Around the time nearly a year ago when President Trump was taking the oath of office, stories began to pop up that declared an end to the woke ethos or sensibility. New York Magazine, showcased young conservatives celebrating Trump’s second inauguration and reveling in the possibilities that now seemed open to them to offend at will. As one of them announced to the reporter, “he wanted the freedom to say ‘faggot’ and retarded.’” If they could do that, of what utility would all the speech codes and other hallmarks of a woke progressivism be?

It seems, though, that the prognosticators mistook particular forms of flapdoodle for the concept of wokeness. Big mistake. For it turns out that right-wing bullies, no less than left-wing provocateurs, are fully equal to the task of denying to the rest of us a large catalogue of words, phrases, and concepts that offend their sense of propriety, dignity, and common sense.

The list isn’t original with me, so I present below a compilation of words and concepts that the conservative end of political discourse has seen fit to eradicate from every institution they can get their hands around. (The list ran in The New York Times a few months back, taken in turn from a survey of terms that have been deleted from federal websites and other federal documents..

accessible, activism, activists, advocacy, advocate, advocates, affirming care, all-inclusive, allyship, anti-racism, antiracist, assigned at birth, assigned female at birth, assigned male at birth, at risk, barriers, belong. bias, biased, biased toward, biases, biases towards, biologically female, biologically male, BIPOC, Black, breastfeed + people, breastfeed + person, chestfeed + people, chestfeed + person, clean energy, climate crisis, climate science, commercial sex worker, community diversity, community equity, confirmation bias, cultural competence, cultural differences, cultural heritage, cultural sensitivity, culturally appropriate, culturally responsive, DEI, DEIA, DEIAB, DEIJ, disabilities, disability, discriminated, discrimination, discriminatory, disparity, diverse, diverse, backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse community, diverse group, diverse groups, diversified, diversify, diversifying, diversity, enhance the diversity, enhancing diversity, en VBNMvironmental quality, equal opportunity, equality, equitable, equitableness, equity, ethnicity, excluded, exclusion, expression, female, females, feminism, fostering inclusivity, GBV, gender, gender based, gender based violence, gender diversity, gender identity, gender, ideology, gender-affirming care, genders, Gulf of Mexico, hate speech, health disparity, health equity, hispanic, minority, historically, identity, immigrants, implicit bias, implicit biases, inclusion, inclusive, inclusive leadership, inclusiveness, inclusivity, increase diversity, increase the diversity, indigenous community, inequalities, inequality, inequitable, inequities, inequity, injustice, institutional, intersectional, intersectionality, key groups, key people, key populations, Latinx, LGBT, LGBTQ, marginalize, marginalized, men who have sex, with men, mental health, minorities, minority, most risk, MSM, multicultural, Mx, Native American, non-binary, nonbinary, oppression, oppressive, orientation, people + uterus, people-centered care, person-centered, person-centered care, polarization, political, pollution, pregnant people, pregnant person, pregnant persons, prejudice, privilege, privileges, promote diversity, promoting diversity, pronoun, pronouns, prostitute, race, race, and ethnicity, racial, racial diversity, racial identity, racial inequality, racial justice, racially, racism, segregation, sense of belonging, sex, sexual preferences, sexuality, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic, status, stereotype, stereotypes, systemic, systemically, they/them, trans, transgender, transsexual, trauma, traumatic, tribal, unconscious bias, underappreciated, underprivileged, underrepresentation, underrepresented, underserved, undervalued, victim, victims, vulnerable populations, women, women and underrepresented

These words and phrases became targets in a computerized purge of government websites, leading the U.S. Defense Department, for example, to remove pages devoted to the military service of Jackie Robinson and Colin Powell, among others (the removal was characterized as a “digital content refresh.”) The outcry about the Robinson removal was nearly instantaneous, leading the Department to restore his page later in the day; Powell’s page stayed pulled. AI: just as smart as its human creators, just as nimble as its human operators. There’s no doubt a similar story about the unanticipated disappearance of other material behind every one of the vanished terms, enough to keep several generations of treatise writers and historians riveted to their desks.

Someone, several someones, may object that what the Trump Administration disapproved of is different somehow from what true left-wing wokesters sought to put down and destroy. And as a generalization that might well implode on closer inspection, it’s obviously true that there is a distinct cultural difference between left-wing and right-wing wokery as I’ve come to understand the different rationales behind the word.

Left-wing wokesters object to words and phrases that seem to denigrate and disparage particular people, members of categories and classes of human beings who have traditionally been picked on in ways ranging from beyond deplorable to highly debatable. And the problem with this form of wokery is that long-established linguistic usages have been trampled with little or no payback to the people who ostensibly will be cheered by the censorship. I’ve written about this extensively in other posts on this blog. For example, the university press copyeditor who wished to delete all uses of the word “stand” because “stand can be read as ‘ableist to some people.’” Never mind that the word has at least 86 other meanings, duly chronicled in the post. And so on for a large list of ordinary words that rile the too many bluenoses who live in our midst: see “rule of thumb,” “blind spot,” and “master.”

Right-wing wokesters, by contrast, appear to obsess over concepts and policies that they wish to consign to the Great Memory Hole. Though they may have constitutional power to do so, right-wing legislators in several states have been banning books from public school libraries and now, controlling the federal government, have taken delight in being able to purge mere mentions of concepts that they find distasteful from sites that they oversee. The First Amendment still has bite, just not everywhere.

But the true indicator that a bluenose is a bluenose, a hypocrite is a hypocrite, and a wokester is a wokester no matter who he (or she or s/he or they or NB) may be, or what political position he leans into, was the startling reaction of conservative politicians and others in various forms of authority to the assassination of their newly minted saint, Charlie Kirk. They agitated for those who bad-mouthed Kirk to be “cancelled.”

The present generation of right-wing commentators have uniformly deplored cancel culture (and correctly so, in my judgment, even though historically conservatives were themselves masters of the art; see, e.g., McCarthyism). Though the term is blurry and embraces a wide variety of cases, in general it is today thought to be the pressure that some left communities have brought to bear on compatriots who disagree with them on basic issues, signifying the attempt to silence those who take positions or act in ways that are anathema to particular conventional left-wing positions. Writers who use the wrong phrase, or seem to sympathize with “the other side,” may find that editors will no longer consider their articles or books. Or put them in movies, or allow them on television, or permit them to work at all. Or remain friends.

And yet, in the wake of the Kirk killing, reports arrived that outraged conservatives went full cancel culture on those who bad-mouthed Kirk, a personally polite but strident avatar of a full-throated conservatism that bordered (or crossed the line, in the view of many) on false narratives and hatred.

For a couple of weeks after Kirk was killed, stories surfaced of ordinary workers (and in at least one case, the spouse of an employee) who took to social media and were promptly fired by their employers for expressing less than lavish praise on or for failing to mourn Kirk’s death. The Times reported “more than 145 such cases through news reports, public statements and interviews with several of those targeted. Those who have faced discipline are professors and health care workers, lawyers and journalists, restaurant workers and airline employees.” Not to mention Jimmy Kimmel, whose “suspension” from his late night television show lasted about a week until the Disney corporation finally overcame its pusillanimous caving to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Lesser people fared worse.

The difference between left-wing and right-wing cancel culture: None. Wokery’s victory is complete.