Woke Culture and the New (Im)moral Hierarchy

Q: What is The Third Awokening?

The Third Awokening is Eric Kaufmann's analysis of what he describes as the third wave of cultural-left ideological enthusiasm in the West. He argues that this movement has increasingly influenced institutions, education, culture, and public debate.

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Woke Culture and the New (Im)moral Hierarchy: Eric Kaufmann

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Eric Kaufmann and the New (Im)moral Hierarchy

What happens when a society’s moral language changes so gradually that people barely notice the transformation?

That question sits at the center of Eric Kaufmann’s analysis of woke culture, identity politics, and the changing cultural institutions of the West.

Kaufmann, author of The Third Awokening, argues that today’s cultural conflicts cannot be understood simply as a struggle between traditional left and right economic policies. Instead, he sees a deeper transformation in the way Western societies assign moral value to identities, institutions, speech, traditions, and social groups. His book describes the current period as a third wave of cultural-left ideological enthusiasm, building on earlier transformations in Western culture.

The provocative question is whether a new moral hierarchy has emerged—one in which some identities receive greater sympathy, protection, and institutional legitimacy than others.

In the interview, Kaufmann does not present this transformation as something that happened overnight. Instead, he describes a long process in which cultural ideas move from intellectual circles into universities, media, professional institutions, public administration, and eventually everyday expectations.

That gradual process may be precisely what makes it so difficult to recognize.

From Cultural Critique to Institutional Power

Kaufmann’s argument begins with an important distinction.

Cultural change does not necessarily begin with legislation.

It can begin with language.

A new vocabulary changes how people describe society. That vocabulary changes what institutions consider acceptable. Institutional expectations then influence professional behavior, education, media coverage, and public policy.

Over time, an idea that once appeared radical can become ordinary.

This is one of the central themes of The Third Awokening. Kaufmann argues that the cultural left has evolved over generations, with universities playing a particularly important role in transmitting ideas into the wider culture. Public discussions of his work similarly emphasize the role of universities as institutions that socialize succeeding generations.

The significance of this argument is not simply political.

It is institutional.

If cultural assumptions become embedded in hiring practices, professional standards, educational curricula, media conventions, and administrative procedures, changing those assumptions becomes much more difficult than defeating a political party in an election.

The institution itself becomes part of the process.

The New Moral Hierarchy

The most provocative part of Kaufmann’s framework is his description of what can be called a moral hierarchy of identities.

The argument, as presented in the conversation, is that contemporary cultural politics can sometimes operate according to an implicit emotional ranking in which historically disadvantaged groups are automatically granted greater moral sympathy while majority or historically dominant groups are viewed with greater suspicion.

Kaufmann summarizes this tendency in deliberately provocative terms: “minorities good, majority bad.”

This should be understood as his characterization of a tendency within contemporary cultural politics—not as a claim that every progressive person or institution literally believes that proposition.

The larger point is about asymmetry.

If two groups make comparable claims, are they evaluated according to the same standard?

If one group’s historical identity is treated as worthy of protection, while another group’s identity is treated as embarrassing, oppressive, or irrelevant, then equality before the moral law becomes difficult to maintain.

That is where Kaufmann’s concept of the (im)moral hierarchy becomes important.

The question is not whether discrimination historically existed. It clearly did.

The question is whether correcting historical injustice can eventually produce a new system of unequal moral treatment.

Political Correctness and the Expansion of Taboos

One of the mechanisms Kaufmann emphasizes is the expansion of cultural taboos.

There is an obvious difference between prohibiting racial abuse and declaring an ever-expanding range of ordinary observations morally unacceptable.

The first protects people from genuine discrimination.

The second can create an environment in which people become afraid to discuss controversial questions.

Kaufmann has argued that the anti-racism taboo that developed in the mid-20th century became an important foundation for later cultural taboos. In his account, the logic was subsequently extended into other areas involving gender, sexuality, identity, and speech.

This helps explain the connection between political correctness, cancel culture, and the broader culture war.

When a society increasingly treats disagreement as evidence of moral defect, political disagreement becomes personal.

A person is no longer merely wrong.

They become suspect.

And once disagreement becomes evidence of bad character, social pressure can accomplish what formal censorship does not.

Cancel Culture and the Fear of Saying the Wrong Thing

The rise of cancel culture represents another stage in this process.

The term itself is contested, but the underlying phenomenon is recognizable: people can face professional, social, or reputational consequences for expressing views that fall outside accepted boundaries.

Kaufmann’s broader argument is that the problem is not the existence of social norms. Every society has them.

The problem arises when those norms become so expansive that they suppress legitimate disagreement.

This is where free speech becomes relevant.

A free society does not require everyone to agree.

It requires people to have enough freedom to disagree without being treated as morally contaminated for doing so.

Kaufmann’s analysis therefore raises an important question:

Can a society defend minority groups without creating a hierarchy in which some viewpoints receive greater protection than others?

That is a much more difficult question than simply asking whether people support diversity.

Universities as Upstream Institutions

Few institutions matter more to Kaufmann’s analysis than universities.

Universities do not merely educate students.

They help determine which questions future generations will consider legitimate.

They produce journalists, teachers, lawyers, administrators, researchers, policymakers, and corporate professionals. Their terminology and assumptions can therefore spread far beyond campus.

Kaufmann has argued that universities became especially important in the development and consolidation of cultural-left ideology.

This makes academic culture an important part of the modern culture war.

If a university treats ideological diversity as legitimate, students encounter competing explanations.

If it develops a strong political monoculture, students may instead learn that certain conclusions are morally respectable while others are not.

The result can be a self-reinforcing cycle.

Students absorb the dominant assumptions.

Some become academics or professionals.

They then reproduce those assumptions within institutions.

The next generation encounters an even more established version of the same culture.

This is one reason cultural change can continue even when public opinion appears to be moving in another direction.

Identity Politics Beyond Economic Class

Another important feature of Kaufmann’s argument is his resistance to explaining contemporary political conflict entirely through economic class.

Traditional political analysis often focuses on income, occupation, and material interests.

Kaufmann places greater emphasis on culture, psychology, education, identity, and attitudes toward social change.

Two people with similar incomes can therefore have completely different political worldviews.

One may experience immigration, demographic change, and cultural transformation as exciting opportunities.

Another may experience the same changes as loss.

Neither response can be explained entirely by a person’s paycheck.

This helps explain why identity politics has become such a powerful force in contemporary politics.

Political identities increasingly involve questions such as:

Who belongs?
Which traditions deserve protection?
Whose history should be remembered?
Which forms of discrimination receive attention?
What constitutes offensive speech?
Which identities receive institutional recognition?
When does equality become equity?
When does protection become censorship?

These questions are cultural before they are economic.

Immigration and the Politics of Cultural Change

Immigration is another major component of Kaufmann’s broader work.

His scholarship has repeatedly examined the relationship between demographic change, ethnic identity, nationalism, and political realignment.

In Whiteshift, for example, Kaufmann examined how demographic change and immigration interact with the politics of identity and populism.

In the interview, this perspective helps explain why immigration cannot be treated simply as an economic issue.

People respond to rapid cultural change differently.

Some see diversity as enrichment.

Others worry about losing familiar institutions, traditions, languages, or national identities.

When political institutions dismiss the second group as irrational or immoral, resentment can intensify.

That can produce precisely the political backlash that cultural elites hoped to prevent.

The Culture War Is About More Than Politics

The phrase culture war is often used casually.

But Kaufmann’s argument suggests that the stakes are deeper than electoral competition.

A culture war is ultimately a disagreement about what society considers good, bad, admirable, shameful, legitimate, or forbidden.

That means the conflict extends into:

universities;
schools;
corporations;
professional organizations;
media;
sports;
immigration policy;
public administration;
religious institutions;
and social media.

Political parties are only one part of the equation.

The deeper contest is over cultural authority.

Who gets to define acceptable language?

Who determines which identities deserve special protection?

Who decides what counts as discrimination?

Who determines whether an institution should remain politically neutral?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who gets to decide what questions may legitimately be asked?

When Guardrails Disappear

Kaufmann’s warning is not that cultural change inevitably produces catastrophe.

His more subtle concern is that cultural systems can move incrementally.

Each individual change may appear relatively small.

A new euphemism here.

A revised institutional policy there.

A new professional expectation.

A new taboo.

A new administrative rule.

A new definition of acceptable speech.

Individually, none of these changes necessarily appears revolutionary.

But accumulated over decades, they can produce a radically different cultural environment.

This is why Kaufmann describes the process as lacking sufficient guardrails.

The danger, in his framework, is not necessarily a single authoritarian moment.

It is normalization.

People adapt to each new stage.

What seemed extraordinary ten years earlier becomes ordinary.

What seemed controversial becomes professional etiquette.

What once required argument eventually becomes an assumption.

And once an assumption becomes invisible, challenging it becomes much harder.

Can Liberalism Correct Its Own Excesses?

Kaufmann’s position ultimately raises a paradox.

Many of the values associated with modern liberalism—tolerance, equal treatment, minority protection, freedom of expression, and individual rights—are themselves valuable achievements.

The problem begins when one liberal value is expanded until it overwhelms the others.

Protecting people from discrimination can become an argument for restricting speech.

Promoting equality can become a demand for equal outcomes.

Respecting identity can become an obligation to affirm every identity claim.

Preventing harm can become a justification for suppressing uncomfortable ideas.

Kaufmann’s proposed alternative is not simply a return to the past.

His broader work argues for restoring stronger commitments to neutrality, classical liberalism, and cultural confidence while retaining legitimate protections against discrimination.

That distinction matters.

The alternative to ideological conformity should not be another form of ideological conformity.

The goal should be institutions capable of accommodating disagreement.

The Real Test: Can We Disagree Without Becoming Enemies?

Perhaps the most important question raised by Kaufmann’s analysis is not whether every part of his argument is correct.

It is whether Western societies can still tolerate disagreement about fundamental cultural questions.

A healthy pluralistic society will contain competing visions of the good life.

Some people will favor rapid cultural change.

Others will prefer continuity.

Some will prioritize equality.

Others will emphasize liberty.

Some will celebrate multiculturalism.

Others will defend national or inherited traditions.

A liberal society does not need to resolve these disagreements permanently.

It needs institutions capable of containing them.

That means allowing disagreement without automatically assigning moral inferiority to the people who disagree.

The danger of a new moral hierarchy is therefore not simply that one political faction wins.

The deeper danger is that people begin to believe there is only one morally legitimate way to think.

Once that happens, political disagreement becomes moral condemnation.

And once disagreement becomes moral condemnation, the space for genuine pluralism begins to disappear.

Eric Kaufmann’s Challenge to the Cultural Status Quo

Eric Kaufmann’s analysis of woke culture, political correctness, identity politics, and the culture war is ultimately a challenge to the cultural assumptions that have become embedded in Western institutions.

His argument is controversial.

It is also difficult to dismiss simply by labeling it conservative or progressive.

The more important question is whether his description of cultural change accurately identifies a growing asymmetry in how institutions evaluate different identities, ideas, and forms of speech.

The Third Awokening presents Kaufmann’s broader thesis that woke ideology represents a third historical wave of cultural-left enthusiasm and argues that it has become embedded in major Western institutions.

Whether readers agree with his conclusions or not, the questions he raises are worth confronting.

Can minority protection coexist with genuine viewpoint neutrality?

Can political correctness exist without suppressing legitimate disagreement?

Can universities maintain intellectual diversity?

Can immigration occur without ignoring cultural cohesion?

Can societies acknowledge historical injustice without creating new forms of collective blame?

And can liberal institutions preserve both equality and freedom?

Those questions cannot be answered by slogans.

They require open debate.

And perhaps that is the most important lesson of the conversation with Eric Kaufmann:

A society that loses the ability to debate its moral assumptions may eventually lose the ability to change them.

Key Takeaways

Woke culture has become an important part of the contemporary Western culture war.
Eric Kaufmann argues that cultural change has accumulated gradually rather than occurring through a single political revolution.
Political correctness can become problematic when legitimate disagreement is treated as moral wrongdoing.
Identity politics can create different expectations for different social groups.
Universities play an important role in transmitting cultural ideas into wider society.
Immigration and demographic change can intensify disagreements over identity and national culture.
Cancel culture illustrates how social pressure can enforce cultural norms without formal censorship.
A pluralistic society requires institutions capable of tolerating genuine disagreement.
The central challenge is protecting minorities without creating a permanent moral hierarchy between groups.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Eric Kaufmann?

Eric Kaufmann is a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham and the author of The Third Awokening, a book examining the development of contemporary cultural-left ideology and what he calls woke cultural socialism.

What is The Third Awokening?

The Third Awokening is Eric Kaufmann’s analysis of what he describes as the third wave of cultural-left ideological enthusiasm in the West. He argues that this movement has increasingly influenced institutions, education, culture, and public debate.

What does Eric Kaufmann mean by woke culture?

Kaufmann uses “woke” to describe an ideology centered on historically disadvantaged race, gender, and sexual identity groups and argues that it places strong emphasis on equal outcomes and protection from emotional harm.

What is the new moral hierarchy?

The “new moral hierarchy” refers to Kaufmann’s argument that contemporary cultural politics can assign different levels of moral sympathy, protection, or suspicion to different identity groups.

How are political correctness and cancel culture connected?

Political correctness establishes social expectations about acceptable language and behavior, while cancel culture can describe the social or professional consequences that follow when people are perceived to violate those expectations. The two concepts overlap but are not identical.

Why are universities important to Kaufmann’s argument?

Kaufmann considers universities important because they educate future professionals and influence the language and assumptions that later enter media, government, education, and other institutions.

Is Eric Kaufmann arguing against minority rights?

Not simply. His argument distinguishes between protecting minorities from genuine discrimination and creating broader institutional rules that, in his view, can produce unequal treatment of different groups. His proposed alternative emphasizes neutrality and classical liberal principles.

What is the central issue in the culture war?

At its deepest level, the culture war concerns competing ideas about identity, equality, tradition, freedom, speech, immigration, social change, and the role of institutions in defining acceptable beliefs.