The tl;dr here would be "it's blindingly obvious they don't have to be", and many aren't especially older ones like me who have different ties to an older world feminism, and anti racism world view which clashes with the current ones.
Hitchens (Chris, not Peter) said things in a very unwoke manner, which despite his clear non socialist world view, many on the left agree with. Of Peter his brother, the less said the better.
Works for me - https://archive.is/BLOgt
I know it wasn't originally so, but nowadays it seems to be just thrown around as a generic insult.
That's the usual go-to, isn't it? Forcing your opponent to define the word woke to make them look dumb/hateful.
If we want to play semantics checkers, why don't we stick with the original meaning of the word, in which case being against only one of those things would be considered woke.
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/12/aoc-democratic-socialists-2...
> Like, what do you mean by woke
The author is positing that:
"From the beginning, it was possible to be a socialist, the socialist, and culturally middle-of-the-road. It was possible to believe in seizing the means of production without being avant-garde on matters of sex, race, crime or war. That point has got lost over time, to the left’s immense cost
...
[a] political entrepreneur will notice the unmet demand for a culturally moderate-to-conservative socialism
...
A century or so after Das Kapital, some British dockers marched in defence of Enoch Powell, a Tory minister who had been fired for a speech against non-white immigration. The march wasn’t, and isn’t, peculiar. The conservatism of even the organised working class should not be news. Unable to come to terms with it, the modern left retreats into a sort of Ken Loach or Mike Leigh fantasy world, in which Christian and Muslim, native and migrant, blue-haired teenager and laid-off steelworker, are forever teaming up to fight the real Other, which is neoliberalism."
A large number of people simply use words as weapons, for effect. Expletives detached from meaning.
If you asked one of them for a meaning, you might get a real word salad, concealing the unspoken meaning basically: "someone who supports Foreigners, Minorities, Women, Socialists, Gays and Liberals" [0]
Since the Lee Atwater "Southern Strategy" days the poor have been conned into supporting the very oligarchs who take away their health care, education, jobs and opportunity.
I see you're not a serious person.
