In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.Hey, remember that unhinged cultural revolution we launched a few years back? That was insane — amirite?That’s essentially what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told ABC News host Jonathan Karl recently, quoting a New York City Council member who describes socialist Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong’s past tweets about defunding the police and shuttering prisons.
“Woke 1 was crazyyyy,” she said with a laugh.The revolution will be sanitized. But as I remember it, “Woke 1” was a high-tech progressive jihad that relied on intimidation, public shaming, and economic ruin to dictate what words and ideas were permissible in the public square.Words had long been tantamount to “violence” on the socialist Left. Now, silence was also violence. Woke 1 is when my local lawn care company was sending out emails promising to dedicate themselves to Black Lives Matter, lest some deranged 22-year-old with rainbow hair accuse them of harboring counterrevolutionary sympathies and drag them into a struggle session.Every thinking person changes their views as they learn and grow. Elected officials and others involved in public discourse, though, surely have some duty to explain why. What was your intellectual evolution on wokeism? Even more pertinently, what was Woke 1?Here is what Ocasio-Cortez’s comments tell us: The first possibility is that Ocasio-Cortez, if I may, and others now moving away from Woke 1, possess such principles and beliefs that they can easily be swept up in mass societal hysteria — so much so that they end up championing the most detrimental aspects of a “crazy” ideology. That means it can easily happen again. Considering where the Left is going these days, it will be a lot more destructive in its second wave.After all, the positions you’ve staked out in the past matter because they’re one of the only ways the electorate can access your ideology and temperament. “During lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today,” Ocasio-Cortez said. Why? How you comport yourself during crises tells us a lot about your makeup and how you’ll act the next time there is a crisis. There is really no reason for voters to trust the judgment of someone who is swept up by a mob.The other possibility, a far more likely one, is that Ocasio-Cortez has decided to run for the presidency or perhaps for the Senate and realizes that woke ideology, an outlook she would pick up again in a heartbeat if it were popular, isn’t liked by vast swaths of the public, and so she softens and dismisses her previous positions. The next time we have a pandemic or inflation, what kind of crazy will be unleashed?And what was Woke 1?Only days after Democrats took a beating in the 2024 election, Ocasio-Cortez removed “she/her” pronouns from her social media accounts. Which doesn’t exactly scream of authenticity. So, is using your “preferred pronouns” crazy? Is adopting pronouns that don’t match your “gender assigned at birth” crazy? Is using nonbinary pronouns crazy? Is performing “gender-affirming care,” needless life-altering surgery on confused children that destroys their development, crazy? Is it crazy to let biological males play in girls’ sports? What part was crazy?Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) smiles during a campaign rally for Michigan Democratic Senate primary candidate Abdul el Sayed on Saturday, July 18, 2026, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Jose Juarez)
