We all remember how bad it got. Just a few short years ago, it felt like every major institution â from corporate America, to media, to universities, to Hollywood, to our own government â had decided that half the population was the enemy. Speech was policed, businesses were pressured, and ordinary Americans found themselves locked out of basic services for holding the wrong opinions.
A lot of people are now saying that chapter is closed. “Woke 1 was crazy,” Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said recently, laughing. Others have triumphantly declared that “woke” has been defeated. I understand the desire to move on. But those of us who lived through the mayhem shouldnt be so quick to agree. Heres what actually happened, and why the danger hasnt disappeared.
The woke ideology that pervaded nearly every aspect of public life did not conquer American institutions by force of argument alone. Rather, it spread so rapidly because corporate America, in particular, became a willing and enthusiastic partner.
GOP FRESHMAN FIREBRAND TARGETS GLOBAL CONSULTING GIANT OVER ‘PLAINLY ILLEGAL’ DEI PRACTICES
Technology companies censored ordinary citizens for what amounted to thought crimes, major financial institutions stopped doing business with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, de-banked Donald Trump, and refused to serve lawful gun manufacturers. “Green” initiatives became official policy, with nearly every major financial institution committing hundreds of billions to pursuing renewable energy, and refusing to do business with coal companies and others that were on the “wrong side of history.”
Public displays of progressive orthodoxy became the price of admission across large swaths of the private sector. Companies understood that those then in political power were prepared to make life difficult for any entity that refused to fall in line, to say nothing of their own employees who could cause immeasurable headaches if executives strayed from the progressive worldview.
What we continued to call free enterprise was, in practice, something closer to totalitarian social control administered at the corporate level. A concentrated group of technology platforms, financial institutions, and cultural gatekeepers enforced a political narrative against large portions of their own user base. And rather than face a market cost for alienating half their user base, the sheer scale of these companies, and the regulatory barriers that protected them from true competition, made the costs of ideological experiments nearly invisible to those imposing them. When a handful of firms control the infrastructure of speech, payment, and distribution, market power and narrative power become one and the same. Dissent does not have to be answered â it can simply be excluded.
DAN GAINOR: WE GOT TWITTER/X AS A PLATFORM 20 YEARS AGO AND GLOBAL CENSORS STILL HATE AND FEAR IT
The only reason this apparatus was interrupted is that the American people changed the occupants of power.
President Trumps 2024 victory put the technology companies on notice. Several of their leaders appeared at the inauguration, some even helping underwrite the event. One major platform executive later publicly conceded that his company had made serious mistakes. But we should not be lulled into thinking these companies have learned their lesson. What we are seeing isnt repentance, but merely temporary accommodation. The true believers remain inside these institutions: corporate boar
