The Illusion of a Left Without Woke
22nd August 2026
Can an intellectual tradition dissociate itself from the very ideas it has helped to develop? That is the question running through “Left Is Not Woke,” one of the most widely discussed political essays of recent years. In it, Susan Neiman argues that the woke phenomenon does not represent the culmination of the Left, but rather its negation. The thesis is undeniably attractive. It allows the moral legacy of the Enlightenment Left to be preserved while attributing the excesses of identity politics to a deviation foreign to its own tradition. The question, however, is whether this historical reconstruction withstands scrutiny when examined in light of the history of ideas.