# The dawn of the anti-woke era
## Metadata
- Author: [[Christopher Caldwell]]
- Full Title: The dawn of the anti-woke era
- Category: #articles
- Summary: insert summary
- My notes:
- Summary: The rise of Donald Trump signals a social revolution driven by backlash against "woke" culture. This shift shows a growing divide between traditional political norms and the desires of everyday Americans, who feel disillusioned by the establishment. As Trump gains support, issues like transgender rights and parental control over education become central to the ongoing culture war.
- URL: https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2024/12/dawn-anti-woke-era
- Source File: web-only
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## Highlights
> During the campaign, the most devastating advert Trump ran was a clip of Harris defending taxpayer-funded sex-change operations for transgender prison inmates. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh2zmg5dy4gt4w5s710mffzq))
> Like the Mafia, wokeness is held not to exist by its adherents. One *Guardian* writer believes that in today’s culture war, “only the right is really fighting”. Another from the *New Left Review* website writes of “an ill-defined ‘war on wokeness’ in public education”. But woke isn’t ill-defined: it is the maximalist exploitation of American civil rights law, which renders almost any citizen sue-able for violations of others’ rights to equality. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh2zrfv93mdxv1bpemcshd54))
> Even leaving aside the emotional complications of adolescent sexuality, it is easy to see the politics of transgenderism will be explosive. Where schools can credibly claim final authority over children’s sexual education, parents will lack the standing to prevent their 15-year-old daughter from having “gender affirming surgery”. Where parents retain that authority, such surgery looks like mutilation – indeed, it looks like madness, like a political horror, like the worst violation of human dignity permitted in the West since the Second World War. You can say that this is the view of “unsophisticated” parents, but it is actually the view of people not locked in to the elite power structure, with its reputational incentives and punishments. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jh2zvbk9v72a8j2c8j4qfj89))