Woke 1: Behaviors, Not Positions

Woke 1 is not defined by specific policies, but by tactics around those policies

“Woke 1” is in the discourse again, mostly sparked by AOC laughing off Francesca Hong’s crazy since-deleted tweets calling to cancel Thanksgiving, by saying, lightheartedly, “Woke 1 was crazy.” She is not the first to say this. In fact, the year 2020 has become shorthand for a rigid, dogmatic, unhinged, very-online social justice movement also described derisively as “Woke 1.”

But as people joke about Woke 1 being crazy, others across the political spectrum have questions. In fact, it’s the same question, posed in different ways: which policies define Woke 1? The Right will say, “If you truly believe Woke 1 was so crazy, which precise positions do you now disavow?” And the Left will say, “If you think Woke 1 was so crazy, pray tell which positions were really that crazy?” The Right’s implicit accusation: you’re hiding the fact that you’re still Woke 1. The Left’s implicit accusation: you’re not Woke 1, ergo, you’re hiding some horrendous bigotry.

But they’re both making a major error by assuming Woke 1 was defined by its policies at all.

First, yes, Woke 1 was associated with unpopular leftist positions such as the now-radioactive “abolish the police” or prison abolition movements. This abolition rallying cry was hardly isolated to law enforcement. We had “abolition of the family,” and, even before the pandemic, a call to abolish restaurants. In a move that seems a bit too on-the-nose, they also wanted to abolish psychiatry. Oh, but don’t worry—Woke 1 didn’t want to abolish everything. They liked some stuff. For example, they made sure to defend looting as a form of political protest (in a 2020 book appropriately titled, In Defense of Looting).

But realistically, most “Woke 1” people did not believe all of these things. Plenty had less absurd political views, but leveraged particular tactics to intimidate others into no-questions-asked compliance. And that is what really defines Woke 1—not the precise positions, but the way people were coerced into adopting those positions (or pretending to) and the way illiberal, dogmatic and grievance-based conduct made it impossible to respectfully dissent or disagree without being kicked out of a rapidly shrinking tent.

This is not something unique to the 2020 Left. Leftists can hold their positions and still not embody this obnoxious-as-shit ethos. And on the other hand, even a right-winger has the capacity to start behaving in a way befitting Woke 1 (and plenty have, such as the officials who, even in 2026, are still scared to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election.) It’s the behaviors, not the positions.

But what were these behaviors?