# Episode 587 - We Were Never Woke (w/ Musa Al-Gharbi)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/bad-faith-1365797/episode-587-we-were-never-woke-w-musa-al-gharbi
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/bad-faith-1365797/episode-587-we-were-never-woke-w-musa-al-gharbi.md
Podcast: [Bad Faith](https://stenobird.com/podcast/bad-faith-1365797)
Published: 2026-06-25T15:08:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.patreon.com/badfaithpodcast/posts/episode-587-we-w-162058928?pr=true
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/badfaith/musa_full_mixdown.mp3?dest-id=2303135
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/bad-faith-1365797/episodes/episode-587-we-were-never-woke-w-musa-al-gharbi
Duration seconds: 10734

## Resource

Author of We Were Never Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, and professor in the School of Journalism at Stony Brook University, joins Bad Faith to discuss his historical review of the history of "wokeness," why it cyclically emerges and declines over the decades, and the dangers the "symbolic capitalism" class present to the pursuit of economic equality. Though there's much agreement on the pernicious effects of woke identity politics, we debate our different theories of who is responsible for "woke," and assess whether Tuesday's big DSA wins in New York herald the end of the establishment's superficial identity driven "woke" politics. https://musaalgharbi.com/paperback-edition-we-have-never-been-woke/ https://musaalgharbi.substack.com/p/book-announcement-those-people " On the Cultural Contradictions of the Antiwoke " " Putting the 'Culture' in the Culture Wars " " On the Cultural Contradictions of the Antiwoke " " Putting the 'Culture' in the Culture Wars " " On Redistribution " " How We Lived in NYC " Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod) . Produced by Armand Aviram . Theme by Nick Thorburn (@ nickfromislands ).

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## Transcript

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