The first time I heard the phrase "peak woke," it was 2022, and a podcaster with a million subscribers declared it dead. "The pendulum has swung," he said, voice dripping with triumph. "DEI is being dismantled. Pronouns are optional. The adults are back in charge." I remember nodding along, half-convinced. Disney had quietly shelved its "Reimagine Tomorrow" diversity quotas. Bud Light's Dylan Mulvaney ad had backfired so spectacularly that executives were hiding in bunkers. Even The New York Times ran an obituary for "wokeism," penned by Michelle Goldberg no less, who wrote that the era of content warnings and microaggression policing had "come to an end."
Two years later, in the fall of 2025, I stood in a Melbourne pub watching a 22-year-old male bartender with a hammer-and-sickle tattoo explain to a tourist why rent control was a human right. "Landlords are parasites," he said, pouring a pint with the casual certainty of someone reciting the weather. "The system's rigged. We need to seize the means." The tourist, an young American, nodded vigorously. "Exactly," he said. They clinked glasses. Two ideologies, one grievance.
That was the moment I realized: we hadn't peaked. We'd pivoted.
Wokeness, like all moral revolutions, doesn't die. It metastases. The skin of 2020, rainbow lanyards, "Latinx," mandatory land acknowledgments, had been shed. But the grievance engine underneath? Still purring. Still hungry. Only now, the sacred victims weren't trans kids or Black academics. They were renters, gig workers, the "squeezed middle." The oppressors weren't cis white men. They were billionaires, landlords, hedge funds, "the 1%."
The slogans had changed, but the structure was identical:
1.Identify the Oppressed™
2.Declare the System Irredeemably Evil™
3.Demand Equity by Force™
4.Silence Dissent as Heresy™
In 2019, the heresy was misgendering. In 2025, it was defending profit margins.
The data told the story better than any anecdote. In 2022, 6.8% of American undergrads identified as non-binary or "other." By 2025, that number had crashed to 3.6%, a 47% drop. The FIRE survey was hailed as proof: the kids were over it. But dig deeper. The same survey showed 62% of 18–29-year-olds viewed socialism favourably. In the UK, 67% of Zoomers said they'd prefer a socialist economic system. The red flag wasn't retreating. It was rebranding.
On campuses, the Che Guevara shirts were back. Not ironic. Not vintage. Earnest. A freshman at UCL said that she wore hers because "capitalism gave me anxiety and student debt." Whenasked if she'd read Marx, she blinked. "I don't need to. I feel it."
South Africa was the control group. While the West flirted with retreat, Pretoria doubled down. BEE quotas in every boardroom. Expropriation without compensation now law. Race-based procurement mandatory. Trump's 2025 ultimatum, "drop the race laws or lose trade," was met with a shrug. The ANC had 30 years of failure to prove grievance politics doesn't need results. It needs enemies.
In Cape Town, a Black entrepreneur told said he'd lost a government contract to a white-owned firm that checked the "previously disadvantaged" box by hiring a Black janitor. "It's not empowerment," he said. "It's extraction." But the ideology was unshakable. Victimhood had become the state religion.
The new Right saw the same rot, just from the other side. Elon Musk tweeted about "financial oligarchies." JD Vance railed against "technocratic elites." In Italy, Giorgia Meloni promised to "defend the nation from globalism." In Argentina, Javier Milei chain sawed the state while quoting Mises. Same rage. Different target.
The Left wanted to nationalise industry. The Right wanted to nationalise borders.
Both were collectivist. Both were authoritarian. Both were woke-adjacent.
Now a look into the future, using my cracked crystal ball. The mutation was complete by 2026. The Mamdani moment in New York's mayoral race wasn't about pronouns. It was about rent strikes, UBI, "tax the rich" graffiti. The Green Party in the UK polled at 12%, not on trans rights, but on "degrowth" and "eco-austerity." The next frontier was already visible: climate victimhood. The oppressed? Future generations. The oppressor? Anyone with a car, a steak, or a pension fund.
The cycle was locked in:
2030s: Planet as sacred victim. Carbon rations. Meat bans. "Flygskam" enforced by law.
2040s: AI as oppressor. "Abolish profit." Universal basic compute.
It never ends. It just rebrands.
The only antidote was never going to be a pendulum swing. Pendulums don't kill ideologies. They feed them. The Right's culture-war victories, banning drag story hour, defunding DEI, only gave the Left a new martyr: "fascism." The Left's economic wins, rent control, wealth taxes, gave the Right a new/old enemy: "communism."
The real fight wasn't Left vs. Right. It was grievance vs. growth.
In 2024, I met a 19-year-old from Sydney who'd dropped out of uni to start a co-op bakery. "I don't want handouts," she said. "I want ownership." She'd read Hayek, not Marx. She'd built a business, not a protest. She didn't care about pronouns or tariffs. She cared about flour prices and profit margins.
She was the glitch in the matrix. The one who'd opted out of the grievance game.
We haven't reached peak woke. We've reached peak mutation.
The ideology that sacralises victims and demonises systems doesn't die. It evolves. From race to gender to class to climate to code. From HR to policy to law to culture.
The only way out is to stop feeding it.
Build something. Earn something. Own something.
Because the moment you let victimhood define justice, you've already lost.
The kids in Che shirts? They're not the end. They're the warning.
And the warning is this: We've seen nothing yet!