On the misguided but (sometimes) well-intended attempt to do Woke Right containment by playing ball in their court to keep the youth from radicalizing further because no one else is reaching them otherwise: There's an argument (and related activity) floating around that the Woke Right is, indeed, too radical, but they're flirting with big truths that no one else will go near. This gives them clout, and perhaps uniquely. Therefore, there's a need to pander to that space to deal with the Woke Right agitations responsibly and hopefully pull people back away from them. That is, being a good shepherd by being a little wolfish because the wolves seem to have a point. Furthermore, there's a recognition that we've already significantly lost most young conservative men (and many young conservative women) to a Woke Right reaction, at least in light measure, and so they won't listen to anything that doesn't flatter that. That is, the sheep have already started listening to the wolves and don't want to hear from shepherds who don't at least speak wolfish, so we need to speak wolfish if we're going to reach them at all and keep them from falling into more radical hands. In both cases, though for slightly different reasons (arguments and consensus), the belief boils down to needing to play on Woke Right turf and in Woke Right framing in order to prevent more young conservatives from becoming radical Woke Right. It's better to meet them with moderate Woke Right-ness and help guide them back. I get the impulse, but I don't think it will work. You cannot compromise with Woke. The laws of bad faith interaction and intolerant factions will beat you eventually if you try to play this game. The first of these two arguments will necessarily assume Woke Right framing, which is ultimately Woke framing. Let me assure you of an Iron Law of Woke: if you adopt Woke framing, you will have no way to stop yourself from going Woke. None. The framing the Woke utilize in all cases is always the slippery slope into their den of resentment, envy, and destruction. Inside this framing, eventually the only interpretations that make sense are the Woke ones, and everything that doesn't go more Woke is doomed to be mere holding out on finishing the job. Since everything Woke turns to shit, adopting their framing even strategically or in part to be a "good shepherd" will turn you to shit. Full stop. You can actually see this happening if you watch Woke Right guys talking back in 2022 versus how they talk now in 2025 (I've been posting clips...). You can see them disagreeing with the precise radicalism they embrace now (racism, antisemitism, anti-Israel, conspiratorialism, victimhood, critical theory orientation, etc.), saying it's "obviously" too far, back in 2022. Now, it's "obviously" necessary and just a fact of the world. That's because there's no way to stop yourself from turning to shit inside the Woke turn-you-to-shit framing. Woke (including Woke Right) is a worldview. It is not a collection of beliefs and attitudes you can just pick up or put down. It is a self-justifying and self-confirming way of seeing the world, and picking it up means starting to see the world that way. Once you go in, there's also no way out because anyone who tries to back out is just being some kind of lame hold-out, coward, cuck, neocon, Jewish, or whatever the "based" insult of the day happens to be. Get it again: Woke framing is the slippery slope to Wokeness. The logic is that you have this diagnosis and thus solution through critique or seizing power which doesn't actually solve anything, and so when it doesn't work the only conclusion is that the critique wasn't deep enough and the power wasn't seized thoroughly enough, demanding more of both. This is why you see the slide from 2022 to 2025 in guys who took up this framing. It's also exactly what happened to the Left. You/we are not immune. If you adopt the worldview, you will slide or be consumed by those sliding faster than you are. Again, full stop. The second of these two arguments concedes that we've effectively already lost the youth; i.e., that the Woke Right problem is far worse than anyone is ready to admit that it is (except, perhaps, me, and even I'm skeptical of that). It's a complete lack of faith in our young people and an embrace of the fatalism that has consumed them. We should be calling them back to faith, reason, and order rather than encouraging their frustrations or leading them to adopt Woke framing as a half-measure, as described above. If it is the case that the MAGA youth already won't listen, just like the Left won't listen, then they need to be left behind until they grow up. They need opportunities to leave these youthful dalliances behind, ample promises of forgiveness, and yet should be given no quarter for their radicalism whatsoever in anything they desire to be a part of. If they want to bog themselves down in going "Full Fuentes," advise them against it, tell them you're here when they repent of that error, and let them. I counsel the same thing for dealing with many teenage and late adolescent errors many people commit. A lot of people will experiment with stupid things in their lives, including radical ideologies. It is our responsibility to tell them that's massively in error, that there will be consequences to those decisions, that they are welcome to make those mistakes though not encouraged to do so as young adults, and to explain to them why that road is mistaken and likely to be both fun and rough at the same time. It's also our responsibility to offer them the promise of the Prodigal Son, if and only if they repent of their error and demonstrate the requisite growth. At any rate, the second error is the error of social capture or popular consensus. That is, it's the poisonous error of democracy, that the "truth" is ultimately tailored by what people are willing to hear. That simply isn't true, and what it does is affirm the error in the hope of using it to steer the ship. The problem is that doing so builds the exact false democratic consensus that needs to be rejected in the first place, thus making it harder to rescue people from it, not easier. Telling the truth takes boldness, faith, and courage in these situations, not craftiness or pandering. Better to take a firm stand for righteousness and let there be wailing and gnashing of teeth before a repentant return than to squander the thing worth returning to in the hope of keeping wild horses in the stable. Ideally, taking a bold stand and drawing bold lines against error and evil would be rewarded, but that reward is only available in the long term where the length of the wait is proportional to the degree of the corruption having to be overcome. My hope and prayer is that the eyes of our remaining thought and activism leaders on the Right will be opened to what we are actually facing now and that their spines will be strengthened to do the right thing despite knowing full well what they'll get (in the short term) as a "reward." As I said thousands of times to audiences regarding the Woke Left, though: the longer you wait to take a stand for the right thing, the harder it will be. The ugliness will only continue to grow and grow stronger and nastier the longer you waver and the more you pander and feed it. In the end, you will wish you stood up sooner, and everything you feared losing in your stand will be recognized for the vanity that it always was. May God or Nature or your consciences or Jiminy Cricket or simply good, plain common sense and decency open your eyes and steel your spines sooner rather than later.
