The latest essay, brief and impactful, by the philosopher Manuel Maria Carrilho, who notably served as Portugal's first Minister of Culture (1995-2000), is entitled The New Plague – From Gender Ideology to Woke FanaticismThis is a major contribution to understanding "wokism" as a coherent ideology, starting from its philosophical origins. But this work also stands out for its concern with understanding the reasons for wokism's "success" within the context of a "disoriented" modernity. It also attempts—and this is quite unique—to consider its future in the era of Trumpism. A swift French translation is expected. It has been announced.
Pierre-Henri Tavoillot met him in Porto for the University Ethics Observatory. Interview conducted on March 15, 2026.
Pierre-Henri Tavoillot — Are we today condemned to a somewhat despairing confrontation between wokism and trumpism, which some even go so far as to say is a right-wing wokism? One of their common characteristics, you say, is to "saturate" the public space.
Manuel Maria Carrilho — It can indeed be said that Trumpism, like wokism, "saturates" the public sphere—this was indeed one of the main characteristics of wokism—but in my view, these are two very different phenomena, and I don't think there is such a thing as a "right-wing" wokism. The wokism of the last decade resists, continues on its path, now undoubtedly less visible and less explicitly embraced, given the media attention Trumpism has received—which, as we know, it has fought against. But wokism remains alive and operative as a fanatical concept and instrument of censorship and suppression; it remains deeply entrenched. built-in, in multiple sectors and institutions in the West.
Therefore, I do not share the idea that Trumpism could be seen as a new kind of "right-wing" wokism (cf., for example, Guillaume Lancereau, The Grand Continent(July 2025). Such an interpretation lumps everything together and, it seems to me, leads to a twofold misunderstanding: on the one hand, it tends to whitewash the censorious and persecutory features of the wokism of the last decade and a half; on the other hand, it prevents us from understanding what is truly unprecedented in Trumpism—an understanding that seems to me increasingly crucial, even vital. And, if you will allow me, let me elaborate on this last point somewhat before returning to wokism.
PHT — Please, this is a crucial point.
MMC — In short, I think that Donald Trump's victory in the November 2024 presidential elections reflected a double consecration On the one hand, the collapse of politics as a space for deliberation based on the confrontation and debate of ideas and proposals surrounding the problems and expectations of citizens and societies, as well as their potential solutions. And, on the other hand, the pinnacle of politics as spectacle, across a spectrum ranging from the most innocuous entertainment to the most grotesque exhibition. This dual consecration, seemingly paradoxical, nevertheless has distant origins. It results from a very complex process, initiated long ago, but which I cannot elaborate on within the scope of this interview.
However, this "return of Trumpism" was experienced by his opponents (and not only by them!) as a genuine traumatic shock, with three consequences: as something that blocks vision, who prevents understanding and that paralyzes the actionAnd which, as a reaction, encourages a defensive posture and above all denial, aspiring – even unconsciously – to a return to normality, and to the comfort that such a return would provide at all levels.
Sometimes trauma, by its seismic nature, makes any understanding between before and after almost impossible, which is – as philosophers like Bergson or Deleuze teach – precisely the clef of the event. Because an event is not a simple fact, but something that marks a break, a difference in the order of events between before and after. It is the change itself in the makingOpen, imposing a confrontation with the unknown, with discontinuity, in short, with contingency. And this is precisely where Europe has found itself since January 2025: paralyzed by the order of events, entrenched behind the screen of rhetoric, incapable of understanding the "Trumpism" phenomenon, which it nevertheless ceaselessly names in a painful ritual of political and media exorcism. A Europe that fell asleep during the presidency of Joe Biden, whose victory in 2020 was wrongly interpreted as the definitive burial of Trumpism.
To this must be added another point that I also believe was decisive in Donald Trump's victory, and subsequently in his presidency, as we see every day: his unprecedented strategy of propaganda and political action. While journalists, commentators, and opponents were getting lost in the labyrinth of alternative facts and post-truth controversies, Trump took another path, made possible and propelled by digital platforms and social networks: that of manipulative conditioning of the very perception of reality, especially through the torrential cascade of facts and versions, their constant repetition and contradiction, and the irresistible expectation of new transgressions on his part — in a ritual as dizzying as it is stereotypical, which imprisons the collective consciousness in a register that I propose to designate by a verb, unthink, a verb that shapes a new form of contemporary consciousness. I wonder if we have truly grasped the consequences of the fact that, with the exception of the "papal interregnum"—the death of Pope Francis and the election of Pope Leo XIV—Trump has been present every day in all Western media since January 2025…and far beyond…
PHT — For you, the emergence of wokism must be understood within the framework of what you call the "paradigm of the unlimited," namely the extension of four dimensions of "hypermodernity": individualism, financialization, globalization, and technology. How do these four phenomena converge to produce wokism?
MMC — If wokism is a doctrine—or an ideology—that emerged within what I call the “paradigm of the unlimited,” it is because it attributes boundless, limitless power to both language and identity. This paradigm, in my view, allows us to characterize and understand the contemporary world based on what I consider its four fundamental axes: globalization, hyper-individualism, finance (or financialization, the ultimate metamorphosis of capitalism), and all that has been called “new technologies,” increasingly intertwined with digital platforms and the development of AI. Now, these four axes—and this point is crucial—converge in an unprecedented way, without major friction between them. On the contrary, they reinforce each other in a spiral of limitlessness that, in truth, no one controls, fueling the idea that Nothing has limits Neither consumption, nor energy, nor debt, nor growth, nor individual rights, not even life itself, as a certain posthumanism maintains. Nor Europe, I might add, with its lack of borders… And yet, it is certain that all these areas have, each in its own way, insurmountable limits.
It is precisely this paradigm which, in my view, nourishes wokism in its global ideological ambitions as well as in its more specific variants, facilitated by the driving force of the axis of individualism, which has experienced a brutal acceleration since the middle of the 20th century, culminating in the affirmation of a sovereign subjectivity, operating through a new form of performativity, in reality hallucinatory, based on the proclamation, which quickly became a slogan: "I am what I say I am!"
It is in this context that wokism appears as an ideology – that is to say, a dogmatic discourse claiming to explain everything, impervious to any objection or criticism – fundamentally reactive (always “against”, never “for” anything), adopting essentially fanatical forms of thought and action: conflict, confrontation, hostility, denunciation, victimization, aggressiveness, aiming to replace in contemporary democratic societies all forms of dialogue, argumentation and conviviality which have generally characterized the West.
PHT — You consider identity feminism or gender ideology to be the matrix of workism, in the very precise sense, you say, "that it transforms human subjectivity into an entity endowed with unlimited powers." Is this, in your opinion, the central axis of this ideology?
MMC — Yes, but it is important here to first make a preliminary distinction between the "ideology" of gender and the doctrine, or theory, of gender. It is the dissolution of this distinction that made possible the transformation you mention: that of "human subjectivity into an entity endowed with unlimited powers." This dissolution is simultaneous with the adoption of a notion that lies at the heart of wokism: the notion of performativity. An adoption that was, in truth, a profound distortion of this notion, as it had been proposed by the philosopher John Austin in his book How to Do Things with Words, where he introduced the distinction between two types of statements: the performatives and observationsIf we carefully analyze certain types of statements—for example, “I swear to remain faithful to you,” “The session is open,” “I christen this plane Pessoa,” “I appoint you Minister of Education”—we readily understand that these are sentences that cannot be definitively ruled true or false. A rigorous positivist criterion would recommend, in this case, declaring them “meaningless,” despite the obvious absurdity of such a statement. But, says Austin, what happens is that with these statements, we are not describing an act, we are performing, we are accomplishing an action.
However, the concept of the performative takes on a completely different meaning within the framework of neo-feminism, particularly with Judith Butler; it becomes the symptomatic concept of the Butlerian system. As Éric Marty so aptly put it in his book... The Sex of Modern Women, to an unlimited extension of the concept of the performative, which will, among other things, allow us to deny the biological nature of sexual difference, as well as validate the hypothesis of a social construction of gender. We are therefore faced with a genuine epistemological leap: the performativity of a a particular phenomenon of everyday language use, which manifests itself in the actions that language itself performs, such as a promise, a nomination, etc., is transformed into a magical operator of a use of language capable of transforming everything into… reality.
PHT — The question of limits is a crucial point in our contemporary times: they seem to be disappearing on all sides, arousing a kind of anxiety. But, in some respects, the entire project of modern humanism consists in pushing back limits, in the name of an "infinite" man. The one of whom Pico della Mirandola said (On the dignity of man(1486) that he had been endowed by God with the power to "mold and fashion himself" without any restriction. Are wokism or transhumanism not essentially offshoots of this thought? And how can we conceive of the criterion that separates beneficial perfectibility from destructive hubris?
MMC — I don't think it's possible to establish a criterion for drawing this distinction in a stable, let's say timeless, way, because these are dimensions of human life that fundamentally depend on the historical, social, and cultural context under consideration. Nowadays, boundaries seem, as you say, to be "dissolving on all sides," and that is indeed what is happening. This is generating a very widespread feeling of anxiety—or rather, "dizzying" feeling. The absence of boundaries, in any area considered, has engendered a feeling ofgeneralized irreversibilityThis is an idea I developed in another book. Sem Retorno, published in 2022, and which I intend to return to.
PHT — À At the end of your book, you lay out the "10 woke commandments," which are prohibitions, even fatwas, against universalism, the Enlightenment, rationality, science, culture and history, equality, freedom of expression, law and impartiality, the presumption of innocence, and liberal democracy. Is this what leads you to identify wakefulness as fanaticism rather than totalitarianism? And how can we understand this passion for the Inquisition in a (relatively) pacified and secularized West?
MMC — It might seem like a masochistic passion… but its roots run very deep. I hesitated on this point for a long time, but I finally decided to consider wokism not as totalitarianism, but as a form of fanaticism. You know, I remain very faithful to the specific meaning Hannah Arendt gave to the concept of “totalitarianism,” as well as to the link she established between it, state power, and the use of terror. This is absolutely not the case with wokism.
I therefore opted for the lineage which, despite its many nuances, runs from Voltaire to Nietzsche, and which leads to considering Wokism as a fanaticism, based on four points: the first lies in its claim to possess, in all circumstances, a comprehensive and dogmatic explanation, applicable to all domains—whether social, sexual, educational, etc. The second stems from its stratagem of transforming any criticism leveled against it into grounds for accusation against its author. The third consists of its minority nature, whether on a national or global scale. And the fourth lies in the creation, let's say, of a "parallel world," which it attempts to impose by force, not only by the force of institutional power—which it does not neglect—but above all by that of the new primary power, the one we can today call... media-network (that is, the convergence of traditional media with social networks and various digital platforms), a power that escapes all institutional regulation or democratic control. And if, as I believe, this is indeed the case, then wokism must be considered a form of fanaticism.
PHT — How should we envision the future, or even the end, of wokism? Some see its decline; others its reconfiguration. What is your prediction on this matter?
MMC — I believe that everything points more towards its reconfiguration than its collapse. I say this while acknowledging the immense civilizational, geopolitical, social, and cultural transformations that are profoundly disrupting all the parameters of the current world, and which seem to me to create a framework conducive to its reconfiguration: whether it be progressive social fragmentation, the discrediting of politics, the erosion of grand ideologies, hyper-individualism, the loss of any sense of collective belonging, or the irruption of...Homo fragilisof the widespread legalism of societies, of the egalitarian delusion, or even of the conformism of citizens. But perhaps I am mistaken.
To learn about Manuel Maria Carrilho's main works, see https://www.manuelmariacarrilho.pt/obras.html
Works published in French:
Rhetorics of ModernityPUF, 1992
Rationalities. The Avatars of Reason in Contemporary PhilosophyHatier, 1997
Rhetoric (ed.), CNRS Éditions, 2012
Author's blog: https://pensaromundo.manuelmariacarrilho.pt/
Author's website: https://www.manuelmariacarrilho.pt/
