If you have been anywhere within range of conservative talking points on either side of the Atlantic during the past few months, you are surely aware that “anti-wokeness” has become central to the right’s assault on their political enemies. There are various explanations for this phenomenon, ranging from not-so-secret pandering to racism and sexism to the absence of a substantive conservative agenda these days.
Personally, I think it’s catnip for the right in no small part because it enables culture warriors fighting such strange ideas as equality to pose as victims rather than perpetrators of injustice. But its power as an unmistakably partisan cudgel for Republicans can be seen in all sorts of unlikely places, including the gubernatorial campaign of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who cares about nothing so much as protecting Arkansans from wokeness and its terrifying first cousin, “cancel culture.”
