place”.
Linguist Ben Zimmer writes that, with mainstream currency, the term’s “original grounding in African-American political consciousness has been obscured”. The Economist states that as the term came to be used more to describe white people active on social media, black activists “criticised the performatively woke for being more concerned with internet point-scoring than systemic change”. Perry Bacon Jr. suggests that this “anti-woke posture” is connected to a long-standing promotion of backlash politics by the Republican Party, wherein it promotes white and conservative fear in response to activism by African Americans as well as changing cultural norms.Such critics often believe that movements such as Black Lives Matter exaggerate the extent of social problems.
In the mid-2020s, a number of political commentators also announced the appearance of a “woke right”, meaning supporters of right-wing views using cancel culture and similar tactics used by left-wing activists to enforce conservative beliefs. During the 2014 Ferguson protests, the phrase stay woke was popularized by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists seeking to raise awareness about police shootings of African Americans. After being used on Black Twitter, the term woke was increasingly adopted by white people to signal their support for progressive causes. The term became popular with millennials and members of Generation Z. As its use spread beyond the United States, woke was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017. The term woke became increasingly common on Black Twitter, the community of African American users of the social media platform Twitter. André Brock, a professor of black digital studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology, suggested that the term proved popular on Twitter because its brevity suited the platform’s 140-character limit.
Woke
Doves typically believe that lower rates will stimulate the economy, leading to an increase in employment. While these policies can reduce inflation, they might also slow the economy and raise unemployment, sometimes even causing deflation. Scholars Michael B. McCormack and Althea Legal-Miller argue that the phrase stay woke echoes Martin Luther King Jr.’s exhortation “to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change”.page needed In the 2025 Australian federal election campaign opposition leader Dutton stated that he wanted to rid the schooling and university system of “woke” policies.
As a result, consumers become less likely to make large purchases or take out credit. The lack of spending equates to lower demand, which helps to keep prices stable and prevent inflation. If the relative inflation rate in the home country is falling relative to the inflation rate in a trading partner, the exchange rate should adjust to keep prices in line with the dollar appreciating relative to the trading partners. As the home currency strengthens, imported goods become cheaper, which can negatively affect local manufacturers. Simultaneously, domestic exports become pricier for foreign consumers, harming local manufacturing.
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Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States. Inflation hawks focus on controlling inflation through higher interest rates, prioritizing price stability over short-term economic growth and employment. This strategy may deter borrowing and spending, potentially leading to deflation and higher unemployment.
- According to French sociologist and political scientist Alain Policar fr, woke originated from African American communities to describe awareness of social injustices and has been used pejoratively by French politicians from the former republican left, the right and the far right to label individuals engaged in anti-racist, feminist, LGBTQ, and environmental movements.
- In economic discussions, “hawks” are policymakers focused on controlling inflation by raising interest rates, even if it affects growth and employment.
- While they make it less likely for people to borrow funds, they make it more likely that they will save money.
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According to Charles Pulliam-Moore, the term began crossing over into general internet usage as early as 2015. The phrase stay woke became an Internet meme, with searches for woke on Google surging in 2015. By the mid-20th century, woke had come to mean ‘well-informed’ or ‘aware’, especially in a political or cultural sense. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest such usage to a 1962 New York Times Magazine article titled “If You’re Woke You Dig It” by African-American novelist William Melvin Kelley, describing the appropriation of black slang by white beatniks.
- In the 2025 Canada federal election, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre weaponized the term in his campaign, characterizing “social justice advocacy as an authoritarian threat”.
- Beginning in the first presidency of Donald Trump, commentators from the alt-right, religious right, moderate liberals, and libertarians have attacked “woke” ideas and the “woke mind virus”, a phrase popularized by Elon Musk, as existential threats to American society.
- In Switzerland, members of the youth wing of the right-wing populist Swiss People’s Party have criticized Swiss bank UBS for its diversity policies, calling them “woke”.
In economic discussions, “hawks” are policymakers focused on controlling inflation by raising interest rates, even if it affects growth and employment. This hawkish stance emphasizes inflation stability over short-term economic gains, contrasting with “doves,” who favor low rates to boost activity. This exploration compares these monetary philosophies, showing their influence on central banks’ efforts to balance economic growth and inflation. In a survey by YouGov, 73% of Britons who used the term said they did so in a disapproving way, 11% in an approving way and 14% neither used it in an approving or disapproving way. Columnist Zoe Williams writes in The Guardian that public discourse around cycling has become “the perfect microcosm of the wokeness split in all its forms”, with anti-cycling voices portraying cyclists as a “lunatic fringe”.
Although the term “hawk” is often levied as an insult, high interest rates can carry economic advantages. While they make it less likely for people to borrow funds, they make it more likely that they will save money. The opposite of a hawk is known as a dove, or an economic policy advisor who prefers monetary policies that involve low interest rates.
At eight annual meetings, a group from the Fed examines economic indicators such as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the Producer Price Index (PPI) and determines if interest rates should go up or down, or stay the same. Those who support high rates are hawks, while those who favor low rates are labeled doves. Janet Yellen, Fed chief from 2014 to 2018, was generally seen as a dove who was committed to maintaining low lending rates. Jerome Powell, named to the post in 2018, was rated as neutral (neither hawkish nor dovish) by the Bloomberg Intelligence Fed Spectrometer. These aren’t the only instances in economics in which animals are used as descriptors.