After Donald Trump swept the swing states and won the popular vote in 2024, many believed he had dealt a cultural blow to the left, with corporations dropping DEI programs and a so-called 'vibe shift' taking hold. This was seen as a punctuation mark on what some now call Woke 1.0.
Today, however, the vibe feels disquieting again, resembling the pre-Trump era. Elite culture is once more gripped by mass hysteria—this time over an alleged gang rape on a college campus—where narrative overrides fact and systemic repression of a victim group is widely assumed, echoing past patterns.
Comedians like Shane Gillis, previously dropped from Saturday Night Live during Woke 1.0, are again facing widespread condemnation for supposedly offensive remarks. People are being hunted down and canceled for things they said long ago, such as the Portland Trail Blazers firing their new TV announcer over social media posts from when he was 15.
While the current climate may not reach the insanity of 2020, when institutions rapidly adopted DEI mindsets after George Floyd’s death, the woke fever has dissipated but not broken. The tendency to bully fence-sitters and cowards into conformity remains, and it could flow again rather than ebb.
Sources: Las Vegas Review-Journal
Original reporting: Las Vegas Review-Journal →
English (US)·