The right began to go woke as early as 2010 when the Tea Party ousted so-called “RINOs” (Republicans in name only) from the GOP in the belief that they were crypto-liberals who were conspiring with a closeted Muslim president to unmake America. Still, the GOP gave lip service to traditional conservative values and principles for a few years more. Then, in the midst of a growing birther movement, under the guidance of Steve Bannon, what had been the Tea Party became the MAGA movement—the “home, sweet home” of the woke right.
To be clear, leading figures within the woke right are connected, often in surprising ways, but the woke right, like the woke left, is more a conspiracy theory-laden, post-truth politics than a discrete group of individuals working toward a common and well-defined goal. The goal, for lack of a better word, is to encourage a mistrust of American institutions, particularly those associated with elites, and to engender a level of political chaos not seen since President Barack Obama repurposed the Executive Order(EO) so that it could be regularly used to bypass Congress and even the judiciary.
Leading figures within the woke right are connected, often in surprising ways, but the woke right, like the woke left, is more a conspiracy theory-laden, post-truth politics than a discrete group of individuals working toward a common and well-defined goal.
We can be assured that Bannon saw the partisan power value in Obama’s flurry of largely domestic policy-related EOs (he issued 276 over eight years) and encouraged his boss to blitz the opposition with deregulatory directives. But it isn’t chaos that defines the woke right; no, chaos is simply their preferred habitat. The woke right is made evident by its habit of giving serious consideration to any conspiracy theory that can be used to further invigorate MAGA and radicalize it against institutions that need to be restored, not torn down.
I should point out that no one is identifying as a member of the woke right in the way that Richard Spencer, Andrew Anglin, and their fellows self-applied the term “alt-right.” Still, the woke right is exemplified by a tendency toward “trutherism,” or the promotion of a Manchurian Candidate-like schema for which there is there is little or no evidence. The woke right then uses those theories to justify what MAGA has done and continues to do in the name of border security, combating activist judges, ending the war in Ukraine, etc.
The mother of all woke right conspiracy theories is that the U.S. government possessed advance knowledge of 9/11 and may have even facilitated those terrorist attacks so that they could be used to justify the invasion of Iraq, the global War on Terrorism, and the domestic surveillance that followed. The belief is also that both things were done at the behest of the State of Israel and in service to the “Greater Israel Project”—a separate but related conspiracy theory which holds that Israel is engaged in a project of regional hegemony and conquest. Some may be surprised to learn that 9/11 trutherism is not the brainchild of some Wikipedia-editing basement dweller, but originated instead with Curt Weldon, a 9/11-era Republican congressman. His theories have been kept alive and embellished by the likes of Laura Loomer, a close ally of President Trump. But it was Tucker Carlson, the godhead of the woke right, who did the most to give new life to 9/11 trutherism by hosting Weldon on his show while painting him as a patriot and hero.
Regardless of whether one is contending with the truther journalist shtick of Tucker Carlson or the syphilitic think pieces of Candace Owens, the trope of hidden Jewish control appears again and again in the woke right narrative that has done so much to invigorate MAGA. The danger in all of this is that the woke right will continue to shape the culture of MAGA and, in so doing, will have an increasingly deterministic effect on the policy demands of the MAGA movement. The woke right has already begun to succeed where the alt-right failed in its effort to insert its racial and religious nationalism into the nation’s Overton window. And it could be that the intentional and unrelenting chaos of MAGA has so desensitized us to what the woke right has pushed into the Overton window that we can barely parse out its meaning.
The danger in all of this is that the woke right will continue to shape the culture of MAGA and, in so doing, will have an increasingly deterministic effect on the policy demands of the MAGA movement.
A Tucker Carlson who had just gained his freedom from the censors at Fox News said this of Ukraine’s President Zelensky on Twitter: “Sweaty and rat-like. A comedian turned oligarch. A persecutor of Christians. A friend of Black Rock.” Here, Carlson resurrects an anti-Semitic trope first made popular by the Nazis while making a reference to the CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink. Fink is proudly Jewish, enormously wealth, largely apolitical in so far as he does not bend the knee to either major American political party. Therefore, he is, for all of those reasons, the subject of a host of right- and left-wing conspiracy theories—including that Fink promotes “climate alarmism” so that he might then profit from the “greening of the economy” at the expense of the American taxpayer and worker. Another conspiracy theory is that Fink did the most to bring about the 2008 financial crisis and positioned himself to profit from it. The latter theory was promoted without proof by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, who, for that reason and others, belongs to the woke right.
Speaking of RFK, Jr., the problem is not just that the woke right is quickly replacing the best parts of traditional conservative culture with its siege mentality. No, the real crisis is that said mentality is now deciding national policy. Much attention has been given to Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency or “DOGE,” but few know that both are a puppet and extension of self-described Christian nationalist Russ Vought and his Office of Budget and Management (OMB) inside the Trump White House.
It was Vought who first said that “America’s renewal” is dependent upon the defunding and dismantlement of the deep state. According to Vought, that state within a state is a network of federal departments and agencies whose partisan leaders and staff work tirelessly to undermine the self-government of the people and demoralize them vis-à-via the steady promotion of an amoral and corrosive politics. As corrupt and wasteful as the administrative state may be, Vought’s theory that it is home to a plot against America is no less woke than any theory being promoted by Carlson.
Vought’s schema for this defunding and dismantlement was laid out by him in his contribution to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, blandly titled, “Executive Office of the President of the United States.” In that document, Vought argues that the independence and power granted to “expert authorities” (bureaucrats who lead agencies like USAID) amounts to tyranny. Vought goes on to say that the power wielded by these authorities must be returned to “America’s families, faith communities, local governments and states.” In other words, all be well when America and her government are Christian once more.
As corrupt and wasteful as the administrative state may be, Vought’s theory that it is home to a plot against America is no less woke than any theory being promoted by Carlson.
While he waited to return to his role as Trump’s chief strategist in a second administration, Vought pursued what he calls a “Christian nation-ist agenda” by writing policy and strategy at the Center for Renewing America, the think tank he founded. The Center’s website describes its mission to restore “a consensus of America as a nation under God with unique interests… that flow from its people, institutions and history….” The following can be found on that same website: “The Center… was created to confront the woke and weaponized agenda of the ruling class and replace it with one that puts God, country, and community at the center of the policy debate in Washington.”
It should also be said that the woke right is a vehicle for white nationalism due in no small part to the fact that the Christian nationalist movement is a fundamentally white phenomenon that often resorts to racism in response to the racism of the far-left. Evidence of this can be found in the behavior of another woke member of the Trump White House, Darren Beattie.
Beattie first served Trump as a speechwriter and policy aide, but was promoted to the role of acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of State in 2025. Beattie recently posted these words to X: “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work.” Beattie also said this of his woke left equal-opposite, Ibram X. Kendi, a black man: “Ibram Kendi needs to learn his place and take a knee to MAGA… Learn his proper role in our society.” Just as concerning is the fact that it is Beattie’s job to advise the president on extremist threats at home and abroad. Because Beattie is able to broadcast his hatred without fear of consequence, it is safe to say that he won’t be shining a light on far-right actors like Patriot Front, America’s most active white supremacist organization, or Generation Identity, the group that appears to be most responsible for the radicalization of the Christchurch, New Zealand, mass shooter.
Just as worrying (albeit more confusing) is a small contingent of Jewish woke rightists who were or are members of Team Trump and who, in spite of their Jewishness, promote anti-Jewish conspiracy theories or the racial nationalism of the far-right, a hotbed of those same theories. Exhibit A: Michael Benz, a member of the first Trump administration who was revealed to be “Frame Game,” a popular anonymous far-right content creator who promoted, among other things, the “Great Replacement Theory,” which posits that powerful Jews are engineering sudden and massive changes to the demographic makeup of the U.S.—all in an effort to turn Anglo-Americans into a minority group. Exhibit B: Stephen Miller, Trump’s current Deputy Chief of Staff for policy who, in emails leaked by a former editor at Breitbart, provided that editor with talking points taken from white nationalist websites, to which Miller linked the editor, and encouraged her to use them in anti-immigration articles being written under the direction of Miller and at the behest of her boss, Steve Bannon.
No discussion of the degree to which right-wing wokeism has shaped the presidencies of Donald J. Trump and MAGA would be complete without touching on the work of Steve Bannon. Bannon is infamous for embracing the alt-right, a conglomerate of neo-Nazis and Christian nationalists, while he was still new to Trump’s inner-circle. To be clear, Bannon didn’t just nod to the alt-right, he actively platformed them on Breitbart News, the network he headed. Bannon’s guiding principle has always been to “flood the zone,” which is to say, blitz his opponents and the general public with messaging, directives, and executive orders and thereby force an acquiescence to those things.
No discussion of the degree to which right-wing wokeism has shaped the presidencies of Donald J. Trump and MAGA would be complete without touching on the work of Steve Bannon.
Bannon’s game was then a dangerous one—to push the boundaries of what was politically acceptable while engaging in double-speak with regard to what any reasonable, non-partisan observer would interpret as expressions of support for an anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and ultimately anti-American worldview. In an interview with Bloomberg’s Michael Lewis, Bannon stunned readers by saying, “I don’t think the alt-right is anti-Semitic at all.” Contrast that with the “race realism” of this article published by Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute and republished by Breitbart:
Immigration is a kind of proxy war [white nationalists believe that lax immigration policies are part of a Jewish conspiracy to replace white majorities with non-white ones]—and maybe a last stand—for white Americans, who are undergoing a painful recognition that, unless dramatic action is taken, their grandchildren will live in a country that is alien and hostile.
To that I should add that many of us heard the neo-Nazi and white nationalist chant “Jews will not replace us” for the first time while watching news footage of Richard Spencer’s “Unite the Right” rally—held in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
I remember well the confusion that followed President Trump’s response to that two-day event and to the death that punctuated it. Not to put too fine a point on this, but the rally itself was already the subject of a national news story when one of its participants murdered a young woman who came to Charlottesville to protest against such a blatant show of white supremacy, racial aggravation, and anti-Semitism. Rather than condemn Spencer, his woke following, and their message, President Trump said this to the American people: “What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right? Do they bear any semblance of guilt? …[N]ot all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me.… The press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”
In retrospect, that response, like so many other things about Trump and the MAGA movement, makes perfect sense in light of what was being planned and what those plans required—namely the support of a woke right political class that had only just begun to find its strength and to sow the political chaos on which Trump’s brand thrives.
