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In Switzerland, members of the youth wing of the right-wing populist Swiss People’s Party have criticized Swiss bank UBS for its diversity policies, calling them “woke”. Brazilian federal deputy Kim Kataguiri has accused the government under president Lula da Silva of promoting a “woke agenda” with a proposal to tax streaming services and social media networks while requiring a certain amount of content to come from Brazilian companies with 51% of capital and shareholders belonging to “identity groups”.better source needed In homage, Muldrow wrote stay woke in marker on a T-shirt, which over time became suggestive of engaging in the process of the search for herself (as distinct from, for example, merely personal productivity). While it is not known when being awake was first used as a metaphor for political engagement and activism, one early example in the United States was the paramilitary youth organization the Wide Awakes, which formed in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1860 to support the Republican candidate in the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln. Local chapters of the group spread rapidly across northern cities in the ensuing months and “triggered massive popular enthusiasm” around the election. The political militancy of the group also alarmed many southerners, who saw in the Wide Awakes confirmation of their fears of northern, Republican political aggression.
As in the United States, the term woke is used by those on the political right wing in Canada to discredit individuals and policies they consider to be overly progressive. During a debate in 2023 on the Law Society of Alberta’s 2020 adoption of a rule which made certain Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training courses on Indigenous Canadian history obligatory, a lawyer from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms wrote an op-ed arguing that the course was a form of “wokeness”. In the 2025 Canada federal election, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre weaponized the term in his campaign, characterizing “social justice advocacy as an authoritarian threat”. The term woke capitalism was coined by writer Ross Douthat for brands that used politically progressive messaging as a substitute for genuine reform. According to The Economist, examples of “woke capitalism” include advertising campaigns designed to appeal to millennials, who often hold more socially liberal views than earlier generations.
Bulls and bears are also used—the former refers to a market affected by rising prices, while the latter is typically one where prices are falling. Hawkish policies will likewise tend to reduce a company’s desire to borrow and invest, as the cost of loans and interest rates on bonds rise. Higher mortgage rates also slow the housing market and can lead to lower housing prices. In some cases, banks end up lending money more freely when interest rates are higher. High rates can reduce perceived risk, possibly encouraging banks to lend to those with lower credit scores. Moreover, if a country increases interest rates but its trading partners do not, that can result in a fall in the prices of imported goods.
While this can be a short-term positive, deflation can often be worse than moderate inflation in the long run. Persistent deflation means that a dollar tomorrow will be worth more than one today, and worth even more in a week or a month. This encourages people to save money and delay big purchases, expecting prices to drop as the dollar’s value increases. A hawk generally favors relatively higher interest rates if they are needed to keep inflation in check. In other words, hawks are less concerned with economic growth and more focused on the potential of recessionary pressure brought to bear by high inflation rates.
The support among the Wide Awakes for abolition, as well as the participation of a number of black men in a Wide Awakes parade in Massachusetts, likely contributed to such anxiety. And since the somewhat pacifist Komeito Party refused to serve under her in a coalition government, she’s been able to bring a hawkish smaller party into the governing coalition. In contrast, low interest rates entice consumers into taking out loans for cars, houses, and other goods.
As a result, consumers become less likely to make large purchases or take out credit. The lack of spending equates to lower demand, which helps to keep prices stable and prevent inflation. If the relative inflation rate in the home country is falling relative to the inflation rate in a trading partner, the exchange rate should adjust to keep prices in line with the dollar appreciating relative to the trading partners. As the home currency strengthens, imported goods become cheaper, which can negatively affect local manufacturers. Simultaneously, domestic exports become pricier for foreign consumers, harming local manufacturing.
Among the uses by Republicans is the Stop WOKE Act, a law that limits discussion of racism in Florida schools. A program of eliminating books by LGBT and black authors from schools was conducted by the Florida government and by vigilantes calling themselves “woke busters”. Florida governor and former presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has frequently used the term, referring to his state as a place “where woke goes to die”.
Merriam-Webster defines the expression stay woke in Badu’s song as meaning, “self-aware, questioning the dominant paradigm and striving for something better”; and, although within the context of the song, it did not yet have a specific connection to justice issues, Merriam-Webster credits the phrase’s use in the what does hawkish mean song with its later connection to these issues. Through the late 2000s and early 2010s, woke was used either as a term for literal wakefulness, or as slang for suspicions of infidelity. In the 21st century’s first decade, the use of woke encompassed the earlier meaning with an added sense of being “alert to social and/or racial discrimination and injustice”. It is the Fed’s responsibility to balance economic growth and inflation, and it does this by manipulating interest rates.
Abas Mirzaei, a senior lecturer in branding at Macquarie University, says brands “without a clear moral purpose” who use social-justice messages in advertising have been increasingly perceived as inauthentic, damaging the concept of wokeness and spawning the meme “get woke, go broke”. According to French sociologist and political scientist Alain Policar fr, woke originated from African American communities to describe awareness of social injustices and has been used pejoratively by French politicians from the former republican left, the right and the far right to label individuals engaged in anti-racist, feminist, LGBTQ, and environmental movements. This derogatory usage gave rise to the noun wokisme, suggesting a homogeneous political movement propagating an alleged woke ideology. The phenomenon le wokisme (sometimes translated ‘wokeism’) has also been used in French politics to criticize anti-racist movements and leftist scholarship, particularly since the 2022 French presidential election. Much of the opposition to le wokisme sees it as an American import, incompatible with French values.
The term increasingly came to be identified with millennials and members of Generation Z. Les Echos lists woke among several terms adopted by Generation Z that indicate “a societal turning point” in France. In May 2016, MTV News identified woke as being among ten words teenagers “should know in 2016”. By 2019, the term woke was increasingly being used in an ironic sense, as reflected in the books Woke by comedian Andrew Doyle (using the pen name Titania McGrath) and Anti-Woke by columnist Brendan O’Neill. By 2022, usage of the term had spread beyond the United States, attracting criticism by right-wing political figures in Europe. This usage was popularized by soul singer Erykah Badu’s 2008 song “Master Teacher”, via the song’s refrain, “I stay woke”.
In the United Kingdom, anti-wokeness discourse is driven primarily by Conservative Party politicians and right-wing media outlets. Conservative papers such as The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail commonly publish articles critical of what they deem to be woke.citation needed The Mail on Sunday publishes an annual “Woke List” criticising public figures for perceived “virtue signalling”.better source needed The right-wing television channel GB News was proclaimed at its founding to be explicitly anti-woke. Its onetime chairman Andrew Neil has presented a regular segment on the channel entitled “Wokewatch”, which aims to be a counter-voice to “woke warriors”.
Mohamed Amer Meziane reported that then-education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, organized a conference at which he argued “woke” ideology “plots against the greatness of a white European civilization” and is therefore an “anti-Republican political religion”. Blanquer established an “anti-woke think tank” in opposition to what is perceived as an export from the English-speaking world. This view also includes a conspiracy theory connecting “wokism” with pre-existing right-wing conspiracy theories of “Islamo-leftism”, suggesting that leftists are manipulated by Islamists to replace European white-Christian civilization with Islam. In this context, “woke” is used pejoratively to describe progressive, anti-colonial, and anti-racist positions that are seen as incompatible with traditional French values. This pejorative sense of woke means “following an intolerant and moralising ideology” according to The Economist.
Linguist Ben Zimmer writes that, with mainstream currency, the term’s “original grounding in African-American political consciousness has been obscured”. The Economist states that as the term came to be used more to describe white people active on social media, black activists “criticised the performatively woke for being more concerned with internet point-scoring than systemic change”. Perry Bacon Jr. suggests that this “anti-woke posture” is connected to a long-standing promotion of backlash politics by the Republican Party, wherein it promotes white and conservative fear in response to activism by African Americans as well as changing cultural norms.Such critics often believe that movements such as Black Lives Matter exaggerate the extent of social problems.
Policymakers must weigh these trade-offs, as hawkish policies can benefit savers and reduce import prices but also make borrowing more costly and hurt domestic producers and exporters. Federal Reserve adjust interest rates based on economic indicators, switching between hawkish and dovish stances as necessary to balance economic growth and inflation. Cultural scientists Akane Kanai and Rosalind Gill describe “woke capitalism” as the “dramatically intensifying” trend to include historically marginalized groups (currently primarily in terms of race, gender, and religion) as mascots in advertisement with a message of empowerment to signal progressive values. On the one hand, Kanai and Gill argue that this creates an individualized and depoliticized idea of social justice, reducing it to an increase in self-confidence; on the other hand, the omnipresent visibility in advertising can also amplify a backlash against the equality of precisely these minorities.
