From ‘Wokeism’ to ‘Le Wokeisme’: Diffusion of Anti‐Wokeness as a Far‐Right Master Frame From the United States to France

ABSTRACT The transnationalization of the far right is a noteworthy and evolving phenomenon, characterized by extensive networks of actors, their collaborative activities and the exchange of novel ideas and frames. The emergence and cross‐national spread of ‘anti‐wokeness’ is a recent trend in the ongoing transnationalization process. As a concept to criticize the woke ideas while promoting the illiberal and conservative ones, anti‐wokeness emerged in the United States during the 2010s, yet it has also been rapidly adopted by the political, social and intellectual actors in many European countries—among which France represents a paradigmatic case. This research note, which is a pilot study under a broader research project, investigates this cross‐national spread of anti‐wokeness and addresses the questions of why and how anti‐wokeness as a popular frame of far‐right politics has diffused from the United States to France recently. Drawing on the analysis of social media content and in‐depth interviews with far‐right/conservative figures, we propose an analytical framework that frames the spread of anti‐wokeness as a phenomenon of the transnationalization of the far right through the cross‐national diffusion of a master frame.