Yes. Absolutely. What we are seeing here at root is some repurposing of the same key postmodern (post-truth) concepts of knowledge, power and language. I disagree with my erstwhile writing partner, James Lindsay, on very many important things now, but one prediction he made keeps coming back to me as encapsulating the problem very well. In 2020, he said that we were heading into a phase that could be called "Late postmodernism - the Age of Narratives."

In postmodern thought, knowledge is understood not as something that humans discover about the world, but something that is constructed by the powerful in the service of maintaining and perpetuating their power. They use their power to legitimate this knowledge and it becomes the way to speak about things and by using this language, everyday people perpetuate unjust systems of power and privilege without being aware of it. To the original postmodernists, there was no way to find one's way through the narratives to the truth. All that could be done was to be aware of the socially constructed nature of everything and deconstruct the power/knowledge (Foucault) and develop a paralogy of legitimation (personal and group narratives presenting multiple knowledges) (Lyotard). The next generation was dissatisfied with this as a means of activism and asserted that while much of what we consider true is, in fact, a social construct created in the service of oppressive power, the thing that we can say is objectively true is those systems of oppressive power. The third generation reified and solidified this understanding of social reality and established themselves as the ones who could see the oppressive power systems and developed their activism as serving the purpose of using the 'lived experience' of those members of marginalised groups who agreed with them (while ignoring the majority of those who did not) to wake everybody up to the power systems and get them to 'do the work' of dismantling them. Because of this and because people did not want to be opposing what they presumptuously called themselves - Social Justice - they became known as 'the woke.'

The concept of the 'woke right' has arisen independently and been posited by numerous thinkers from various places on the political spectrum. Those of you who are Christian and conservative might find the work of Neil Shenvi on this particularly useful. This designation was not created as a childish "I know you are but what am I?" move on the part of illiberal leftists. People keep noting markers of wokeness because they are there to be noted. The woke right might use different symbolism, often speaking of 'the matrix' and "red pill" rather than systems of power and privilege and a 'woke mind virus' rather than 'unavoidable socialisation.' Nevertheless, they have the same underlying structures of knowledge, power and language and the same belief that everybody apart from is either asleep and needing to be woken up or knowingly part of the conspiracy. This leaves no space for the liberal stance that individuals can evaluate ideas for themselves and decide which to reject and wish to accept. Any dissent is regarded as evidence that one is either still asleep or complicit and must be shut down, vilified and shamed.

Andrew has listed these core markers. I would expand on this into specifics on modes of engagement that are very familiar from the woke left and help to recognise when you are dealing with the woke right. I recently had a thread in which I addressed cult-like behaviour among some of the followers of Elon Musk. I was very clear that I was not speaking of people who admired him and agreed with a lot of his ideas while disagreeing with others and also agreeing with some ideas of people who Musk himself disagreed with, but with a particular mindset among some of his admirers. I was referring clearly to people who decided that anybody who disagreed with him in the slightest was suffering from a woke mind virus, had not seen through the matrix and was blind to the light of truth and needed to shunned or vilified. I provided screenshots. While many people who admired Musk responded reasonably saying they felt I overstated the issue, I was also deluged with woke rightists. Woke right responses included:

Telling me to just admit that I just hated free speech (much like 'just admit you're a racist')

Accusing me of holding all kinds of woke ideas that weren't even remotely implied (if you're not with us you're against us mentality + responding to a rival narrative to their own which they assumed I held rather than anything I had actually said)

Claims of feeling attacked and shamed for their political views even though I clearly specified a mindset and behaviours, not an political group. One man even said that he 'felt' that I was doing that even though I had said I was not. ("Dogwhistle")

Accusing me of bullying and inciting a dog-pile on an autistic man (cry-bullying and accusations of ableism rather than addressing anything I had actually said)

Accusing me of having no empathy for the 'trauma' Musk has suffered in relation to one of his children ( 'victimhood as status', appeal to emotion and lived experience, accusations of "tone policing" victims of trauma I myself cannot possibly speak to because of my privileged status and so should sit down and shut up even though I wasn't saying anything about Musk's family problems but about the cult-like attitudes of a subset of his admirers)

Demands that I read Gad Saad's "Parasitic Minds" to understand the need to fight the woke mind virus and a refusal to believe I had read or understood it and have also written about the ideological capture of institutions and indoctrination of young people myself. ("Do the work" and until you stop criticising anything happening in this movement and agree with everything Musk says I have not done the work)

Reporting me to third parties for attacking all defenders of free speech and not believing woke is a pervasive problem melting people's brains even though I didn't and I do. (Attempts to penalise dissent and take grievances to a third party authority rather than address them with arguments)

Endless, endless hyperbolic appeals to emotion and being told I don't care about the trauma of victims of wokeness (disagreeing with a way of addressing a problem means I don't care about the problem or marginalised people and disrespect their lived experience)

Being told that wokeness is the big problem and that I should show solidarity with critics of it rather than undermining them (much like "Why are you criticising ineffective approaches to anti-racism rather than racism, you racist" which I have likened before to "Why are you criticising homeopathic treatments for cancer rather than caring about cancer. You just hate sick people")

Absolutely none of these responses addressed any point I was making, but instead found ways to self-victimise, cry-bully and appeal to emotion and lived experience and present me as a person who hates freedom of speech and does not care about the harms being done by wokeness. Pervasive throughout was the profound lack of dignity and emotionally-charged, hyperbolic language that one finds in people who have abandoned Dignity Culture for Victimhood Culture (See Campbell and Manning, "Rise of Victimhood Culture)

This is the woke right and the similarity to the woke left should be extremely clear both in their parallel beliefs about power, knowledge and language and that they have seen the light while the rest of us are still asleep or complicit in the problem and in the highly undignified, emotive, irrational and dishonest mode of engagement.

Pointing out that the woke right exist is not an attack on conservatives or a claim that to be right-wing is to be woke. On the contrary, it is ethical, rational and anti-authoritarian conservatives who are best placed to address this and I am profoundly grateful to those who already are and will offer any assistance and support that I can. It is an irrational, tribalistic and authoritarian mentality that we are most familiar with on the left but has also had a presence on the right and one that is now growing stronger.

As Andrew concludes:

Authoritarianism is not specific to any political cause. It is a natural impulse in humanity that we must learn to resist.

(P.S. I am aware that my comment is actually a similar length to Andrew's piece itself. Sorry about that. I have been wanting to weigh in on what the 'woke right' is for some time and Andrew's excellent piece inspired me to do so!)