In the wake of Donald Trump’s victory, many writers and commentators have signed woke’s death warrant. However, this ignores the fact that young people are substantially more likely than older people to prioritize social justice over free speech. For many, equal outcomes and emotional harm protection for totemic groups – racial, gender, sexual – is a higher value commitment than expressive freedom or the pursuit of truth. Kaufmann will review extensive US, UK and Canadian survey, polling and donations data to make the case that generational turnover is likely to produce a less classically liberal society. Along the way, he argues that shifts within the left - away from class and free speech to identity and harm protection – have been more impactful on those in the vanguard of the culture, including young people. K-12 is now a major transmission belt for these values. On the other hand, formerly agnostic or moderate young people have shifted right over the past two years, which affected the 2024 presidential election. This suggests that while society may be more woke in the future, it will also be more divided by culture wars over speech boundaries. A portion of this will reflect the political gender gap which emerged strongly among young people in the 2010s. Another wildcard is the apparent loss of woke confidence and prestige at the highest levels of society. This crisis of belief has the potential to derail the cohort-driven locomotive carrying us toward a future of progressive illiberalism. Ultimately, however, there is always the potential for another upsurge of left-liberal cultural radicalism so long as our moral order remains centred on identity symbols and stories.

Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham where he directs the Centre for Heterodox Social Science. He is the author of The Third Awokening (Bombardier May 14, 2024) / Taboo: How Making Race Sacred Produced a Cultural Revolution (Forum Press, July 4), Whiteshift: Immigration, Populism and the Future of White Majorities (Penguin 2018/ Abrams 2019), Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth (Profile Books 2010), The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America (Harvard 2004), The Orange Order (Oxford, 2007) and one other book. He has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Times of London, Newsweek, National Review, New Statesman, Financial Times and other outlets. 

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