The Manufactured Divide: Why We Think the ‘Woke Right’ is Nonsense
We’ve been watching a recent exchange unfold online involving Tim Pool, Colin Wright, and James Lindsay, and frankly, it’s time we talked about it. While there are positives to having a large “big tent” like we saw during the Trump presidency, one negative can be this kind of infighting. We’re not afraid to jump into these discussions sometimes, and we feel like we’re the perfect ones to talk about this.
Colin Wright, who we initially thought might have been a Google whistleblower (though we’re unsure if that’s correct), has teamed up with James Lindsay to push this idea of the “woke right”. We don’t have anything personal against Colin going into this, but when you put Tim Pool on blast, we pay attention. Tim and we don’t agree on absolutely everything, but generally, Tim has never done us wrong, and we tend to side with him on most things.
James Lindsay hasn’t been particularly relevant for a long time, despite having hundreds of thousands of followers; he struggles to get significant engagement on his posts. He seems to be on some sort of resurgence trying to appeal to this quote-unquote “woke right” idea.
Here’s the thing: we’ve never heard anyone actually describe what the “woke right” is in a clear way. If you have to spend months or endlessly try to define it on podcasts or social media, like James Lindsay and Colin Wright have been doing, it just feels like you’re trying to make something happen that isn’t naturally happening. To us, it feels like trying to “make fetch a thing,” referencing that old movie.
Colin Wright has argued that Tim Pool is criticizing liberals as “woke” now, even though five years ago Tim was criticizing wokeness alongside James Lindsay because it abandoned liberal principles. According to this perspective, Tim identified as a social liberal back then and understood the distinctions between different political ideologies, getting angry at the woke left for adopting illiberal identity politics. The argument is that Tim has somehow forgotten what liberalism is, while Colin and James have remained consistent in opposing wokeness as the opposite of liberalism.
However, the criticism often devolves. Colin Wright’s argument seems to wrap up into criticizing Tim because he’s “making millions posting daily rage bait” on YouTube. To us, this is pure bull spit and feels like a logical fallacy, maybe driven by weird jealousy. There are few people who work harder online than we do, and Tim Pool is one of them, so we would never hold his success against him. This idea that there’s a limit to how much money someone like Tim is “allowed” to make, or if he’s “allowed” to be happy or own things like a Cybertruck or a skate park, feels like a leftist ideology. We see this frequently, where people on the internet get upset if you have things or spend money, even if you work hard for it. We recently posted about preparing a small area for an RC track at our house – literally just a couple truckloads of dirt and a weekend rental of equipment – and had people, even conservatives or anti-woke people who generally agree with us, complaining about how much money we must have or claiming we’re wasting it. It’s the same flawed logic.
Tim Pool, responding to criticisms, has correctly, in our opinion, said that the harsh reception to the term “woke right” is because people are confusing superficial characteristics of left-wing wokeness (like colored hair or jargon) with its core nature. He argues that wokeness is less about specific policies and more a framework for processing information. We agree; if you have to spend months trying to convince people this concept exists, it probably doesn’t. While there might be some right-leaning individuals who fit some of the categories proponents describe, it feels to us like this push is either “paid for” to cause division on the right or comes from people who were happy being part of the “big tent” and getting attention, but now that things have shifted, they’re trying to re-position themselves.
Tim has explicitly called Colin “woke right” and defined wokeness as a “cultlike adherence to liberal social orthodoxy”. He sees Colin as a liberal to the right of the woke left but believes he and others are using manipulative language to shift the political discourse. Essentially, the argument is they are acting like the woke left but with a right-leaning facade, ultimately aiming to cancel those who don’t conform. We 110% agree with Tim; this whole “woke right” concept is nonsense.
These “woke right” proponents seem to identify groups outside their acceptable boundaries. They seem to lump various conservatives, nationalists, and anarchists together into one group, which is exactly what the woke left does. They claim these individuals are “on the right line right side of woke,” even if they aren’t overt leftists. We find it hard to be labeled “right leaning side of woke” when we publicly supported Donald Trump as a specific means to an end. This is just what happens with a big tent – you get people with different views.
We’ve asked Tim why he engages with people like James Lindsay, who seem to have no traction despite a large following. James Lindsay appeared on Jordan Peterson’s show to discuss this “woke right” type of idea, talking about the “morning star” and rising “woke”. Despite being on a massive channel with millions of subscribers and being out for a week, the episode had very low viewership and the comments were largely negative, with people making fun of the concept. It really reinforces our view that they are trying to make a concept popular that simply isn’t resonating.
Tim Pool has stated that he’s just criticizing ideas and that people are free to disagree or point out misrepresentations. He has correctly pushed back against what feels like elitist dismissal and emotional attacks, stating he doesn’t care about tribes or gatekeeping. He has correctly called out these “smarmy tactics” when people avoid debating ideas by lying.
We would love to see Colin Wright come on our show and clearly define what “woke right” means and why it’s even a worthwhile discussion. As far as we can tell, it’s a completely made-up term designed to divide, distract, and weaken the right wing. It seems to be pushed by a very specific group of people. Why else, after months of trying to make it stick, has it not been adopted? Why are comment sections universally critical when these ideas are discussed, even by well-known figures? It’s because the “woke right” simply isn’t a real, widely accepted thing.
