Wokeism’s paradox: minorities caught between slogans

wokeism paradox – A term that began as a vigilant call against racial injustice has, over decades and across continents, helped spawn an anti-woke political counterforce. From campus admissions bans and threats over DEI programmes to Europe’s mounting hostility toward Romani, M

The paradox doesn’t announce itself with a single headline. It arrives the way policy always does: through decisions that sound bureaucratic until you realize who will pay the price.

In 2025. Donald Trump wrote a letter to various large European companies threatening to exclude them from the American market if they continued to run their DEI programmes. At Harvard University, students could not be enrolled unless the university abandoned such policies. The move wasn’t framed as a debate about ideas—it became a condition. For minorities, that difference matters.

The story begins long before those letters and bans. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, the term ‘wokeism’ has featured prominently in political, academic and media debates. Originally an African American slang term. in the 1940s ‘woke’ described a state of vigilance toward racial injustice and the diverse forms of discrimination that stemmed from it. particularly in the segregationist USA. In the 1960s the concept became more widely known in the wake of the civil rights struggle. Black activists, but also feminist and pacifist movements, embraced the vigilant stance. Initially an activist slogan, the term was gradually transformed into an organized ideology.

In France. Régis Debray’s A Modest Contribution to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Tenth Anniversary anticipated this shift. denouncing ‘the white man’s rights’ as a universalist fiction that served to obscure Western domination. The new ideology of wokeism challenged the abstract universalism of the Enlightenment in favour of militant particularism. In the 2000s the expression ‘stay woke’ was revived on social networks, especially after 2013 and the Black Lives Matter movement. The American intellectual sphere has since then been permeated by a euphoric wokeism that has become the alpha and omega of the new intellectual society.

But what was intended as an instrument of emancipation has been met by an accelerating backlash—an anti-wokeism that, the text insists, is not merely critiquing wokeism’s excesses. It is being radicalized and turned into a political weapon to stigmatize minorities.

The cultural fight hardened into strategy. The heyday of French deconstructionist philosophy. known as French Theory. in the 1960s. the birth of Cultural Studies in the 1980s. and the introduction of affirmative action policies in the 2000s punctuated the slow shift in progressive circles from a defensive stance (protecting minorities from discrimination) to the offensive goal of overthrowing the inherited social structures that perpetuate injustice (normative heterosexuality. colonial heritages). As globalization and rising inequality deepened divisions across Western societies. the educated upper classes received wokeism as a new moral grammar. while working-class people increasingly saw it as an elite-imposed ideology that was dismissive of their culture and traditions.

David Goodhart gave a name to that fracture through the opposition between the ‘Anywheres’—mobile. university-educated. globalized cosmopolitan elites—and the ‘Somewheres’—people with local roots. attached to their area. often denigrated. Resentment didn’t stay theoretical. In the 2020s. figures like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos denounce the woke worldview as stifling. inefficient and hostile to innovation. The movement’s instability, the text argues, shows in their ‘about-face’, while the same about-face fuels working-class anger.

In the US, that anger has found institutional homes and ideological scaffolding. The Heritage Foundation, a MAGA think tank run by Kevin Roberts, has devised a strategy of cultural reconquest. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former advisor, has radicalized discourse by championing an identity-based nationalism. Project 2025, spearheaded by conservatives, announced the dismantlement of DEI policies (diversity, equity and inclusion) and the restoration of traditional values. The appointment of JD Vance as US Vice President is presented as a symbol of this shift—his white. working-class background offered as epitomizing locally rooted America in confrontation with the cosmopolitan elite. His Catholic integralist views are said to be likely to play an important role in the MAGA intellectual universe from now on.

France’s version of the same shift follows familiar routes: from philosophy to street heat, from street heat to politics. Michel Onfray popularized the idea of the ‘dictatorship of minorities’. But social issues—the Gilets jaunes crisis and farmers’ protests—are described as what galvanized a silent majority in opposition to wokeism. Politicians François-Xavier Bellamy. Éric Ciotti. Laurent Wauquiez and Marion Maréchal are said to exploit such events as ideological glue. while reactionary francophone Catholic intellectuals—including Joseph de Maistre. Louis de Bonald and Charles Maurras—are being rehabilitated. Think tanks like the Thomas More Institute and the Institut de formation politique are providing a doctrinal framework. and certain media outlets—CNews. Causeur. Omerta and Radio Courtoisie—are presented as amplifying critiques of wokeism.

Across Europe more broadly. the key change is described as happening when anti-wokeism becomes not only defensive but a strategic lever. Conservative groups, the text says, unite their electorates around a common rejection of wokeism’s ideology. While anti-wokeism was initially focused on questions of gender. it is now ethnic and cultural groups—immigrants and Romani—who become the primary target. The European Conservative. a magazine published in Budapest by the Center for European Renewal. is said to spread ideas developed in the US to an international audience. For Central Europe’s illiberal governments. including those experienced under Victor Orbán in Hungary and the Law and Justice Party in Poland. anti-wokeism becomes a useful tool for legitimizing identity-based politics.

Two texts are treated as milestones of this convergence: the Paris Statement. signed by numerous conservative intellectuals in 2017. and the manifesto National Conservatism: A Statement of Principles from 2022. Together they put forward a civilizational vision of a Europe defined by its Christian roots and its direct opposition to progressive cosmopolitanism. In France. Charles d’Anjou—the polemical journalist and co-founder of Omerta—presents wokeism as a threat to civilization and even suggests it represents a concerted strategy to destabilize the West. The Périclès project. funded by Catholic billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin. aims to bring together the right and the far right under an ideological banner placing the fight against wokeism at the heart of a national narrative. Inspired by Philippe de Villiers’s theme park. Le Puy du Fou. a growing number of spectacular multimedia shows are disseminating a reactionary historical narrative.

All of this, in the text’s framing, turns the original protective impulse into a weapon.

The consequences land in the lives of minority groups, not in the speeches about them.

In Europe, Romani are described as among the first victims. Latent anti-Romani racism becomes emboldened. Municipal authorities, the text says, appear gripped by rage against the ‘traveller community’. Encouraged by parties like Rassemblement National (RN). Vlaams Belang and AfD. and websites like Résistance Républicaine in France. local councils become more aggressive in tracking down Romani in caravans and making life impossible for them.

On 18 May 2025, Portugal holds legislative elections. André Ventura, the Chega party candidate, wins 22.56% of the votes. The text credits this result to rhetoric against immigrants. and especially Romani—portrayed as outsiders to the nation. even though the country has always lived alongside its small Romani community. The election, it says, marks the resurrection of old prejudices. In Ukrainian Transcarpathia, Romani—particularly those who fled the Donbas—are described as frequently facing veritable pogroms.

Immigrants from outside Europe become the second target, and Muslims are said to be particularly impacted due to Islamic terrorism. Racist attacks and manhunts are described as becoming more common. shaped by the ‘great replacement’ theory popularized by Renaud Camus and the myth of ‘remigration’. Europe’s Muslim communities—Turkish in Germany and Maghrebi in France—are described as living in a climate of fear.

Then, the text turns to a sharp and recent escalation: antisemitism. It is said to be spreading around the world, especially in the West, connected to events in the Middle East. It is no longer possible to wear a kippah in certain neighbourhoods in French cities. which have been described as ‘the Republic’s lost territories’. For the first time since the Second World War, Jews are described as no longer feeling safe in France. The problem is also framed as American, shown by the murder of Jewish diplomats in Washington on 21 May 2025.

Even among national minorities, the protections appear to thin. The text points to Russophone minorities in the Baltic states. Between 1995 and 2015. Russian speakers reportedly enjoyed extensive support from the Council of Europe and the High Commissioner on National Minorities at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). In the last few years, the topic is described as dropping off the radar of European intergovernmental bodies. The abolition of Russian-language education in Estonian and Latvian schools is said to have provoked virtually no reaction. and the war in Ukraine is described as insufficient justification.

In the US, the shift toward anti-wokeness is presented as parallel to a reversion in treatment of Native Americans. After improving dramatically under the presidency of Richard Nixon—so much so that Native Americans became global champions of the cause of indigenous peoples—the text says the situation deteriorates again under Donald Trump. It describes Trump as reviving anti-Native policy associated with Andrew Jackson. who was responsible for the Cherokee removal around 1830. by drastically reducing funding allocated to a community that makes up just 2% of the nation’s population and feels itself in an increasingly precarious situation.

The text adds another layer: the idea that oppressed minorities are being ‘invented’ to justify a vision of the world. citing Stephen Miller’s influence. Washington, the text says, halted USAID to South Africa and expelled its ambassador. It then welcomed a group of Afrikaner farmers who had come to the US as ‘refugees’ from supposed anti-white racism. or even a genocide against Afrikaners in South Africa. It states there is no evidence for these claims. and includes figures: South Africa’s white minority represents around 7% of the country’s population. yet it still owns 72% of the land. and the average income of white households is almost five times higher than that of black households.

Outside the West, the text says, the situation is worse still. In Syria, the Alawite people are described as still paying for their loyalty to the Assad clan. In Rojava in northern Syria. Kurdish people are described as watching hopes of independence evaporate and even their autonomy under threat. The text says the country’s Orthodox Christians and Druzes suffered deadly attacks in June 2025. In Afghanistan, the Hazara people are described as regularly victims of targeted attacks, murders, forced displacement and sexual violence. Kurdish. Baloch. Arab and Azerbaijani people in Iran are described as subject to extrajudicial execution. arbitrary arrest. torture and political and economic discrimination. In Gaza. the text says more than 72. 500 people have been killed by Israeli bombs to date. with the Palestinian minority suffering more than ever.

In South Asia, the text cites more than a thousand attacks on Hindu households and businesses in Bangladesh in August 2024, and a 74% rise in anti-minority hate speech in India in 2024. It says Christians and Muslims face abuse ranging to murder.

In Southeast Asia, the Rohingya population—originally from Myanmar but expelled from that country—endures an ‘endless ordeal’. In May 2025. a group of refugees arrested in New Delhi are described as thrown overboard wearing life jackets into the Andaman Sea by units of the Indian Navy. In Myanmar, the army is described as continuing to hunt down minority groups (Karen and Chin peoples). In China. despite an ostensibly Confucian human rights policy. the text says Tibetans and Uyghurs are subject to ethnocide under the guise of an official policy to modernize society. The identities of several hundred other ‘small’ minority groups are described as suffering a policy of folklorization inspired by the korenizatsiia (roots policy) implemented in the Soviet Union before hard Stalinism.

Back in Europe and beyond. the text also points to a widening gap between what happens and what people care about. Public opinion in the West is described as increasingly indifferent as people are weary of conflicts around identity and of the economic and environmental crisis. International institutions are described as seeming impotent: the UN paralyzed by vetoes, the European Union divided by national interests.

And this is where the central paradox becomes harder to dodge: wokeism, the text argues, attempts to defend minorities but ends up laying the foundations for a systematic campaign against them.

The danger, in that view, is reflected in the proliferation and increasing power of populist and authoritarian regimes. With Vladimir Putin. Donald Trump and their autocratic emulators. the world is described as entering a new ‘iron age’ in which might beats right. In this new world, the text says, international treaties and conventions—traditionally the ‘strength of the weak’—lose power. Vulnerable minorities become prime targets.

That threat isn’t only directed at people often described as minorities in the headline sense. Regional and local minorities are described as under threat too: Alsatians. Bretons and Sardinians in Europe see their identities exploited or negated; Inuit in the Americas. Pygmies and indigenous peoples of Central America face marginalization and forced assimilation.

The paradox, in the text’s phrasing, is clear and brutal: born to protect minorities, wokeism is now making them increasingly vulnerable. As it became more radical, it transformed into the ideal adversary for populism. Populists, in turn, use anti-wokeism to impose authoritarian policies.

The closing question is what to do with that momentum. The text points to three possible ways out: restore democratic universalism without denying differences; strengthen international institutions by building enforceable mechanisms; and teach people to appreciate complexity because democracy cannot survive ideological simplification. If Western democracies fail. it says. they risk being plunged into a prolonged period of identitarian conflict with minorities as the first victims. If they succeed. it says the battlefield around wokeism could become something else entirely: a restoration of inclusive universalism that can reconcile equal rights with recognition of differences.

In the meantime, the evidence in the text keeps returning to the same place: minority groups bearing the cost of a war they didn’t start—while institutions, borders, admissions policies, councils and courts move in the direction of exclusion.

wokeism anti-wokeism DEI minorities Romani immigration Islam antisemitism Europe United States cultural politics identity-based nationalism