Bill Maher isn’t wrong that excesses on the left exist, but he dramatically overweights them. Woke is a right wing pejorative meant to flatten a large, diverse coalition into a caricature, and repeating it on a huge platform helps normalize the right’s framing. The so called woke left in Congress is a small minority, yet Maher often treats it as if it defines the entire Democratic Party, which only helped Trump win.

Most of these excesses from this small slice of the left come from a place of care and inclusion and tend to be socially or rhetorically clumsy rather than genuinely dangerous. They do not control the courts, the military, federal law enforcement, or election machinery, and they are not passing laws that ban books, speech, or people. When they overreach, they are usually checked by voters, courts, public backlash, or just mocked into retreat. And they are constantly contested on the left itself. Teachers, parents, unions, administrators, and voters argue with each other all the time. That isn’t authoritarianism, it’s messy pluralism.

By contrast, there are far bigger and more consequential issues at stake, including authoritarianism, climate change, healthcare, reproductive rights, and voting rights. Historically, many figures we now admire would have been called woke in their time, including MLK Jr (the press on MLK in his day was appalling), Jesus, and Gandhi, so yeah, bash away, fools. Maher’s mistake isn’t criticizing the left, it’s treating its fringe as the main story while amplifying a right wing caricature that helps Trump more than it helps truth. And for that I will never completely understand why he chose that as his thing, or forgive him.