wokelash

English

Etymology

Blend of woke +‎ backlash.

Noun

wokelash (plural wokelashes)

1. A backlash against media, speech, etc. deemed inconsistent with social justice principles, or viewed as perpetuating unwoke or reactionary ideas. [since 2019]
   • 2019 September 12, Polly Vernon, “I watched it at 22. I'm still watching it: Friends is the most-streamed show on Netflix, its jokes shared by today's teens”, in The Times, London, page 2:

     A “wokelash”, I called it, a backlash designed to denounce Friends’s ageing values. I was scathing about this wokelash at first: all those youngsters raising their voices in condemnation, so confident that the things they thought and said, felt and believed wouldn't seem preposterously outdated 25 years hence too… but then I realised you only judge a cultural property by today's values if it is still relevant according to today’s standards and habits.

   • 2019 October 4, Kyle Smith, “The Mob vs. Joker’s Director”, in National Review‎^[1]:

     His unguarded remarks about the state of comedy inspired a huge wokelash.

   • 2020 January 21, Hugo Rifkind, “We're wrong to shout down cries of racism”, in The Times‎^[2], London, page 23:

     Over the past fortnight, in the background of the Sussex soap opera, it has often felt as though Britain has been enjoying what you might call a wokelash. The first royal of colour is quitting not just the firm but also the country, after only 18 months in the job, and the big question is who ought to feel bad about it. Much of social media, woke ground zero, has already decided that the answer to that question is racist newspapers and racist chat hosts, closely followed by their racist readers and viewers.

2. A backlash against or mass rejection of wokeness, or of media, policies, etc. deemed woke or politically correct. [since 2020]
   • 2020 January 31, Catriona Stewart, “TV awards illustrate backlash against woke cultural snobs”, in The Herald‎^[3], Glasgow, page 21:

     There is a solid demographic of people who are fed up with what they see as increasingly rigid progressive ideals who feel clamped by the modern liberal consensus. […] Liberal ideals are being subjected to a wokelash, and telling people what they should and shouldn’t culturally consume is not going to help build any bridges between divided factions.

   • 2021 November 30, Ibram X. Kendi, “TV awards illustrate backlash against woke cultural snobs”, in The Atlantic‎^[4]:

     Some centrist Democrats today say “woke” politics have gone too far and provoked the “wokelash” (causing Democrats to lose elections in 2021).

   • 2021 November 20, Angela Mollard, “Gen Z cancelling musical Grease is disappointing”, in The Daily Telegraph, Surrey Hills, N.S.W:

     Fortunately, there’s early signs of a “wokelash” from institutions that won’t cower to this nonsense. When staff at publisher Hachette threatened to down tools because they regarded JK Rowling as a toxic transphobe for a tweet mocking “people” who menstruate instead of “women”, management pushed back saying they couldn’t refuse to work on a book because they disagree with the author’s views.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:wokelash.