‘Woke is back’ but it goes unnoticed: what does the left that defeats the far right talk about?

Barcelona / Washington“Focusing on economic issues and not taking the bait of the culture war”. That is the recipe that the Democrat Gina Hinojosa, the first woman of Latin origin who will be governor of Texas, has prescribed to the left to defeat the right and the far right at the polls. Betting on discourses focused on making life “affordable” –and even on social class– is the formula that the Democrats have followed in the US midterm elections, Lula in Brazil and Die Linke in Berlin. All of them have won the elections in which they were running. But this does not mean that they have renounced defending socially marginalized groups and the causes that the right encompasses under the label of woke.

The blue wave in the United States is the example that has most clearly confirmed that economic populism works and that it is the way to approach people's daily concerns, without this being incompatible with the defense of identity struggles. In Texas, James Talarico has made history by using Christian morality as a vehicle to defend access to healthcare and also respect for LGBTIQ+ people. In one of the most conservative states in the USA, where abortion is completely prohibited and where there have been attempts to prosecute women who went to other states to have an abortion, Talarico has defended in prime time that “there is a common point we can find” between pro-life people and those who defend abortion, without this implying the denial of that right. Talarico has even said that “God is not binary”. And, even so, he has swept through a conservative stronghold.

In Michigan, while the Republican sector stoked Islamophobia against Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat has never hidden what he thinks about trans people. What he has done is include them under a much more transversal issue: the right to access healthcare. As the doctor he is, when he is forced to give an opinion on sex reassignment surgeries, El-Sayed reminds that it is a matter that concerns only the doctor and the patient, as well as their parents in case they are a minor. If until recently some candidates approached issues such as abortion or the rights of trans people in an almost performative way, competing to see who used the most correct word, this campaign has buried that idea. All identity issues are now treated from an essentially material perspective, as one more topic.

The preeminence of economic issues in speeches, without renouncing identity issues, is repeated everywhere. In Brazil, Lula da Silva has focused his campaign on the fight against organized crime, the reduction of inequality and the defense of sovereignty against Washington's interference. On these last two folders, he has confronted the tech-oligarchs of Silicon Valley and has made the increase of the minimum wage one of his main hobbyhorses. This does not prevent the party from continuing to defend minority groups and including among its proposals measures for equality.

In Berlin, with the far-right on the rise in all the country's polls, in September the post-communist Die Linke party won the city-state elections for the first time since reunification with 25% of the vote. Their star proposal was to expropriate 240,000 apartments owned by companies and investment funds. The group embraces all the demands that the right calls woke and, in fact, this was one of the reasons that caused the split of Sahra Wagenknecht, who now leads a political space that is left-wing in economic matters and conservative in social issues, especially immigration. Wagenknecht's party has representation in the European Parliament, but a year after its founding it remained out of the German chamber, and for the moment it gathers less support than Die Linke.

The exhaustion of the idea of progress

If the left has not renounced identity issues, what makes some groups now prioritize economic issues and the confrontation with the elites in their discourse? Over the last two decades, social democracy has clung to cultural and identity issues to nourish the idea of progress, with advances such as same-sex marriage, the introduction of gender self-determination into legislation, or euthanasia laws, portrays Jordi Mir, a humanities professor at the UPF. “But if it wants to remain in power or be representative of an important part of the population, it needs to be more ambitious when it comes to assuming measures that are currently defended by parties to its left,” the academic points out.

Mònica Clua Losada, a political science professor at UPF, adds that since the 2008 financial crisis, neoliberal social democracy has dedicated itself to making “cosmetic changes,” which it is now shown “are not capable of changing people’s living conditions.” Furthermore, the rights achieved over the last two decades “have not been sufficiently consolidated.” Faced with this scenario, not adopting some of the demands from its left “could lead the social democrats to collapse,” adds Mir, who cites the case of the French state as an example, where the alternative left of France Insoumise leads the progressive political space in the polls and is expected to reach the second round of the presidential elections against the far right. The movement also focuses on the deterioration of public services during the Macronist governments, the increase in the cost of living, and geopolitical issues.

The danger of the culture war

That Hinojosa asks to relegate the culture war – understood as the dispute to dominate a society's values, in which the left has mostly situated feminism and anti-racism until now – is no accident. The context of the rising cost of living also encourages political conversation to return to economic issues. Losada summarizes it this way: "Perhaps when people don't have enough money to fill the gas tank, they stop worrying excessively about which bathroom a trans woman uses, and then, transphobia stops winning votes."

Furthermore, the field of the culture war can turn into a boomerang. For example, in most polls, if a respondent is asked if they are in favor of equality between men and women, the response is usually more favorable than if they are asked if they consider themselves a feminist. Now, the left seems to adopt a move similar to these responses and takes for granted that feminist or anti-racist ideas are unquestionable and, as such, an inseparable part of its program. Although some voices have questioned the slogan “Woke is back”, which has become popular in recent weeks, if we stick to the program and part of the speeches, the statement is true. It is just that now that which is woke is not as explicit in the speeches, but surely we would not be here if for many years it had not been intentionally made explicit.