Ever since AOC quoted a local city councilman as saying, “Woke 1 was crazy,” a troubling thought has been lurking in my mind: The phrase “Woke 1” means there must be a Woke 2 — and potentially a Woke 3, Woke 4, and so on. I never believed that “wokeness” died; it simply grew quieter because its loudest activists retreated to private rooms for off-the-record discussions. Still, I’ve been wondering when the second era of wokeness would emerge.
Now, I believe I’ve already seen it. This summer, I observed aggressive illiberal extremism in three particular cultural episodes that eerily resembled the fashions of 2020: the Cambridge cover-up, the Clancy trial, and the Cornell case.
For those who didn’t follow the story, Jason Arday was the youngest black professor ever at the University of Cambridge in England — except his entire scholarly career was replete with academic misconduct, including extensive plagiarism and research fraud. He also regularly fabricated personal feats, like saying he that he volunteered abroad with a charity that has a policy to not send volunteers abroad. (See my reporting in National Review for a more detailed summary of his fictitious biography and academic misconduct, including our discovery that he falsely claimed to be a visiting professor at Ohio State University.) Arday resigned as more of his lies were exposed in the press, and nine days later, he was found dead in his home.
Arday personified wokeness: His “research” (even if it had entirely lacked stolen data and language) was entirely bogus drivel designed to advance predetermined conclusions about “racism” that would justify increasing DEI, and he surely would not have been deemed qualified for an academic position anywhere (let alone at Cambridge) if he fell into the “straight white male” category. But since his publications and career ascent aren’t limited to this past year, he cannot be construed as marking a new chapter of wokeness. Rather, the relevant barometer is that academia and mainstream outlets reflexively supported him this summer, even as his claims and papers were being picked apart in some outlets. Cambridge University initially defended Arday, as did a large swath of academics within and outside the school. The mainstream media largely avoided discussing the incriminating evidence behind the accusations and further downplayed the extent to which he had exaggerated his life achievements.
Mainstream journalists and the Ivory Asylum’s inmates decided that Arday was the victim of racism and that the villain worthy of opprobrium was the whistleblower, Nathan Cofnas — not because Cofnas’s exposé on Arday was factually flawed, but because he had previously written about IQ differences and disparate outcomes across racial groups. Once Arday was discovered dead, the hostility to Cofnas only intensified. The New York Times reported in late September that Cambridge abandoned its previous plans to investigate the hiring of Arday, and the university will instead examine whether it offered sufficient support to Arday as the controversy gained traction. By contrast, Cofnas was suspended by his own institution in Belgium, Ghent University.
This affair only reaffirmed that even the most prestigious institutions, ostensibly dedicated to truth and research, were willing to ignore heaps of damning evidence for the sake of appearing sufficiently committed to social justice, DEI, anti-racism, and all that jazz. Rather than admit to wrongdoing and acknowledge the plain facts, the university’s leadership espoused a nonsense “racism!” narrative, condemned the people who defended meritocratic standards, and then rescinded its conciliatory institutional inquiry that had been offered solely because public criticism was mounting.
But worse than elevating Arday to innocent martyr status was the campaign against Cofnas, who did what an academic is supposed to do: present evidence and seek the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. A great, and significantly concerning, irony is that Cofnas himself had previously been dismissed as a fellow from Cambridge University’s Emmanuel College for the supposed crime of writing articles that offended minorities within the academy; he published a blog post that qualified as “a rejection of diversity, equality, and inclusion” and thereby violated the college’s “core values and mission.” In other words, the guy who did actual research was the one actually booted from his Cambridge office.
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The second phenomenon of mass delusion was apparent in how left-leaning women responded to the Clancy trial. Former mother Lindsay Clancy faced three first-degree murder charges. Her defense team did not dispute that she strangled her three children — Cora (5), Dawson (3), and Callan (8 months) — to death with an exercise band in January 2023. The trial more narrowly focused on whether she was suffering from “postpartum psychosis” (potentially induced by medication) when she committed the murders; if she was in such an altered state when she committed the murders, then she could not be held criminally responsible. One lone juror, a black man, prompted the judge to declare a mistrial after six days of deliberation.
A lot of crazy progressive women who weren’t on the stand for insanity expressed their “solidarity” with Clancy. To support her, several hundred women dressed up in pink and rallied outside the courthouse when the trial was ongoing, insisting that the case represented how the medical system mistreats and dismisses female patients, particularly those with postpartum health issues. Of course, activism also occurred online. A woman (who claimed to be an ob-gyn) posted a video to social media where she explicitly thanked Clancy and attested that it is difficult to be a mother to three children. “I don’t know what else [Clancy] could have done,” she said. (The most charitable interpretation possible is that the ob-gyn was praising Clancy strictly for seeking medical help related to her mental health, though that isn’t obvious.) The New York Times ran the headline “I Study Women Who Kill Their Children. Lindsay Clancy Deserves Mercy.”
Elaborate explanations emerged to excuse the murderess’s actions. “Stop thinking about these kids as people and think about them as ceramic vases for just one second,” a woman and self-described “forensic scientist” said as she compared Clancy’s case to that of an epileptic person who involuntarily broke expensive pottery in a museum. Complex conspiracy theories attempt to argue that Clancy’s husband was somehow in on the murders, or even entirely to blame. Clancy’s lawyer has been praised as a “feminist icon” and hailed as “the voice of so many moms,” even though a fraction of a percent of new mothers have postpartum psychosis, and an even smaller subset kill their children. Mothers watched Clancy achieve something like sainthood, and now, there have been several reported instances of apparent copycat cases: As a CNN headline put it, “Illinois mother texted friends about Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial hours before killing her 2-year-old, prosecutors say.”
Perhaps it isn’t surprising that a society that celebrates the murder of children in utero naturally progressed to celebrating a woman who murders her children outside the womb. But an unanticipated outcome to the trial was the fervid witch hunt — not targeting Clancy, but rather the dissenting juror. “He had the hardest time getting over the fact that Lindsey viciously killed her children,” a female juror later said in an interview on NBC TV. Another female juror explained to the public that the man was “arrogant,” which just means he didn’t do exactly what they kept nagging him to do. Journalists decided to actually investigate for once; the public was informed of every infraction the male juror had ever committed, which is among the few instances of the left and the mainstream media discussing any wrongdoings committed by a black man. We know that he faced eviction due to unpaid rent and had been served a restraining order, yet the ugly facts about George Floyd’s multiple crimes were hardly ever mentioned during Woke 1.
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Finally, there is the so-called Cornell 7 debacle. The publicly available information suggests that Jane Doe had enthusiastically consented verbally to a wide range of extreme sexual activity throughout the evening. (Just describing the escapades in detail would corrupt a virgin.) Afterward, she affirmed in writing that “non[e] of the sexual stuff was illegal” and “our body our choice.” She was so unbothered by the fraternity boys that she wanted to party with them again and had plans to do so. Later, Doe claimed she had been raped — after scandalous rumors were gaining traction on campus, after her sorority sisters construed the shame as evidence of sexual abuse, and after she was disinvited from a fraternity party.
Progressives have responded to the Cornell debauchery by displaying the same totalitarian impulse that was present in 2020: The men are presumed guilty, and everyone must condemn them. As was the case during BLM, leftists have resorted to social media to express their support for Jane Doe by sharing infographics with misleading statistics, posting “MeToo” style narratives, and demanding comprehensive reform. To advance their interpretation of that scandalous Cornell evening, the left-wing activists are pressuring higher-education institutions to support Doe and adopt policy changes — the same way that faculty and students issued statements urging their universities to implement “antiracist” measures. For example, the undergraduate senate at Princeton released a letter insisting that their school express “solidarity” with Doe, rework its Title IX policies, and much more. Cornell itself has responded with an iron fist, recently banning social events at all fraternities for the school year — even though the specific fraternity where the purported “sexual violence” occurred (as well as the accused individuals) had already been punished.
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What do all these instances have in common with one another, and with 2020-era madness? First, facts are disregarded and suppressed in the media. Second, everything is construed in terms of an oppression hierarchy, while the victims are misidentified. In some instances, the condemned villain is actually the good guy. Third, important long-standing norms are abandoned with little regard for the long-term consequences. Extensive plagiarism and research fraud is somehow excusable, harassing a particular juror is encouraged, and consent is construed as something that can be retroactively repealed. Fourth, there are social demands for individuals and institutions to proactively affirm that they agree with the progressive stance du jour. Perhaps the most clearly shared trait, though, is the groupthink: In each of the three examples, and back in 2020, leftists instinctively arrived at the same conclusion and did not entertain any challenges, then they attempted to promote a consensus by punishing critics. But the worst thing is that the groupthink doesn’t involve reasonable ideas. Instead, it consists of absolutely absurd beliefs, seriously erroneous interpretations of facts, and extreme demands.
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of recent anecdotes about growing illiberalism: We could point to the popularity of Democratic Socialist candidates or the anti-ICE protests, along with other examples, as additional evidence. But these three episodes lead me to conclude that either Woke 1 never ended and is awakening from a brief hibernation, or we’re living through the earliest stage of Woke 2. Either way, illiberal sentiments are shared more openly, more widely, and more passionately — all of which is worrying. The good news, if there is any, is that I might be wrong: This is an observation of the culture, not a quantitative study supported by a rigorous methodology. In fact, I really hope that I am wrong. But I suspect that if the midterms elections wind up with Democrats in control, or even simply more heavily represented in Congress and elsewhere than they are now, then wokeness — whether a continuation of Woke 1 or a sequel with distinct characteristics — will erupt immediately thereafter.