Politics of Conspiracy

Rightwing Boogeymen and The Great Other

Conspiracy theories are foundational for rightwing politics

Laura Westford

7 min read

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Rightwing politics seemingly always has a new boogeyman they are going after. No matter how many times they switch up what this boogeyman is, people never seem to catch on. Whether it’s the gay agenda, social justice warriors, wokeness, or even something like the Jewish Question (JQ), people on the right are always pointing to some nebulous concept as being the cause of a number of, if not all of our social ills.

People might object to the comparison between the rightwing attacks on wokeness and the attacks made by the far-right in their silly and bigoted ramblings about the JQ. However, what people have to understand is, the core of both these positions is fundamentally the same. If you look at the way the contemporary right attacks wokeness as this monolithic force which is apparently causing the destruction of the nuclear family, white people, and even Western civilization at large, there really is little difference between this and the antisemitic ramblings of someone like Nick Fuentes.

The way the right attacks wokeness is completely divorced from how the term was originally coined. Originally, wokeness meant to simply be aware of social injustices…