The Fatal Flaw Of ‘Dark Woke’:
Sometimes Dark Woke involves downright harsh and mean spirited barbs aimed directly at the insecurities of prominent fascists like Marjorie Taylor Greene or wheelchair-bound Greg Abbott, who Jasmine Crockett once called “governor hot wheels.”
It’s never easy for folks experimenting with this lefty edginess to be as freely and gleefully hurtful as their counterparts on the right, who can say anything about anyone at any time because they have the advantage of caring about nothing and no one. Nihilism is their shield. You can’t shame the shameless; you can’t force someone to feel bad when the whole point of their existence is to spread the suffering generated from within. The left, if it wants to right the wrongs of the American fascist movement and the country’s first dictator, can’t quite go all in on the nastiness unless they are to slide toward the nihilist mindset the far right so desperately wants them to embrace.
A pro-democracy movement that unchains itself from institutionalism and proper political etiquette is not one that must be vicious and unyielding in its insults. We don’t have to be assholes. But we can laugh at the assholes until they are reduced to pathetic nothings in the eyes of the public. We can make them lose their minds with a strategic smile and a hearty laugh, because nothing says fuck you like a good laugh.