Woke Lost, but Freedom Didn’t Win

The End of Woke: How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution By Andrew Doyle

By Ashley Frawley for Compactmag.com

Andrew Doyle begins his new book The End of Woke by expressing his hope that the book will one day become a compendium of historical curiosities that merely makes “a decent doorstop.” He’s partially right: Reading his catalogue of absurdities—the compulsory pronouns, the protest theater, the police knocking at the door to “check your thinking”—does give the distinct feel of being hung over and forced to recall the unseemly events of the night before. But while the enthusiasm of that moment has faded and certain of its excesses are being pared back, much of its legal backing remains in place.

Doyle’s book, which is written with wit and intelligence, makes another fact absolutely clear: Woke may be losing, but freedom hasn’t won. Society has not yet found its way back. If anything, we may find ourselves more lost than before. Doyle reminds us that liberalism did not triumph in the woke era, and it won’t again unless we realize that it needs defending.

“All the talk of decency and opposing bigotry was a smokescreen.”

Doyle’s central argument is simple but too often missed: “Wokeness is not an extension of liberalism; it is its opposite.” Woke movements cloaked themselves in the language of liberal tolerance, inclusion, and anti-racism. But this was only ever a ruse. Doyle mines a seemingly bottomless pit of examples to show that all the talk of decency and opposing bigotry was a smokescreen: Wokeness is distinguished specifically by its “authoritarian aspect.” It demanded not moral agreement, but ideological submission. I would go further: Wokeness is defined precisely by its antithesis to liberalism.

Hence, many of the cursed opinions it sought to blot out were in fact liberal ones: that being gender non-conforming did not literally mean you were the opposite sex, that people should be judged on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, that free speech includes the right to offend. But Doyle skilfully illustrates how “evangelists of the woke movement” were able to gain power precisely because they preyed on the liberal propensities of the public. Transgenderism was first passed off as just another “‘live-and-let-live’ type of gay.” The return of race essentialism was hidden under layers of equality rhetoric. It took a keen eye to discern the sexism and racism behind these claims. For instance, Doyle describes how one school excluded Asian students from the “students of color” category on the grounds that their success made them “white-adjacent”—a move that, he writes, treats achievement itself as a white trait.

That wokeness gained power by such deception might be a hopeful sign for the cause that Doyle wishes to defend: real liberalism—not the skinsuit wokeness wore, but the liberalism that came to life in the Enlightenment. Ironically, the early success of wokeness demonstrates that this spark still burns in the heart of the masses, even as it enjoys scant political representation. Many passively assented to woke demands because activists and governments colluded to bundle them in with genuinely progressive ones. As Doyle highlights, the Dentons/Reuters/IGLYO report “Only Adults?” recommended slipping gender transition policies into popular legislation like gay marriage.

Unfortunately, opponents of wokeness have taken this liberal mask at face value. In their opposition, they flocked to what seemed to be its opposite pole, only deepening the cultural turn toward illiberalism and authoritarianism. Doyle laments that for many in the anti-woke camp, “liberty is overrated.” So we have seen the rise of the “woke right,” equally eager to defund this or that, and see people fired for ill-considered social media posts. Doyle notes that the label “woke right” is contested, but if wokeness is defined by its antithetical relationship to liberalism as I suggest, then the term is not just apt, it’s unavoidable.

Reading The End of Woke, I began to see something deeper than ideological overreach: a shift in the very logic of institutional authority. Increasingly, society is governed through a model drawn less from liberal legal principles and more from the world of public health. Just as new health regimes edge toward seeing cancer as a failure of lifestyle and behavior management, so too does crime become a kind of failure of social regulation. The goal is no longer so much to punish wrongdoers as to engineer conditions in which wrongdoing never arises. This explains one of the most disturbing examples in the book, that of a 13-year-old girl found by police “inebriated and mostly naked, in the company of seven Pakistani men.” Ignoring the unfolding spectacle of what would later become known as the “grooming gang scandal” before their eyes, they arrested the girl for being drunk and disorderly.

The logic is coherent, however perverse: If crime is a symptom of regulatory failure, then the real target becomes not criminals but the general public. Just as public health regimes shifted from treatment of the sick to regulation of the well, so too must institutions now seek to shape speech, behavior, and thought before harm occurs. This helps explain many of Doyle’s examples, particularly in the United Kingdom—the rise of “non-crime hate incidents,” the aggressive policing of free speech while violent offenders are considered for early release. In this system, the measure of justice is not proportion, but compliance.

Doyle is right to say that reason, not more authoritarianism, is the way out. He is as worried about Donald Trump’s attempts to use state power to control speech as he was by those of the Democrats. Such measures betray an ingrained political instinct that public reason and democratic processes are not to be trusted. This kind of pessimism must be rejected. If liberty appears impossible, it only means we must work harder to create the conditions in which it can thrive.

Some of the debates covered in the book might feel well-worn, but Doyle makes them come alive with moral clarity and wry humor. It’s society’s decade-long psychotic break, written down. And while I want it to be over and I want to forget it, we must ensure that no one does. Woke is ending, yes. But liberalism hasn’t yet won. That fight hasn’t even begun.