Kulturkampf

[benji]

Nowadays “woke” is a rebranding of PC/political correctness from the 80s and 90s. Originally it was used in borderline conspiracy sense by the black community. Just the “wake up, sheeple” thing conspiracy theorists do when they tell you about lizard people running the new world order. But grammatically convoluted. So “stay woke”, as in “awake” and perceptive to alternative facts.

I just want to point out, especially because so many progressives don't know this and make it clear when they lecture people about it, that it actually goes back much further. It predates the 1940's and was originally just about Black people just realizing that social position is not fixed and therefore not inherently justified. So Blacks should be "woke" to not making eye contact with white women or whatever being racist practice dictating custom rather than accepting that's just how it be. This was necessary because dominant narratives, especially those by progressives of the era, said that these positions were fixed and were justified.

The modern usage much more tracks with what you say because so much of the left has been informed by conspiracy theories over the 20th Century, most notably all of Marxism.