Kaufmann: If ‘Woke’ Puritanism Is the Disease, Trump’s Amoral Populism Isn’t the Cure
2025/04/12 Leave a comment
Funny to see some of the critics of left wokism become woke to the dangers of right-wing populist wokism and the failure of the right wing intelligentcia to counter the inherent destructiveness of Trump and his acolytes and sycophants:
To what extent should a society demand adherence to moral norms? Three months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, it’s a question worth asking. Having rejected the puritanical “woke” moralism of the 2010s and early 2020s, Americans are now enduring the opposite problem: Trump and his chief corporate enabler, Elon Musk, have over-corrected, embracing a morality-free style of governance fuelled entirely by a drive to hoard power and punish their enemies.
…This behaviour isn’t just amoral and anti-democratic. It’s juvenile. Trump and Musk have become America’s trolls-in-chief—as exemplified by the White House’s posting of an AI-generated cartoon depicting an immigrant crying in handcuffs. This type of “shitposting” is the furthest thing from presidential.
What makes this descent into power-drunk nihilism all the more regrettable is that it’s come on the heels of a historic “vibe shift”: Many serious liberals and centrists joined the campaign against woke overreach. The most interesting new ideas on the left have been coming from moderate leftists such as Matthew Yglesias, Noah Smith, and Ezra Klein, who leaven their pro-immigration sympathies with respect for border control.
In light of this, the intellectual right had a chance to broaden its coalition, and fashion what I’ve termed a “rational populist” consensus that marginalises leftist extremism. Such a development could, among other things, dispel the stigmatisation of “whiteness” and manhood pervading progressive discourse—which itself has become a source of populist grievance. More generally, it would also help spark a return to a moral consensus that promotes cultural wealth, personal resilience, and classical liberal values such as free speech and equality among group identities.
Trump could have shown the world a way forward by embracing this challenge. Instead, he’s provided a dark cautionary tale about what happens when a nation’s leader throws off all moral constraints.
Source: If ‘Woke’ Puritanism Is the Disease, Trump’s Amoral Populism Isn’t the Cure
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