Woke – it’s a word that we can’t seem to escape.
The comments section on news websites are littered with people being accused of “woke” behaviour for having a progressive view, or even just one that isn’t shared by the mainstream. It’s not just individuals who are considered woke – organisations and businesses are targeted for being allies of everything from Pride Month to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
The Merriam-Webster definition of woke is to “be aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)”. But increasingly wokeness has become a term of abuse and ridicule, just as the term “political correctness” was in the 2000s.
Being anti-woke is now so widely supported online that it isn’t always obvious that it has veered from being an honestly held opinion, to dog whistling, to (at times) a cover for full blown hate speech. Australian extremism researchers have referred to this as a deliberate method used by the far right to engage with online debates about the issue of the day and slowly attempt to introduce extreme ideas with the aim of shifting and shaping the discourse. It comes as intense debate, in Australia and around the world, continues over the removal of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) roles and policies by US President Donald Trump and other prominent political figures.
It is important to note that not everyone who shares an “anti woke” post is guilty of hate speech. Disagreement and a robust exchange of ideas is not a problem and should be encouraged. Freedom of expression and speech are values that need protecting – one person’s differing views, even if they are strongly opposed by another – are not automatically wrong or unreasonable. But anti-woke content becomes problematic when it is weaponised into hate speech and vulnerable communities are targeted, as is the case when the so-called ‘Woke Virus” is used as a shield to engage in hate speech. These posts become online hate, as defined by OHPI, when they attack, denigrate, vilifie, incite hatred towards or incite violence against a segment of society.
In this briefing we provide some examples of how discourse around the so-called Woke Virus is being used to direct online hate on various social media platforms, and explain its connection to Homophobia, Transphobia, Misogyny and Racism. Posts that convey an anti-woke message oftentimes also display additional explicitly hateful views, or they use the anti-woke messaging as a disguise for such views. We conclude that social media platforms should monitor content that is hate speech, and should make efforts to remove it from their platforms, while noting the delicate balance required to protect internet users’ fundamental human rights.
The following post from Gab is in support of Elon Musk, who has been estranged from his daughter for some time. The post is a blatant transphobic attack that dehumanises Musk’s trans daughter by referring to her as “this thing” and accuses her mother of infecting her with the “woke mind virus”. This is a clear example of when claims about “wokeism” are used in conjunction with, and to justify, explicitly hateful ideas.
There is no attempt to disguise the intent of this post and, like many of its kind, it triggers a flood of replies about the “woke virus” which serve to increase the engagement of the original transphobic post.
This next post, also from Gab, accuses the “woke virus’ of being to blame for a number of things that the user claims is wrong with the world. He refers to a woman as a “bull dyke lesbian” and invokes Islamaphobia and Racism when he claims the woman “shits on white people” and turns a “blind eye” to “toxic” Islam.
Discourse about “wokeism” is being used as cover to share blatant homophobia by linking the “woke mind virus” with the LGBTIQ community. The following screenshot is from a video on Bitchute that repeats a familiar claim that LGBTIQ people are making a concerted effort to spread woke “propaganda”. In the clip, then US Secretary of State Antony Blinken discusses how the US Government has used its diplomatic channels to urge governments to “reverse discriminatory laws and practices”. The Bitchute user takes this to be evidence that USAID spreads the “woke mind virus” and has linked this with LGBTIQA rights that they refer to as “propaganda’. This narrative demonises the LGBTIQ community and suggests they are a threat to society.
The withdrawal of funds by the US Government to USAID is increasingly featuring in online hate posts, where the removal of certain programs is celebrated as fighting back against “woke” ideas. Simply being opposed to these programs isn’t itself hate-speech, it is when the discourse is used to target marginalised communities that it becomes an issue. In some online communities, the USAID funding cuts have become a shorthand for anti-woke rhetoric that veers into hate speech.
Found in an X thread about sexuality being taught in schools, this post contains a number of statements that stray beyond justifiable debate. They have directly linked “woke lies” to harming children – a statement accompanied by a claim that gender ideology is an “abusers wildest dream”. The insinuation is that anyone who believes this ideology – and is therefore woke – is complicit in child abuse; a common level of hate directed at gay and trans people.
This post could have responded to the original post in a number of ways, even robustly, conveying the person’s contrasting viewpoint. Instead, it dismissed a group of women and their legitimate views by denigrating them and vilifying them.
This next comment is a reply to news footage of the number of white women with a college degree who oppose Donald trump. In the original post, the results of the poll are dismissed as the “woke virus” and trigger a series of replies like the following that are intended to attack and denigrate women for their political views. This post belittles women and disregards their views by claiming that they are less intelligent than men.
The term “woke virus” or “woke” is being used to signal a strong dislike of a particular cause and is understandably provoking a fierce debate that is contested widely and which illustrates how a free and open internet can operate. But, increasingly, it is being used as a catalyst for people to disguise dog whistling, and also functions as an excuse to share explicit online hate directed towards vulnerable groups.
For example, the following post on X was a reply to a post depicting an anti-war protest in Paris. The original post shows several topless women who have the US flag painted on their bodies along with the words “anti fascist’, as part of an International Women’s Day protest organised by a feminist group and attended by about 120,000 people. The reply, featured below, fails to engage with the purpose of the protest – or the protest itself – but instead leans right into misogyny and anti-gay messaging in a derogatory, mocking way. It is intended to belittle the women pictured, and to suggest that homosexuality is wrong and should be challenged.
In a thread about the ‘Woke Virus’ being defeated, this final post promotes transphobia and also leans into xenophobia relating to disagreement over USAID funding decisions. It was in fact a response to a tweet about the US economy since the presidential election. Instead of engaging in debate about the substantive issue, transgender people become the target and are dehumanised in the process. Once again, debates about “wokeness” are facilitating hate-speech that vilifies and degrades marginalised communities.
