Tucker Carlson Triggered by "Woke" Candy

Tucker Carlson’s response to the rebrand of M&M’s candy represents the current conservative response to woke culture and the extremity of partisan culture wars.

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The term “woke” received mainstream popularization around 2010 and during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. Its origin lies in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination” and was used frequently in racial justice movements. The meaning of woke has broadened slightly and has been adopted to refer to being alert to social and political issues. It is also used to describe progressive politics in general. The word is strongly associated with leftist identity-based social movements, however, the right has capitalized on the popularity of the term in a different way.

Republicans have recently weaponized “woke” as an insult to the left’s agenda. Conservatives have manipulated “wokeness” into a term that refers to modern social movements’ perceived negative effects on people. The culture behind wokeness to conservative is the sort of “gotcha” culture that surrounds it. Rather than real activism, conservatives equate wokeness to performative activism and believe that it allows the social culture to be dominated by radical leftists/liberals. Groups who share this view have gathered around the opposition to “wokeness,” coining the phrases “war on woke” or “anti-woke”. Certain conservative politicians and figures have branded themselves with these phrases and have exacerbated the political polarization on this subject. Recently, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has made himself a