New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is no firebrand. Yet as he delivered his school’s commencement address last week, he was booed. Several dozen students even walked out.
These aspiring Jacobins, in other words, wanted to silence an advocate of campus free speech—thereby proving his point. Whatever they majored in, it wasn’t irony.
The gesture was futile, but the lesson wasn’t. The radical ideas on race, “gender” and sexuality known as woke ideology—and the activist intolerance for dissent that accompanies them—might have retreated from their Biden-era apex. They haven’t disappeared. Though woke concepts such as systemic racism, critical race theory and gender fluidity aren’t as visible in corporate boardrooms and the federal government, they remain a powerful force in progressive strongholds, from college quads to Democratic primaries.
This is unexpected. The wave of left-wing activism that swept U.S. institutions after the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 seemed to have receded. A few years ago, headlines announced that America had hit “peak woke.” In 2023 the Supreme Court ruled that race-based college admissions are unconstitutional. A study that same year found a decline in academic research focused on identity and discrimination. Media outlets published fewer articles on “white privilege.” Major universities no longer required job applicants to sign statements pledging support for DEI.
Donald Trump’s 2024 victory confirmed the trend—and accelerated it. Mr. Trump had campaigned against Kamala Harris’s support for “gender transition” surgery for imprisoned felons and aliens in immigration detention. His early executive orders repealed Joe Biden’s equity initiatives, ended racial preferences in federal contracting, and withheld funds from universities that weren’t complying with the Supreme Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence and laws combating antisemitism.
The business community followed. LGBT Pride marketing campaigns were scaled back. DEI programs were shuttered. Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, onetime spokesman for Bud Light, was out; blond bombshell Sydney Sweeney, modeling American Eagle jeans, was in.
Yet looks can be deceiving. Mr. Trump didn’t rout wokeism. He forced it into a tactical withdrawal. Corporations and colleges rebranded DEI programs to avoid legal repercussions. As Washington moderated, blue cities and states radicalized. New York and Seattle elected socialist mayors. Minnesota defied federal immigration enforcement.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom says it’s “deeply unfair” when males compete in women’s sports. Yet his state party platform endorses reparations for slavery and affirms the right of transgender people to select “gender pronouns” and compel others to use them. And every Democrat running to replace him supports free healthcare for illegal immigrants.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger campaigned as a moderate with national-security credentials. Her first act in office was to end state cooperation with ICE. Then Ms. Spanberger began to roll back the state higher-education reforms of her predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin. Ms. Spanberger appointed Sesha Joi Moon, former “chief brand strategist” for Rep. Jasmine Crockett, as the commonwealth’s chief diversity officer and director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. “I feel like DEI is just getting started,” Ms. Moon said on a podcast last year. “You can defund and dismantle all you want, but the work continues.”
It sure does. Mr. Trump’s second term handed Democrats an opportunity to recalibrate on merit, economic growth, energy and immigration. They’ve missed it. Instead, the party has doubled down on identity politics and opened its gates to socialists and antisemites. Racial equity and climate change used to animate the movement. Now opposition to Israel does.
Consider the beliefs of Analilia Mejia, the former Bernie Sanders organizer who won the Democratic nomination in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District. Ms. Mejia wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour, provide Medicare for All and impeach Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. But she saves her harshest words for Israel, which she falsely accuses of genocide. Asked if Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, Ms. Mejia dodges.
She isn’t alone. Attacking Israel unites far-left candidates from California to Michigan and Maine. At least one candidate’s antisemitism is even more explicit: Maureen Galindo, a Texas sex therapist and housing activist, said she’d turn an ICE detention center into a “prison for American Zionists.” So toxic is Ms. Galindo that James Talarico, the Democrats’ U.S. Senate nominee, says he won’t support her if she wins next week’s runoff for the Democratic nomination in the state’s 35th Congressional District.
Mr. Trump’s antiwoke campaign changed policy. But no policy can reach wokeism’s core: the binary of oppressor and oppressed that supplies adherents with moral fervor—directed these days at MAGA and Israel with religious intensity. Mr. Trump’s very presence on the national stage drives Democrats ever farther to the left. The share of Democrats who say they are liberal or very liberal is at a record high. Since 2016, Democrats have viewed socialism more positively than capitalism. Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center asked Democrats to describe what made them proud of America. Among the answers the respondents volunteered: “Nothing.”
Remember the Pew poll the next time you hear we’ve reached “peak woke.” If progressives continue to reduce politics to victims and victimizers and elevate identity and group membership above individual rights, the Democratic Party will remain captive to an ideology at odds with American principles and the American mainstream. The consensus is wrong. Wokeism isn’t dead. It’s very much alive.
Mr. Continetti is a columnist for WSJ Opinion’s Free Expression.
