The Changing Vocabulary Around “Woke”

Elon Musk says his daughter has been “killed” by a “woke mind virus”

The woke text on America flag background 3d rendering..Photo byniphon / Adobe Stock

Elon Musk is well known for making attention-grabbing statements to the media.

His latest controversial words have nothing to do with any of the companies he runs, however.

In a recent interview with media commentator Jordan Peterson, Musk told his interviewer that his transgender daughter has been “killed by the woke mind virus.”

Origin of the term “woke”

If you’ve got hours and days to spend doing research, you might just start to get at some of the history and usage of the term “woke.”

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary currentlydefines the word “woke” as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues ofracial and social justice.”) It further notes thatthe term originated in African American Vernacular English and gained more“widespread use”after the Black Lives Matter protests of 2014.

That is the very tip of the slang iceberg.

A more in-depth history of the term can be found from many sources. In a 2022 article in The Independent, Kate Ng pointed to earlier uses of the term, quoting lexicographer Tony Thorne as sayingit was first popularly used by African Americans in the 1940s, and “literally means becoming woken up or sensitised to issues of justice.”

In recent years, however, the term has been co-opted by both the political left and the right. On the left, it’s often brandished as an ideological flag symbolizing progressivism, while on the right, pundits and politicians alike have used it as a rallying cry for one another andto indicate when they think opinions are being held solely for the sake of their “politically correct” appearance.

And then there’s Elon Musk

Musk excels at getting attention through words.

Musk’s statements about his transgender daughter’s life and history, made recently, reflect how he is once again dominating the cultural dialogue. Instead of simply referring to his family members and others as woke, Musk has upped the ante by stating that one of his children has been killed by the “woke mind virus.”

This is not the first time he has used this phrase.

Over recent months and years, in fact, Musk has been working to get the phrase “woke mind virus” firmly into the public consciousness.

When asked more directly what he means by woke mind virus, Musk recently stated that “the woke mind virus consists of creating very, very divisive identity politics…[that] amplifies racism; amplifies, frankly, sexism, and all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite.” He has used the phrase in a wide variety of contexts: when referring to Disney; when calling Netflix “unwatchable,” and when blaming it for all of San Francisco’s social and political problems.

The careful crafting of a phrase

You don’t need to have a degree in linguistics to recognize that calling something a “virus” escalates the tension and fear around it.

Biological viruses are of course infectious and most often are nothing that anybody wants to have.

Musk seems to be working single-handedly to elevate the term “woke” into something that he sees as infectious and dangerous:the woke mind virus.

Although the story outlining his reaction to his transgender daughter’s “death” from the virus has garnered the most press, Musk has, in the past, also warned that it is “pushing civilisation towards suicide.”

He is not, however, the only person who has ever compared ideas to an infectious biological agent. In 1993, British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins published an essay titled “Viruses of the Mind.” In it, he suggested that those infected with “mind-viruses” showed “symptoms” as the belief in and practice of religion.

As popular as Dawkins was, as an academic and an author, his reach did not equal that of Musk’s. As owner of the social media site X.com (formerly known as Twitter) and a CEO across various industries, Musk’s words are typically heard by millions and even billions of people worldwide, every day.

Is it dangerous?

Some speech is considered by experts to be dangerous because it dehumanizes the ideas or opinions of people as a “virus” that must be vanquished.

By pairing the term “woke” with another phrase like “mind virus,” and further, stating that such a virus has “killed” one of his family members, Musk seems to be trying to inject even more fear into the culture.

At the Just Security online forum, its editors and advisors suggest that, in the future, it will become necessary to protect democracy by keeping people “from being captured by conspiracies, disinformation, and violent rhetoric.”

Musk’s words seem to be capturing more interest than ever. What effect do you think his words will have on discussions about the meaning and role of being “woke”?