Right wing politicians have been using the term "woke" to describe virtually anything that they don't like from the liberal/progressive side of the aisle. Conservatives decry "wokism" and pass "Stop Woke" laws, despite there being no such thing as "wokism", in that there is no universally agreed upon tenets that everyone who might describe themselves as "woke" would agree upon, although common ground would include equal rights for all, including gay and transgender people.
Conservatives are adept at taking a term that progressives use, defining it in terms of a caricature of its most extreme or unpopular components, further demonizing that extreme position, then lumping in broad swath of progressive positions as part of that straw man definition. Once they have implanted that false, distorted definition in people's minds, the hard work is done. From that point on, all they have to do is call anything vaguely liberal as "woke" and they have a built-in opposition. This frees them from realistically framing and debating the actual issues and allows them to move right to the torches and pitchforks phase.
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