The progressive movement has apparently discovered version control. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently described the political excesses of 2020 with the phrase ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’ borrowing a line from a New York City councilman. Zohran Mamdani has since been asked about the same formulation while distancing his current administration from parts of the old defund-the-police agenda. The Daily Wire returned to the subject Thursday with the useful reminder that many of the people now discussing Woke 1 as an embarrassing software release were not exactly innocent bystanders when it shipped.
There is nothing wrong with changing your mind. Politics would improve overnight if more people did it without first hiring a branding consultant. Mamdani has pointed to low murder and shooting numbers in New York while defending the continued existence of police, prisons and jails. Ocasio-Cortez has argued that candidates should be judged on what they say now. Fine. People learn. Conditions change. Movements mature. The funny part is the sudden insistence that a sweeping political culture can be safely placed in an old folder marked Version 1.0, as though everyone agreed to the update notes.
The phrase works because it does several jobs at once. It concedes that parts of the era went too far without requiring anyone to list which parts. It lets current candidates distance themselves from unpopular slogans without admitting exactly who popularized them. It turns a period of real policy fights, institutional decisions and public pressure into a phase. Phases are convenient. Nobody is responsible for a phase. The phase simply happened, like bangs in a high-school yearbook.
Fox News has documented the problem from the other direction. Conservatives are eager to make Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani own every slogan, demand and cultural excess associated with the left in 2020. That is partisan opportunism, but it does not make the underlying question illegitimate. If ‘Woke 1’ was crazy, which ideas were crazy? Defunding police? Abolition rhetoric? Corporate DEI rituals? Institutional speech policing? The phrase becomes useful only after somebody is willing to name the actual mistakes. Otherwise it is political Febreze. The room smells different, but nobody removed the source.
Ocasio-Cortez has a reason to want the distinction. The left is in a different political moment now. Economic populism, housing costs and affordability are stronger organizing themes than the language policing and institutional symbolism that dominated parts of the pandemic era. Mamdani’s own rise has shown that a socialist politician can build a broad urban coalition by talking relentlessly about rent, buses and groceries. That shift is politically smarter. It is also easier if the movement can declare the previous edition retired without spending too much time on the warranty claims.
The Democratic Socialists of America make the rebrand even more awkward. Fox reported that one hard-left DSA faction has attacked Ocasio-Cortez for becoming too moderate and specifically criticized her retreat from abolitionist language. In other words, the old politics have not vanished. Some activists think the problem with Woke 1 is that prominent politicians stopped believing in it loudly enough. That leaves national progressives trying to explain that the movement has evolved while parts of the movement are shouting from the back row that no, actually, the original settings were correct.
This is where the gold-standard roast target becomes clear. The target is not people who supported racial justice, police reform or other serious causes in 2020. The target is political leaders who want credit for having evolved without giving voters a straight accounting of what changed. If you once supported a policy and now reject it, say so. If you think critics exaggerated your old position, explain that. If you still believe the goal but changed the method, make the case. ‘Woke 1 was crazy’ is funny because it gestures toward accountability while remaining carefully allergic to nouns.
There is a useful lesson for the right here too, though this is not their roast. Political movements often survive by pretending their least popular era belonged to a different franchise. Republicans have done versions of this trick for years. The important point is that progressives once argued language revealed values and institutions should be judged by whether their stated commitments matched their behavior. By that standard, the sudden language of Woke 1 deserves the same scrutiny. A new label does not answer an old question.
Mamdani may have the strongest practical argument available. He can point to governing results and say voters should judge the administration in front of them. That is more persuasive than pretending nobody remembers 2020. Ocasio-Cortez can do the same. She is a powerful politician precisely because she has spent years telling people what she thinks. The price of that power is that the archives remain searchable. Political memory is inconvenient that way. A movement that spent years insisting words have consequences cannot be shocked when its own old words remain part of the case voters are evaluating. Rebranding can clarify a change. It cannot substitute for explaining one.
The left does not need to apologize for every protest sign, every corporate memo or every sentence posted during a chaotic year. It does need to decide whether Woke 1 is a genuine political reassessment or simply a way to keep the popular parts of the era while assigning the unpopular parts to a discontinued brand. Voters can handle a politician saying, ‘I was wrong.’ What they notice is when the politician invents a software version instead.
If Woke 1 was crazy, which specific ideas are progressives willing to say were wrong rather than merely out of date?
Sources
Daily Wire: Woke 1 Never Left Because It Is The Left
Fox News: Mamdani shrugs off AOC’s ‘Woke 1’ comments, but critic says progressives can’t be absolved of ‘radical’ past
Fox News: AOC’s ‘Woke 1’ comment conceals a dangerous pivot to socialist class war, media chief warns
Washington Examiner: AOC only admits ‘Woke 1’ was crazy because it stopped working
