Political leaders, academic institutions and sports leagues including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the University of Cambridge and the WNBA are attempting to abandon wokism to reconnect with working classes following Donald Trump's 2024 election victory.
The shift follows a period of political correctness that revived the militant logic of the 1960s, where elite athletes knelt during the United States national anthem and progressives asked for preferred pronouns before speaking. The trend has been accelerated by Trump's second victory and the poor economic performance of cultural products that adopted a woke approach.
Democratic Party shifts strategy
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a young radical leader who currently polls third for the Democratic Party's 2028 presidential nomination behind Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris, told ABC News during a recent interview that the first stage of wokism was crazy.
Ocasio-Cortez said that the pandemic appeared to be an opportunity for major political and social changes, which led to overly extreme approaches. She said she no longer believes in woke solutions, starting with the slogan about defunding the police, which she noted the vast majority of Americans consider crazy.
The Democratic representative belongs to a generation of young radical leaders in the US, such as New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, who operate between Marxism and wokism. Ocasio-Cortez is attempting to broaden her appeal beyond urban centres to an entire country with vast rural areas attached to their flag, churches and traditions.
During the ABC News interview, Ocasio-Cortez was asked about Francesca Hong, another radical Democratic party member who made news this summer for walking back a proposal to eliminate Thanksgiving. Hong had stated six years ago at the peak of woke euphoria that the holiday should have been banned in 1621. Ocasio-Cortez told the network that she would eat stuffed turkey with her family like most of her compatriots. The shift is part of the Democratic Party's attempt to reposition itself without losing its base to have a chance of recovering the presidency.
Cambridge University plagiarism scandal
The University of Cambridge has also faced criticism over wokism following the suicide of Jason Arday, a 41-year-old black professor. Arday was an academic star who was discovered to have plagiarised work and lied on his resume about his background.
Arday had exaggerated his autism and his experiences as a victim of racism. He was a media figure who had appeared on Good Morning America, was admired by tennis player Andy Murray, and carried the Olympic torch for the 2012 London Games.
Prior to his death, Arday was preparing a memoir that was expected to become an international bestseller. His life story claimed he went from being a poor, illiterate and neurodivergent child to a successful academic, ultramarathon runner and charity fundraiser. Investigations proved he lied and that those who promoted his university career did so because he fit the mould of their multicultural fantasies.
His academic decline began in 2023 when David Harris, an emeritus professor at Plymouth Marjon University, asked Arday about apparent plagiarism in some of his published articles. Arday rejected the arguments in an email and filed a police report.
Nathan Cofnas, an academic fired from Emmanuel College Cambridge in 2024 for comments on race and recently dismissed from Ghent University on similar grounds, also questioned Arday's work. Investigations by Cofnas and the conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph revealed that more than one hundred passages of Arday's doctoral thesis were copied from another thesis published six years earlier, with only minor modifications.
Tom Slater, director of the digital magazine Spiked, blamed university elites who bought into the woke paradigm for promoting Arday because it looked good to do so. Slater said there are brilliant black academics who are reduced to mere symbols or labelled traitors when they express wrong opinions, while students and academics who do not belong to protected groups are denied opportunities and promotions.
Slater said Arday was a man trapped in a fantasy world, encouraged by people who should have acted more sensibly, and that Cambridge has a lot to answer for, even if it does not have blood on its hands. Cambridge and other Anglo-Saxon faculties are now needing to exit wokism to prevent similar cases.
WNBA locker room debate
The WNBA, the women's branch of the NBA basketball league, held a meeting this month to agree on what constitutes a woman.
The league's collective bargaining agreement states that only players who are women are eligible to play, but it does not specify whether this eligibility is based on biological sex, gender identity, hormone levels or another parameter.
The debate intensified following an interview with Indiana Fever shooting guard Sophie Cunningham, who publicly supported restricting categories and locker rooms exclusively to biological women. Cunningham has gained popularity among the majority of the league's fans for expressing opinions against political correctness.
Adidas created a signature shoe for Cunningham named after her nickname, Crazy energy. Woke forums called for a boycott of the product, but it quickly sold out in stores and is now only available on the resale market for much more than its official 120 euro price.
Cunningham was booed while playing in progressive Seattle and in Canada, an area described as ground zero for wokism, and her name was banned by the platform Reddit because they claimed she attracts too much controversy. She has become the most charismatic player in the US women's league and an icon of conservative common sense.
More companies are viewing wokism as a problem as the movement continues its decline following Trump's victory.
