War on wokeness: the year the right rallied around a made-up menace

A modern-day blend of McCarthyism and white grievance became the focus of a rightwing crusade in 2022

Having vanquished the manufactured menaces of vaccine mandates, the gay agenda and widespread election fraud, Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, used his midterm's election victory speech to position himself as a wartime leader. Now, he was preparing his constituents for the existential battle posed by their newest imaginary adversary: wokeness. In Churchillian tones, he announced: We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die."

DeSantis was summoning the resentment that produced the racial terrorism of Reconstruction, the pro-lynching Red Summer of 1919, and the pro-segregation states' rights movement. This time, it was called anti-woke: a modern-day mixture of McCarthyism and white grievance.