What Does a Defining Journalist of the Woke Era Think Now?

Taylor Lorenz on Trump, Luigi, and the politics of violence

For many, Taylor Lorenz was one of the defining media personalities of the woke era. She was a “star reporter” at the New York Times and pioneered a characteristic style of controversy-filled social media engagement. Politically, she was reliably left-wing: Lorenz supported extreme coronavirus lockdowns, engaged in cancellation campaigns, and boosted the most radical ideas of the Black Lives Matter moment.

A few years later, however, the scene had shifted. Lorenz left the New York Times for the Washington Post. She departed the Post under a cloud of scandal, having caused numerous headaches for the paper, including doxxing a popular social media creator and calling President Biden a “war criminal.”

Despite this, Lorenz remains committed to the bit. Her politics have remained left-wing and she still wears a coronavirus mask in public. But she recognizes that we have entered a new era. BLM has disintegrated, transgenderism is in retreat, and Donald Trump has cemented himself as the era’s political center of gravity. The Left, having failed to dispatch him, must grapple with what comes next.

My conversation with Lorenz was somewhat split. On one hand, she distanced herself from the woke era, criticizing some left-wing activism as “fake.” On the other, she equivocated when asked about Luigi Mangione, the alleged assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Lorenz was careful not to endorse violence explicitly, but she, like many others, seems fascinated with the darker side of politics. Radicalism is her fix. She started out on BLM, but soon she’ll turn to the harder stuff—and she is not alone.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Christopher Rufo: It seems that we are entering a post-woke era. The more strident #Resistance-era, anti-Trump media personalities have exhausted themselves.

Taylor Lorenz: I agree with you. I did this video a while ago about the “Rise and Fall of the Resistance,” and I do think that 2017 Resistance-era media is not going to be successful. First of all, they weren’t really woke; they were grifters. There was no real focus on, for instance, economic equality. It was all this fake corporate woke bulls**t and resistance grifting: “Donald Trump is this unique evil, and that’s why you have to give me $35 a month so that I can call him Orange Cheeto—that’ll really take him down.” It was Mueller, it was Russiagate—it was this constant feeding people slop.

There is a lot of conspiracism in liberal spaces, too, and you see that in the anti-Trump movement’s desire to constantly believe that he’s just one little scandal away from really going down. Or look at all the election fraud conspiracies, where they think that Elon Musk hacked Starlink to make Trump president again. They’d rather live in that delusional space than acknowledge the reality, which is that the Democrats are deeply, deeply unpopular. They’re selling a losing message and they’re not in touch with the struggles of the American people.

I’m not a Trump supporter. Donald Trump is also not in touch with the struggles of American people, but his movement is better at speaking to the resentment that a lot of Americans feel toward their elected leaders and the system as a whole.

Rufo: And, in your argument, if Democrats refuse to address economic equality or challenge that system, it inevitably leads to a reaction like Luigi Mangione’s alleged assassination of Brian Thompson?

Lorenz: I did a video about Luigi and the “Somebody’s got to do it” meme. One of the most popular memes on the Internet in the past year has been “assassinating the president.” These posts get millions of likes; it is a very popular thing. I think it is a sign of a deeply sick democracy. If you aren’t giving people a legal and effective way to make their voices heard, they’re going to go outside the system. I actually don’t think that Luigi is a leftist at all. I think he’s a reactionary centrist—a centrist, tech-pilled Democrat type of person.

Rufo: I would agree that Mangione seems to be some kind of centrist, or rationalist. His social media feed was banal, Ivy League, gently dissenting from orthodoxy. Jonathan Haidt is not exactly a revolutionary.

Lorenz: No, but there’s this whole movement around the idea of the high-agency lifestyle, and being a high-agency person means that you’re not waiting around. You’re not an NPC [non-player character] letting life pass you by. You’re doing something in the world. You’re really making change. You’re not a slave to your phone. It’s this reactionary belief system against technology, too—it’s an extension of the Jonathan Haidt stuff. It’s very much him, like, “Oh, you’re being brain-rotted by short-form content, seize control of your life.” That kind of energy.

Those people are all like Luigi. That’s the ideology I see expressed on his feed. I have never talked to Luigi, but I do think that he clearly was aggrieved in some way with the system, as we all are, and he wanted to make a difference. And he’s the perfect vehicle for the public to rally around, because his supporters—the girls that are standing outside his prison cell cheering—they view him as this moral paragon.

Rufo: But what I’m struggling to understand is how do you get from a “high-agency lifestyle” to gunning down a health insurance CEO on the streets of Manhattan? I don’t see how you get from Coddling of the American Mind to political assassination.

Lorenz: I think he wanted to do something that would put him in the news. I think he wanted to do something that was impactful. I think he wanted to open up this discussion about health care. A lot of people who do any public act of violence are politically motivated; they’re hoping for some outcome. Luigi was successful in the fact that we’re talking about health care a lot more.

He is seen as a class traitor. He grew up wealthy, he grew up with privilege, so he has this narrative that he’s turned his back on that to be a man of the people. He’s also just a conventionally attractive young man and this is America, where people love killers. We have Netflix series lionizing them. True crime is one of the most popular genres of content.

Rufo: By your calculation, if the assassination of Brian Thompson led, through an improbable chain of events, to a single-payer health-care system, would his killing then be worthwhile or justified?

Lorenz: I’ve thought about the question. I broadly support single payer. I think that it is crazy that we don’t have public health care in America, but before I could say, like, “This man should die for single payer,” I want to understand it a little bit better. We should look at this broader system, right? If you have a death machine and you shoot the person that stops the death machine, is that the moral act? I’m not a philosopher, but I think that we should acknowledge that our current for-profit insurance system is a death machine.

Rufo: From my point of view, it seems that the progressive movement has stalled out. And historically, if you look at the period from 1968 to 1972, the Left then splinters into violent factions, charismatic figures, and cult gurus. It seems that we are seeing that emerge again, and these are early warning signs.

Lorenz: I don’t think it’s the Left—it’s everyone. Trump’s going to die at some point. He’s human, and I think everyone’s going to be left in a lurch. I think that he’s holding a lot of people together for now, but overall, we have this rotten system that is fundamentally broken. I don’t think that Trump is prepared to address those concerns. I also think he’s going to die, and what’s going to happen when he dies? I don’t know. I don’t know that J. D. Vance is as compelling.

Rufo: You think he’s going to die because of natural causes or because “somebody’s got to do it”?

Lorenz: No, no, no. Oh, my God—

Rufo: —You mentioned “Somebody’s got to do it.”

Lorenz: Well, it is crazy that it’s such a popular meme and there’s no discussion of that on the Left or the Right.

Rufo: Do you agree with the premise of the meme?

Lorenz: That somebody has to murder the president? No, Rufo, I’m not going to say that, ever. I’m not trying to get sent to El Salvador. Even if you were the type of person who thought that Trump should be out of power at all costs, I think that murdering Trump would be so stupid, because then you literally just turn him into a martyr.

Rufo: Will woke ever return?

Lorenz: I don’t think we’re going to get the #Resistance type of woke back—and we shouldn’t want it back.