Defining "Woke"

What makes something or somebody "woke"?

While ideas and people belonging to the left are much more likely to be labelled "woke" than those on the right, I don't suspect it's as simple as saying that "woke" is a synonym for "left-wing politics." Chris Hedges, who is not particularly friendly to the right, interviewed Christian Parenti on his article “The Cargo Cult of Woke.” Based on a brief skim of Hedges' interview, both him and Parenti seem very left-wing and also very uninterested in wokeness.

So if "woke" isn't just shorthand for "left-wing," then what exactly does it mean? I would put forward the following definition: For something or somebody to be "woke" is for it/them to contain the most superficial, self-congratulatory, and intolerant aspects of left-wing politics.

Western culture abounds with wokeness. Whether it's a research paper on the relationship between queerness and parkour or a rabble-rauser in a public library cursing at a senior over offensive words used in a quotation, woke ideas and behaviours are running at full speed and don't appear to be slowing down any time soon. These two examples belong to my province, Saskatchewan, by the way, which is hardly a bastion of progressivism. Most people don't even know that Saskatchewan exists (a fact that is perhaps slightly buffered by the occasional cultural phenomenon like Corner Gas).