THE END OF WOKE: How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution

by Andrew Doyle

A SPECTATOR AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR

'A lovely blend of righteous polemic and wishful thinking' Julie Burchill

'Thought provoking and entertaining. Andrew Doyle's intellect dazzles' Jimmy Carr

'A magisterial read . . . divinely inspired writing and commentary from one of the most thoughtful intellectuals of our time' Michael Shermer

'The best work yet by the creator of genius parody Titania McGrath' The Critic

'Andrew Doyle's essential The End of Woke makes it woke is down but it's far from over' Spiked

'A brilliant, timely, highly entertaining book' Allison Pearson, columnist for the Telegraph

A revelatory investigation into the rise and fall of the 'woke' movement and how we can prevent it from happening again.

It is no secret that we are in the midst of a cultural revolution. Activists in the 'woke' movement have claimed to be on the right side of history, and yet their approach has been intolerant, intemperate and, above all, illiberal. Having dominated the western world for the past fifteen years, there are clear signs the woke are now losing their power. The re-election of Donald Trump, the scaling back of DEI initiatives, and a growing awareness of the threats to women's sex-based rights has stirred a counter-revolution. But is this truly the end of woke? Or have the culture wars merely evolved?

In The End of Woke, Doyle skilfully examines the mechanisms underlying the zealous extremes on both the left and the right. He shows that, in a desperate power struggle to re-assert liberal values, some leaders of the anti-woke movement have found themselves adopting a different kind of authoritarian approach - one which also promotes censorship and erodes our freedoms.

Doyle argues that although authoritarianism is common to all political tribes, we must resist its pernicious influence wherever it emerges. After all, replacing one form of tyranny with another will not end the culture wars. But liberalism - true liberalism - might just see the end of woke for good.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Cultural, Audiobook, Sociology

Audible Audio

Published May 29, 2025

Reviews

[Thorkell Ottarsson]

It's not often I give up on books, but already in the beginning, I found so many things that were factually not true that I did not want to waste my time reading over 500 pages of things that might not be fact-checked.

Let me first say where I stand. I'm no fan of the woke ideology. I am a Social Democrat and I do support the rights of marginalized people but I'm one of the few on the left who did not like the insanity that overtook the discussion on the left. This was therefore a book I was sure I was going to like, and I might have if it weren't for the sloppy work of the author.

Let me take just two examples. He quotes Trump's speech to Congress on government spending (including his claim that the government spent $8 million “making mice transgender” Doyle knows that this has been debunked. It was debunked right away, but Doyle skates over it. None of the studies he referred to were specifically focused on "making mice transgender," but rather on the health effects of hormones. Doyle uses the quote to show how crazy the left got. This is not a scholarly work.

The other example I'm going to mention is how many women have lost in sports because of transgender women who were allowed to compete against them. The number he quotes is a number taken from a website where anyone can just go and say they lost. There is no fact check, and it does not even mean that it was a serious competition, let alone if it happened at all.

This book is 560 pages, and I'm simply not going to read all of them because I can't trust anything in it. I could fact-check the whole book, but that would be too much work. I'd rather find an author who knows scholarly work.

I'm not rating the book since I did not finish it.

[Raine McLeod · Rating 4 out of 5]

I disagree with some of his positions and conclusions, but he's right about the ideology of wokeness having hit critical mass. People have stopped using their brains and are bragging about it, and it's going to bite every last one of them in the ass.

I just wish their adherence to their bullshit didn't leave so many victims behind.

[Lord Bathcanoe of Snark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does this mean that I can no longer identify as a lawnmower?

[Buttsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a centrist that is becoming increasingly concerned with the normalisation of extremism on both sides of the aisle I found this book quite valuable.

Andrew makes the compelling case that the old definitions of left vs right no longer fully apply and that this should be seen as the difference between those who are willing to resort to authoritarianism and those who are not (and that these people are found on both sides of the political spectrum).

An appeal to traditional western values to combat both the craziness of the far left of recent years and the inevitable far right backswing.

A bit dry at times but I wouldn't hold that against the author as the subject matter and the people associated with it can be quite tiresome and exhausting if not read in shorter sessions.

[Chris Wray · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Authoritarianism is always reprehensible, no matter where it originates or what form it takes. It is incumbent upon us to challenge this kind of intolerance even when it emerges from those who share our views.”

This is an excellent, thoughtful and engaging piece of cultural commentary. While some reviewers have sought to dismiss this book as a triumphalist screed, that completely misses the point. Now that the tide of the “Woke” phenomenon seems to be starting to recede, there is an opportunity to understand it better, and more importantly, to determine how to continue to recover our cultural sanity. To begin, we must try to understand what “Woke” actually means, and why it is a problem.

Problem: Resurgent Authoritarianism

One of the big takeaways for me was the reminder that what we call “woke” is not so much a phenomenon of left or right politically, but rather is an essentially authoritarian impulse that those of any political persuasion can weaponise. As Doyle explains, “The culture war of our times has often been misinterpreted as a conflict between left and right, but, as I shall argue, these designations are hangovers from the French Revolution, ill-suited to today's complex ideological skirmishes. The sudden rise in the early 2010s of Critical Social Justice - that sprawling, complex and disparate movement known colloquially as 'woke' - has meant that the terms 'left' and 'right' have lost much of their utility. Definitions of 'woke' are as varied as can be imagined, but it is best understood as a cultural revolution that seeks equity according to group identity by authoritarian means…the core belief of wokeness is that its ideological dogma should be imposed on society by force and coercion, rather than persuasion and consensus. Authoritarianism is not specific to any political cause. It is a natural impulse in humanity that we must learn to resist.”

And again, “although the philosophical origins of the movement can be traced to leftist thinkers, its rejection of class consciousness and its essentially capitalistic timbre make it difficult to describe as 'left-wing' in any meaningful sense. Its practitioners' weapon of choice, what we colloquially refer to as 'cancel culture', mostly preys upon those without the financial means to protect themselves. Wealthy individuals cannot be 'cancelled', which means that woke activists disproportionately end up attacking the poor. Moreover, in disputes over DEI initiatives in the workplace, or the imposition of 'unconscious bias' training, woke operatives invariably side with corporate bodies over individual workers. The impact of the woke movement, in other words, has been the empowerment of the richest in society. We might fudge the matter by designating the woke as 'left-wing capitalists', but this is certainly not the revolution anticipated by Marx and Engels.”

He continues to point out that, “Our culture war could only have arisen in the context of immense privilege. My generation and those that have followed have not endured the hardship of a global conflict, and it is very easy to deride our own nation if we have never been called upon to defend it. Many of today's activists believe that they are bravely standing up against tyranny, but there can be no comparison between the generation that fought the Nazis and the culture warriors who think they have achieved something by getting a supermarket worker fired for 'misgendering' someone on social media. While my grandfather's generation put their lives at risk to resist authoritarianism, many of today's young adults are calling for their own liberties to be restricted. This baffling volte-face has arisen for a number of reasons, not least that the threat has taken a more opaque form. There is little ambiguity in a murderous tyrant who seeks to consolidate his power through conquest and subjugation, but what happens when authoritarianism disguises itself as benevolence and accrues power so gradually that it becomes almost imperceptible?”

This re-emergent authoritarianism has manifested itself in some odd and interesting ways. One that caught my attention is the impulse of protestors to attack works of art. Doyle is surely right when he says that, “Attacks on art have such a visceral effect because we understand that they represent a repudiation of human civilisation. For intersectional activists, art and literature are merely further manifestations of the will to power. We have seen this in recent trends in criticism, by which art is judged on the basis of whether or not it is sufficiently intersectional or diverse. Faced with a piece as monumental as Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937), could these activists see anything other than the labour of a misogynist who mistreated his wives and mistresses, a tribute to oppressive patriarchal systems of control?...We are dealing with a catastrophising mindset that sees art as little more than a futile hobby, a distraction from the greater mission…How long before an activist sets fire to a Titian, or carves political slogans into a Botticelli with a penknife? If you think that such philistinism is beyond them, you have not understood the soullessness of their creed. The destruction of art is always an authoritarian act, which is perhaps why it is so appealing to present-day activists who see the values of Western civilisation as essentially toxic. I have no doubt that the foot-soldiers of the Taliban who demolished the Buddha statues of Bamiyan in March 2001 felt much the same way.” I’m sure that these protestors would be enraged with the comparison to the Taliban or Nazi book-burners, but it does seem fair.

A second manifestation of this authoritarian impulse, albeit a trivial one, that caught my attention is the attempt by both left and right to claim the legacy of George Orwell. While Orwell himself commented that we must fight against totalitarianism, or it could triumph anywhere, Doyle comments: “That both the right and the left can claim Orwell for 'their side' should tell us something about the shared tendency towards authoritarianism that is the subject of this book. As a writer, he has always been difficult to pin down politically, which is troubling to those for whom 'left versus right' is an inflexible and convenient dualism. While Orwell's body of work stands as a warning against cleaving to one's own ideological group irrespective of the circumstances, today's commentators cling limpet-like to their political clans, making excuses for their party's faults and interpreting every oppositional statement in the most negative light. In essays such as 'Notes on Nationalism' (1945), Orwell exposes how this 'with us or against us' mindset results in the outsourcing of individual agency. He is nervous about the tendency to assume 'that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad", and he cautions against 'the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests'.”

The result of this, as Orwell concluded and Doyle points out, is an unthinking loyalty to the tribe that results in the revolutionaries morphing into the very tyrants they started out fighting against: “When we think only in terms of the demands and aims of the tribe, we are not thinking at all. Those who have convinced themselves that 'my side can do no wrong' are suffering from a delusion…In the pessimism of his pre-war essays, Orwell imagines that 'we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships' and that 'in the remaining years of free speech' there will be no authors actively seeking to improve society. His own work, by contrast, is what he would term 'constructive', profoundly moral, and purposefully crafted in the hope of actuating real-world change. While other writers resigned themselves to a life inside the whale, Orwell was determined to cut his way out. We have now reached the point in the culture war that Orwell would have recognised, where the revolutionaries have become the tyrants they sought to resist. The illiberal left and the woke right share that quality of the pigs in the farmhouse at the end of Animal Farm, being observed by the other animals through the window. "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Solution: Classic Liberalism

Woke is a notoriously slippery term, but the definition Doyle developed above is the best I have seen. Similarly, he helpfully defines what he means by liberalism: “My own understanding of liberalism is perhaps best summarised in John Stuart Mill's maxim in On Liberty (1859): 'the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.’ That is to say, a free society depends upon the right of each citizen to retain his or her autonomy. Yet all branches of liberal thought…share an understanding that the rule of law is paramount. Individual autonomy cannot be preserved if the state is unable to maintain the peace and impartially resolve the natural conflicts of human existence. This is why Mill is keen to stress that 'for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments.’ Liberalism, then, is not some kind of anarchic free-for-all, but a means to ensure that individual freedom can flourish on the condition that the rights of others are not impaired.”

There is a lot to unpack here, not least the balancing act between the citizen and the state (a topic that Doyle addresses at some length). However, one fair question is why we should bother to try and sustain a societal principle that is so frequently beleaguered. The answer is compelling: “If liberalism is so delicate and continually under threat, why bother with it at all? In short: because it works. Liberalism has enjoyed a long and successful history in the Western world. It has seen advances in civil rights, equality law, tolerance and social cohesion. For all the claims by identitarian activists that the West is a racist hellhole, few living in the era of Jim Crow could have conceived of the advances we have since made. Yet while liberalism has a proven track record of success, it is not the norm. Very few nation-states, either globally or historically, embrace the principles of freedom of speech, individual autonomy and equal rights for all. We are fortunate to have reached a consensus that human liberty is a force for good, even at a time when that consensus is under threat. Of course it is only natural that our patience wears thin when we see people openly supporting the demolition of our civilisation and showing utter contempt for our shared values and history, but this is a right that must be preserved. Taking action against direct incitement to violence is one thing, but compromising on our key values is another. If we renege on our liberal principles at the very moment when they are most imperilled, we risk undermining the very foundations upon which our civilisation is built.”

Doyle contends that the “authoritarian impulse is one that is restrained by civilisation, which is why the liberal insists on socialisation through education and a fair application of the rule of law as a safety net for when that process has failed…Its focus on individual rights is not a negation of social responsibility, but a corollary of it.” This is part of what distinguishes liberalism from progressivism, and is what makes it compatible with the philosophy of a social conservative like me. Again, Doyle is clear that liberalism does not equate to licence. As he explains, “When Locke urges readers to dispense with leaders who subject them to a 'train of abuses', it is not because he envisages a moral free-for-all in which every fleeting desire, however sordid or self-centred, is satisfied. It is because in a cohesive society the general will can only be sustained where there is harmony between the needs of the citizens and those of the state…For those of us who are dismayed at the rejection of liberalism from both the right and the left, the ongoing confusion of liberty and licence is a seemingly perennial obstacle. For a truly free society, we must strive towards a reconceptualisation of liberalism as a way of life that can flourish only on the foundations installed through effective socialisation, rigorous educational values, a just legal system, and a shared social contract formed on the basis of consensus rather than top-down imposition. Naysayers will deny that this qualifies as liberalism at all, but theirs is a myopic view that fails to observe a debate that has been raging for centuries. When we cry for liberty, they mistake it for licence. To put it simply: freedom can only exist when its conditions have been successfully cultivated.”

Alongside freedom, Doyle urges us to recentre truth, and in a poignant passage, he runs up against the limitations of his own worldview: “Our conviction that human freedom is paramount has origins that are perhaps ultimately incomprehensible to us. To defend the principle is one thing; to consider why it exists at all is quite another. Where we might seek answers, we find only questions. Is our belief in freedom essentially religious? Does it spring from a sense in which the value of the individual is connected to an inherent regard, however subconsciously felt, for the sanctity of human life? Does our faith in individual liberty, in other words, itself convey a faith in the divine? If men have no souls, no higher utility beyond the corporeal, why is depriving a man of his freedom or life any more objectionable than leashing a dog or crushing an insect? Or is it a matter of sheerest pragmatism? Is our belief in liberty a utilitarian project, a means by which we can achieve the greatest good for the greatest number? Or is it based on self-interest? Do we promote human liberty as a universal precept because it thereby protects us, as individuals, from tyranny? When we say 'slavery is abominable', do we mean 'it would be abominable for me to be enslaved'? Or is our sense of justice innate, either as the God-given sine qua non of the human condition, or the product of an evolutionary process that has endowed us with empathy and the capacity for love as an advantageous quality in the struggle for survival? I pose the questions as a man roaring into an endless void, with no expectation of the faintest echo of an answer.”

Doyle is certainly correct in his contention that we need the transcendent, and equally correct in his call for us to embrace freedom and truth. Far from roaring into the void, I contend that the answers to all these questions are found in the person of Jesus Christ - but that is the subject of another review. He may not provide all the answers, but in this excellent book, Andrew Doyle offers both piercing insights and convincing analysis of our cultural moment, reinforcing my belief in the importance of resisting authoritarianism and embracing true liberty. This is a timely and helpful book, and I highly recommend it.

Postscript 1: Multiculturalism critiqued: “Liberals support a multiracial society with shared cultural values, multiculturalists promote a system that leads to incompatible groups living disparate lives. As citizens of a secular democracy, we naturally incline in favour of freedom of belief and worship and condemn those who seek to suppress it…It is of course true that ethnical mores fluctuate according to time and place, but this does not mean that we should not be able to measure one cultural norm against another. True inclusivity and equality means holding everyone to the same standards.”


Postscript 2: Progressivism, not relativism: “I am not suggesting that human beings should be valued according to the norms of their culture. Had we been born a few centuries ago, we would have doubtless supported many things that we now abhor. Similarly, if we were raised in an Islamic theocracy, we would almost certainly end up holding very different views about human rights or free speech or democracy. A recognition that we are all products of our upbringing and tradition does not mean that we should dispense with the notion of moral appraisal altogether, or make excuses for societies in which abhorrent crimes have become normalised. This is not to imply that our foreign policy ought to be based on the project of 'civilising' other nations, or that there are not cultural practices of our own that are worthy of criticism. However, we can surely all agree that basic human rights should not be restricted to those who are fortunate enough to live in liberal democracies. Nor is it acceptable that governments that deny such rights to their citizens should escape scrutiny on the grounds of cultural differences.”

Postscript 3: Free speech and snobbish critical theorists: “A snobbish mistrust of the masses lies at the heart of the opposition to the First Amendment, a feature that we can trace to the Frankfurt School and the French postmodernists of the 1960s, two groups that have substantially influenced the philosophy behind wokeness. According to this view, popular culture has created a society of unthinking clones. What Herbert Marcuse described as the 'one-dimensional man' is therefore irredeemably blind to his own persecution and reacts mechanically according to decrees from above. It is maintained that 'hate speech' has the power to rile up one group against another, even though the evidence for this claim is scant. The history of censorship plainly reveals that it does not have the desired effect, because bad ideas that are driven underground tend to fester and multiply. Furthermore, laws against offensive speech soon become expanded to incorporate any viewpoints that are not approved by those in power.”

[Phillip Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love Andrew Doyle, but in this book he does strike a slightly superior tone. Talks alot of people knowing history and the great literature of the past and the clear lessons we can learn from that. But do you really need to read, digest and comprehend-like-he-does all that material to understand woke is (or can be) a bad thing? He seems to understand 'woke people' wont read those books because the morality of the authors can be so easily written off but also seems to be telling them off for not reading them - because if they did, they'd think like he does. I'm not sure there's only one way to interpret the material he relies on when presenting his case.
It's a good book though, and incredibly well researched and articulated. It does want to focus more on the contemporary though as current-moment examples against woke work just as well and might be more appealing to those minds that can be changed by talking them through.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn’t expecting much more from this as I would a rant from my dad. But it was actually articulate (obviously as Andrew Doyle is a successful journalist, so it’s well written and sourced).

And it’s also pretty funny too.

I’m cautious of books that are too self congratulatory or affirming. But this books did make me question a view point I had not considered, that modern culture is not unlike Victorian manners obsession or catholic purity culture. And this realisation made me cut the cord totally from general online left wing performative behaviour.

I already knew it was a bit much, but realising this has always existed in English society made me think a lot about my world view.

[Laura Naysmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Doyle never fails to entertainer and inform. The quip about Regents street being covered in progress pride flags and looking like the paramilitary wing of The Care Bears had me laughing. The narration was a bit stilted in the first few chapters but he seemed to hit his stride as the audiobook went on. Great stuff.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started out strong and then fell off a cliff halfway through.

[Janne Virtanen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fair and balanced take on the excesses of both extremes of the horseshoe-shaped political spectrum, only betrayed by its rather banal title.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting read and well written intellectually. Some points I’d dispute, but overall an eye opening antidote to the current culture that prevails