Weaponizing Wokeness: How Project 2025 Constructs a New Moral Panic

• In Event: Critical Issues in Anomie and Extremism

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the role of “wokeness” in Project 2025, which is a right-wing agenda released by the Heritage Foundation in April 2023. The document has raised concerns about its radically conservative views, although President Trump denies involvement in the creation of Project 2025. Despite this denial, numerous plans detailed in Project 2025 have been implemented under the Trump Administration. Project 2025 contains multiple mentions of “woke” and “The Great Awokening,” terms that have both been used in public and political discourse as a descriptor of social justice movements as well as a pejorative label used by critics of progressive ideologies. Building on Stanley Cohen’s theory of moral panic, we investigate the weaponization of wokeness by right-wing political actors through the discourse of Project 2025. We use critical discourse analysis (CDA) to investigate how lexical choices – such as references to “wokeness,” “social justice,” and “woke warriors” – create discursive tensions that reinforce harm, domination, and the “us vs. them” mentality. Based on our analysis, we found that the use of wokeness in Project 2025 constitutes a new form of moral panic. We conclude the study by exploring strategies to mitigate tension caused by this new moral panic.

Authors

• Sydney Shevat, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

• Helen Wilds, University of Tennessee, Knoxville