2024: The year wokeness began its retreat

Kurt Mahlburg
November 22, 2024 4 Reactions

A strange phenomenon has been observed across the world of American sports this week.

In celebration of soccer goals, NFL sacks and touchdowns, UFC fight victories and more, United States athletes have broken out in the ‘Trump dance’ — a hip-swaying, fist-pumping mimic of Donald Trump’s iconic rally jive.

Newsweek has even compiled a list of players who’ve indulged the routine, to the approval of cheering fans.

As Clay Travis has mused at Outkick, “the birth of the woke sports era” began in 2016 with San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for the national anthem. But it officially came to an end “when first the UFC fighter Jon Jones and later white and black players on the Detroit Lions, the Tennessee Titans and the Las Vegas Raiders all celebrated on the football field with their own versions of the Donald Trump YMCA dance.”

Reclaiming the public sphere

Non-woke Americans were told for years on end they are a despised and discredited minority. But in a twist of irony, via the secret ballot box, this illusion was at last shattered for all the world to see.

In truth, the Trump dance has very little to do with Donald Trump. It is a cultural clue that wokeness has mercifully begun its retreat from the public square and that normality is back in fashion.

Want further evidence that wokeness is on the retreat?

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a veritable paragon of wokeness, recently removed her pronouns from her bio on X. For context, it was only two years ago that AOC apologised to her followers for neglecting to display the same pronouns on her social media accounts.

Some of America’s largest newspapers have also begun to course-correct. The owner of the Los Angeles Times reportedly plans to fire the paper’s entire editorial board, vowing that “ALL voices must be heard”. The LA Times was joined by USA Today and The Washington Post in opting not to endorse a candidate for President this year, after all three backed Biden in 2020.

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There have even been rumours that far-left ABC daytime talk show The View plans to bring on a panellist sympathetic to Donald Trump, though I’d personally put money on hell freezing over first.

In one of the more bizarre revelations in Big Media this week, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski discussed their recent visit to Mar-a-Lago in an effort to “restart communications” with President elect Donald Trump.

While at one level, I am heartened by this gesture of conciliation, I also share the cynicism of CNN’s dissident-in-residence Scott Jennings, who questioned why “literal Hitler” is now being inundated with meeting requests from the Democrat elite.

Historic swings

The election itself was, of course, a repudiation of wokeness. Trump gained historic swings from demographics that traditionally favour the Democrat candidate, whether Black, Latino, Native American, young, suburban female, union, Jewish or Asian-American.

In an article released just months before the election, The Economist noted that “discussion and espousal of woke views peaked in America in the early 2020s and have declined markedly since”. The magazine conducted a detailed analysis using measurable data to track the decline of wokeness, including:

  • Polls from Gallup, Pew and YouGov revealing a reduction in concerns about racial and sexual discrimination
  • A decrease over time in the use of terms like “white privilege” and “intersectionality” in media, books and academia
  • After peaking in 2021, a sharp drop in mentions of woke-related terms in newspapers, TV shows, books, academic papers and course catalogs
  • A significant fall in frequency of DEI references in corporate earnings calls
  • A growing number of states passing laws limiting DEI initiatives and race-based policies

In short, the re-election of Donald Trump is not some eleventh-hour victory over the dark forces of wokeness. It is evidence that wokeness keeled over and died some time ago — proof that the West has finally found its way back to civilisation after our gratuitous wilderness wanderings.

Hate Trump if you like, but don’t hate what his Oval Office comeback represents.

History will look kindly on our culture’s return to sanity.

What do you think of these developments? Let us know your thoughts below.

Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor.

Image credit: Pexels

 

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  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-22 14:23:15 +1100
    Kurt does seem to be fixated on this imaginary thing.

    Maybe he can switch to endless articles about ‘communism’ or ‘the elites’.
  • Anon Emouse
    commented 2024-11-22 11:22:46 +1100
    Maybe now you’ll stop writing about it?
  • David Page
    commented 2024-11-22 10:55:03 +1100
    “Wokeness” is a way to slur compassion. And you are right, compassion is in retreat.
  • Kurt Mahlburg
    published this page in The Latest 2024-11-22 10:24:38 +1100

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