The Classical Liberal Side of the Anti-Woke Divorce Story
A response to Christopher Rufo and others who think like him
For those who have been following the so-called woke vs anti-woke wars, the divorce between the classical liberal wing and the right-wing culture warrior wing of the anti-woke movement is old news by now. However, just like any bitter divorce, there is inevitably going to be two versions of the events. The culture warriors, who have fully joined up with the postliberal right, have access to well funded media outlets, and are using these outlets to tell their side of the story. The classical liberal side of the story is less often heard, by contrast. This is because we simply don’t have access to media outlets with similarly wide reach.
One thing the postliberal right likes to do is to paint the current political situation in the West as an either-or alternative between choosing them or choosing the ‘woke left’. However, there was actually a time, in the not too distant past, that many of the same people now in the postliberal right actually advocated for an alliance with ‘centrists’ (which are mainly classical liberals) against wokeism, and this alliance was to be (mostly) on classical liberal terms. The so-called Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) was part of this effort. However, ever since the authoritarians won control of the cultural right, they have not only come to abandon this approach, but also blame classical liberals for its failure, because we wouldn’t join them and move to the right. Today, I want to discuss the logical fallacies in their argument, and further demonstrate why classical liberals just can’t be in any alliance with a right that has decided to go ‘postliberal’ in their policy approach. I will start by responding to the recent article ‘Why the IDW Fell Apart’ by Christopher Rufo, who argued that anti-woke people need to support the Republican Party in America, something that I (and many other classical liberals) strongly disagree with.
But now, five years later, the IDW has become a spent force… Consequently, the IDW was overtaken by events. Although the movement deserves credit for pointing out the problem of left-wing overreach in America’s institutions, this critique is now part of conventional wisdom and is no longer sufficient. As I explain in my new video essay, the lesson of the IDW’s disintegration is clear: opponents of left-wing orthodoxy must grapple with the reality that, in a two-party democratic system, the path to reform must go through politics. If they want results, they must be willing to get their hands dirty. -Why the IDW Fell Apart by Christopher F. Rufo
As usual, those on the anti-woke right are ignoring what classical liberals are actually saying and doing. We’re not scared of getting our hands dirty. But we’re not going to do anything that would jeopardize our values. Contrary to Rufo’s opinion, we don’t just critique for the sake of critique. We have a theory of change, and we are putting it into action. Our view is that wokeism is the result of certain bad ideas being able to build up support while evading scrutiny and criticism in the marketplace of ideas, and that by forcing these ideas to be debated in the marketplace of ideas, we can win the argument against them once and for all. This would naturally require an awareness of the roots of wokeism, which is why the critique is needed. We then need to forcefully argue against the philosophical ideology behind wokeism, while showing that social progress via traditional liberal means is both possible and better than wokeism. To credibly deliver this argument, we would naturally have to oppose an illiberal right that would make all forms of progressive social change the enemy. Moreover, our plan can only work when there is a truly free and fair marketplace of ideas, which by definition can’t happen if the state is involved in waging the culture wars for one side. This, perhaps, is the most fundamental reason why classical liberals must unwaveringly oppose the postliberal right.
I mean, look: even the New York Times has absorbed the initial critique of the IDW into its op-ed pages. You see, IDW-style critiques getting published in the New York Times all the time now. They aren’t new, they aren’t fresh, they aren’t transgressive, and they aren’t dangerous opinions to hold. And so, you have a necessity to then go beyond critique into the realm of action. -Why the IDW Fell Apart by Christopher F. Rufo
And here Rufo even accepts that what we have been doing has had an effect, i.e. the classical liberal critique of wokeism is not as hopeless as he says it is. We don’t go from getting unfairly smeared to ‘getting published in the New York Times all the time’ without changing a lot of people’s minds. Even those on the anti-woke right have noticed that America and the West is less woke than five years ago, and a lot of effort has gone into making this happen. Most importantly, it shows that the mainstream center-left (those who read and write the New York Times) is still receptive to our ideas, and we should not give up on it.
In fact, simple numerical logic would show that winning the center-left over is the most effective way to prevent wokeism from advancing, which means the center-left is where our ‘realm of action’ mainly needs to be. This means our program must be palatable to the center-left. To achieve this, we need to be able to deliver some of the social progress the center-left wants. David Cameron’s British Conservative government being able to deliver gay marriage is a good example of this kind of action. Siding with an increasingly extreme right that is reactionary towards all change would only alienate the center-left.
And if you look at what’s underneath all of these three decision points, I think there’s a single theme that was the initial and primary cause of the decay of this idea, of this movement: it’s that the IDW’s value proposition was that it offered a critique. And I’ll be the first to say: it was a brave critique, a brilliant critique, and a necessary critique. But the IDW wanted to remain in the mode of criticism in perpetuity. It had a very clear idea of what they were against, but could never rally around a coherent agenda on what they were for. And as those decisions started to become imposed from the outside because of these external circumstances-Trump, COVID, CRT, DEI-they were forced to make decisions, and then all of those people tapped out and said: No. -Why the IDW Fell Apart by Christopher F. Rufo
Again, while Rufo is accusing us of tapping out, from our perspective, it is people like Rufo who have been tapping out. Any ‘alliance’ between anti-woke classical liberals and the anti-woke right was always going to require that the anti-woke movement remain compatible with classical liberal values. The post-Trumpist culture warrior style of anti-wokeism is clearly not compatible with classical liberal values. There is simply no tent that can be big enough for both classical liberals and the rising postliberal element in the right.
For any alliance or coalition to work, those who join must not be pressured to give up their values. For example, back in the Bush 43 era, the anti-Iraq War coalition included classical liberals, libertarians, paleoconservatives, socialists, as well as much of the general center-left. It worked because none of us had to compromise our values in order to join together to oppose the war. Soon after, a coalition of classical liberals, libertarians, center-leftists and atheists joined together to oppose the religious right, which was running a moral panic campaign around issues like gay marriage. Again, none of us needed to change our values, we just needed to agree that the religious right’s influence on politics was bad.
Classical liberals will never support Trumpism, anti-science conspiracy theories, a fundamentalist Christian approach to abortion and LGBT rights, the DeSantis war on Disney, introducing religion into politics via dishonest ‘natural law’ arguments, and so on. We opposed similar things during the reign of Bush 43, and we haven’t changed a bit in this regard. (Speaking of the IDW and its supporters, it contained some atheist intellectuals who were part of the anti-religious right coalition during Bush 43, which just shows why you can’t realistically expect them to support the Republican Party in its current form.) If the right has decided to re-embrace these things, and indeed double down on them, we will have to join the coalition opposing them, just like during Bush 43. We would have no choice but to do this, for the sake of defending liberty and good order.
Classical liberals oppose wokeism because we are committed to classical liberal values. You can’t expect us to be willing to give up those same values in an alliance with the right. Therefore, it was always that the right was going to have to give up on its authoritarianism, particularly its religious-inspired authoritarianism (those who like to deny the separation of church and state for example). In return, classical liberals would guarantee the free speech rights of conservatives, and oppose cancel culture together with them. There was a brief moment when the right seemed willing to make this compromise, because they were scared of wokeism taking over, and they realized they would fare better under classical liberalism. But then, some in the right had second thoughts (the French-Ahmari debate was the turning point, looking back) and they ended up tearing up the deal. Perhaps when the right returns to its senses and recommits to values like limited government, we can talk about working together to oppose wokeism again. But not before this happens.
Well, again: what is your theory of change in a two-party political system? If you would categorically never vote for Republicans who oppose “woke racism,” who oppose critical race theory, who opposed DEI bureaucracies, how are you going to get the political Left that has staked its fortune on those concepts and operationalized them through every facet of government that it controls-how are you going to get them to walk it back? How are you going to persuade that organized political faction to defeat “woke racism”? You’re not. That’s actually the spoiler to the question. You’re not going to do it. That’s an impossibility. And again, what you see over and over and over: an initial tapping out when the political question is raised, an initial tapping out when you have to actually make a decision, when external circumstances are forcing a decision point, and then tapping out when you have to grapple with the fact that we have a two-party political system. -Why the IDW Fell Apart by Christopher F. Rufo
I think Rufo isn’t quite truthful here. It’s not as if America (or any other Western country) has a woke party and an anti-woke party. While some Democrats are indeed woke, the Democrats are not, as a party, committed to wokeness. There is no evidence that this is the case. It would indeed be postmodern (i.e. using speech for power rather than to discover the objective truth) to say this. From what I observe, this postmodern approach to truth is also increasingly the norm among the faction of the anti-woke movement aligned with the Republican Party, which unfortunately controls most of the ‘anti-woke media’.
In reality, the Democrats, as well as their counterparts in other Western countries, are divided between the ‘woke’ and the ‘normal’ progressive wings. Normal progressives still have a plenty good chance to defeat wokeism and reclaim their parties, and classical liberals should be trying their best to help them out here. Far from ‘tapping out’, this I believe is the most effective strategy to defeat wokeism. Therefore, if forced to choose a ‘theory of change’ within a two-party system, I would rather work within the center-left party.
Of course, we don’t have to choose like that, because there really isn’t a reason why the promotion of classical liberal values needs to be limited by party boundaries. But if we really had to choose, the center-left is objectively more important. Rufo’s call for all anti-woke Democrats to jump ship will essentially surrender half of the American political landscape to wokeism permanently, which would mean handing that movement its biggest victory so far. It seems that Rufo is so dedicated to helping the Republican Party win elections that he doesn’t care about cementing wokeism’s place in politics as a result.
Originally published at https://taraella.substack.com.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who recently published her autobiography The TaraElla Story, in which she described the events that inspired her writing.
She is also the author of the Moral Libertarian Horizon books, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
