George Orwell's 1984 gets invoked a lot these days, but what happened to the word "woke" is exactly what was intended with Newspeak. Per Wikipedia, "Orwell explains that Newspeak follows most rules of English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts are reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning." With "woke" we see the entire project of humanism reduced to a stupid insult. Shamefully, many political commentators not on the authoritarian right still use this lazy shorthand to belittle activists or anything vaguely socially conscious, invoking the right's pejorative framing.
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