Daniel Tutt offers a provocative diagnosis of modern political paralysis, arguing that the fierce cultural battles over "wokeism" and "cancel culture" are not signs of a fractured left, but rather symptoms of a deeper, class-based failure to challenge the status quo. The piece's most striking claim is that the very energy meant to upend the system is being siphoned off by the Democratic Party and the upper-middle class, turning genuine agitation into harmless aesthetic gestures. For anyone trying to understand why protests seem to flare and then fade without structural change, this analysis cuts through the noise of personality politics to expose the machinery of "anti-politics."
The Mechanics of Pacification
Tutt begins by dismantling the popular narrative that pits "woke" activists against their critics. Instead, he suggests both sides are trapped in a feedback loop that serves the establishment. "Critics of 'wokeism' and 'cancel culture' often reproduce the very same nihilism and despair that fuel wokeism itself," Tutt writes. This observation is crucial because it shifts the blame from individual bad actors to the structural incentives that reward outrage without demanding results. The author argues that the Democratic Party functions as a "pacifying machine," designed to absorb radical energy and neutralize it before it can threaten the material bases of power.
The distinction Tutt draws between different types of protest is particularly sharp. He contrasts the "No Kings" protests, which he describes as a middle-class movement sponsored by nonprofits, with the anti-ICE uprisings in Los Angeles that emerged from working-class neighborhoods. "The anti-ICE protests emerged from some of the poorest working class neighborhoods in Los Angeles, and the tactics they deployed against the police (like burning, looting, and effacing property) recall the Rodney King riots of 1992," he notes. This comparison highlights a fundamental split: one movement seeks symbolic recognition, while the other engages in direct, disruptive confrontation with state power. By framing these as antagonistic rather than complementary, Tutt forces the reader to confront the class divisions that often go unspoken in progressive circles.
The Democratic Party is perhaps the single most efficient force by which truly agitational political energy in American life becomes overwhelmed by inertia and subordinated to the establishment’s own political machinery.
Tutt leans heavily on the theories of Joshua Clover to explain this dynamic, invoking the concept of the "split" within a riot between its "practical" side (maximal agitation) and its "communicative" side (redirecting energy). While this framework is intellectually robust, it risks oversimplifying the complex motivations of participants. Critics might note that not all "communicative" protests are merely tools of pacification; some seek to build broad coalitions that the "practical" approach might alienate. However, Tutt's insistence on the class basis of these movements provides a necessary corrective to the tendency to view all activism through a purely cultural lens.
The Upper Middle Class and the Politics of Authenticity
The essay then pivots to a scathing critique of "wokeism" as a phenomenon driven not by the working class, but by the discontents of the upper-middle class. Drawing on Musa al-Gharbi's research, Tutt argues that modern identity politics is a reaction to the failure of the postwar social contract for educated elites. "Woke politics is defined as a symbolic demand for norm corrections, not material or revolutionary alteration to the prevailing system of power," Tutt summarizes. This reframing is powerful because it strips the moral high ground from the culture war, revealing it as a struggle over status and career prospects among the elite.
Tutt suggests that for this demographic, ideology has become a substitute for genuine class consciousness. "Marxism, in other words, is completely shorn from Marx’s main principles," he writes, describing how it has been adapted to serve the "subjective authenticity" of a coddled elite rather than the material needs of workers. This argument resonates with the feeling that much of contemporary political discourse is performative, yet it also raises difficult questions about the role of intellectuals in social movements. If the vanguard is indeed composed of those whose primary grievance is unmet career expectations, can they ever truly represent the working class?
The piece also addresses the phenomenon of "cancel culture," linking it to a top-down enforcement of norms by the professional class. "Cancelation is like cricket or lacrosse—it is invariably an elite sport designed and enforced by people with power, deployed against those with less power," Tutt asserts. This is a provocative claim that challenges the common narrative of cancel culture as a tool of the powerless. It suggests that the real power dynamic is one where elites police their own ranks and those below them, while the actual working class remains largely outside this arena of symbolic conflict.
At the heart of woke ideology, then, is an uncritical politics of 'authenticity' that affects minority communities differently, but which is driven consistently by elites policing their own.
Tutt's analysis of the "lumpenproletariat"—the unemployed and gig workers—adds another layer of complexity. He argues that theories relying on this group as the vanguard of revolution are flawed because their interests are easily manipulated by the Democratic Party into identity politics. "The lumpenproletariat are what Claus Offe refers to as 'policy takers,' that is, prone to following consumption-based concerns and not economic-based concerns," he explains. This challenges the romanticized view of spontaneous uprisings and suggests that without organized labor, these movements lack the cohesion to effect lasting change. A counterargument worth considering is that the rise of the gig economy has fundamentally altered the nature of work, making traditional union models less relevant and necessitating new forms of organization that Tutt's analysis may not fully capture.
Bottom Line
Daniel Tutt's piece is a rigorous, if pessimistic, excavation of why American political energy often fails to translate into material change. Its greatest strength lies in its refusal to accept cultural arguments at face value, instead tracing them back to the class interests of the upper-middle class and the structural inertia of the Democratic Party. However, the essay's biggest vulnerability is its potential to dismiss the genuine grievances of marginalized communities as mere "symbolic" distractions, risking a disconnect from the very people the left claims to serve. The reader should watch for how these dynamics play out in upcoming elections, where the tension between symbolic politics and material demands will likely intensify.