In an article for Slate published Tuesday, writer Molly Olmstead noted that several key thinkers who helped shape the modern Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement are now expressing concern over the direction it has taken. Elements within the movement, she observed, appear to be straying from their original vision.
Olmstead highlighted how tensions within the conservative movement escalated Sunday following the publication of a provocative essay by Rod Dreher, a prominent right-wing commentator and longtime ally of Vice President JD Vance.
The piece, titled “The Woke Right Is Coming for Your Sons,” appeared in The Free Press, a media outlet launched by conservative former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss.
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In the essay, Dreher criticized what he sees as a troubling evolution within the political right, accusing some factions of adopting tactics typically associated with the left. He pointed to examples such as President Donald Trump’s push to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” which he characterized as a form of language control, and the portrayal of Winston Churchill as the “chief villain” of World War II by a MAGA-aligned podcaster.
Most concerning to Dreher, however, was a rising trend of identity-driven politics centered on white Christian men, which he warned often veers into virulent antisemitism.
Olmstead detailed the backlash that followed Dreher’s essay, which provoked sharp criticism from figures on the right.
According to Olmstead, many conservatives accused Dreher of unfairly maligning mainstream right-wingers by labeling them as “woke.” The core of the outrage, she explained, stemmed from Dreher’s use of a term “woke right” — that some centrist conservatives had previously applied to controversial figures like Christopher Rufo, a leading voice in the fight against critical race theory in schools.
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Olmstead noted that the term’s usage struck a nerve because it appeared to suggest a kind of moral or political parity between what Dreher called the “woke right” and the “woke left.” For many conservatives, that comparison was unacceptable. They argued that the progressive left wields far more institutional power than any right-wing faction could claim.
The day after the uproar, Dreher walked back his wording in a lengthy 4,700-word blog post — something Olmstead described as typical of his verbose style. He apologized for what he called a misjudgment stemming from not being “online enough.”
The offending phrase “woke right” was removed from the original piece, and the headline was revised to refer instead to “the radical right," Olmstead noted.
She argued that "the incident was not the first time the term had been the center of controversy in debates around modern conservative politics."
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Olmstead added: "But the episode marks a particularly heated moment for the digital elites of the MAGA movement, as Dreher’s miscalculation comes at a time when the right, wielding greater political power than it has held in years, has begun to show fractures in its coalition."