Two leading figures on Italy’s centre-left, former prime ministers Giuseppe Conte and Matteo Renzi, have publicly argued that progressive forces should move away from “woke” cultural politics and concentrate instead on tackling material economic and social inequalities.
In a letter to the editor of the centre-left daily La Repubblica published on August 21, the leader of the Five Star Movement (M5S) questioned whether “woke culture can constitute the ideological backbone of a progressive force”.
He answered that he doubted it. “It has become a sort of self-referential moral religion,” Conte wrote, “and for a progressive force it would be a serious strategic error to rely on it to build effective political action.”
Conte acknowledged that the movement had positive effects in highlighting racism, sexism and discrimination, and in promoting more respectful language and recognition of marginalised identities.
He warned, though, of its excesses, including elements of cancel culture and ideological conformity that risk restricting freedom of opinion. “It is not with woke that the left can deliver justice,” he stated.
Among the cases that had left him perplexed, he cited Homer and Cicero being treated as white supremacists.
The former premier insisted that progressive parties must instead “intervene on the material roots of inequalities”, making the reduction or elimination of economic imbalances and social inequities their primary objective.
He said the left needed to address the concrete concerns of the underpaid, workers, small business owners and the middle classes, who face an uncertain future.
Priorities should include wage policies, industrial strategy, tax fairness, support for the real economy, housing rights, public services, healthcare and quality education. Resources for that agenda should come in part from a revision of military spending, he added.
The intervention comes amid internal debate within Italy’s fragmented centre-left opposition as it prepares for the next general election, which must be held no later than December 2027 and which Italian media expect in the spring of that year.
Italian newspapers including Avvenire and Il Foglio have read Conte’s comments as an attempt to differentiate himself from Democratic Party (PD) secretary Elly Schlein and to broaden the M5S’s appeal beyond traditional progressive voters.
Matteo Renzi, leader of Italia Viva and another former prime minister, endorsed the core of this argument.
Writing to the same newspaper on August 23, he said that if the centre-left is to challenge the current government it must focus on “social issues, economic well-being and people’s daily lives, not woke culture”.
Renzi stressed the need for less ideology and more practical politics centred on everyday concerns, a point he had already made on X, where he described the “woke binge” as damaging for the left.
“The role of us reformists in the centre-left is to guarantee the welfare state, not to dream of a socialist state,” he said.
Renzi also dug deeper and said it is not enough to abandon woke culture merely because “otherwise you lose”.
The shift cannot be purely tactical. “We need to analyse what this ideology really was that pretended to establish the Truth,” Renzi argued.
In his view, woke was “not simply a matter of statues being torn down or exaggerated respectability: In its name, lives were destroyed, discrimination was produced and dismissals were caused. Freedom of expression was affected through the reintroduction of forms of censorship”.
He noted that Dante and Shakespeare had suffered from the left, while Tolstoy and Orwell had been targeted from the right. Even among supposed liberal democrats, he said, the temptation had prevailed to use the legitimate defence of Ukraine as a pretext for the “insane” censorship of Dostoevsky or Russian culture more broadly.
Overcoming the woke, Renzi wrote, means opening a reflection on the cultural identity of our time.
“Mind you,” he added, “we are and will always be on the side of rights, defenders of respect for diversity, opponents of all forms of racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism.”
Meno woke, più economia. Meno ideologia, più ceto medio, sanità, sicurezza, innovazione e libertà. Il centrosinistra può vincere, ma deve costruire un’identità riformista capace di parlare al Paese. Leggi il mio intervento su La Repubblica 👉🏼 https://t.co/3TfdtkJgbb
— Matteo Renzi (@matteorenzi) August 23, 2026
Both former prime ministers’ remarks form part of a broader apparent shift on the left away from earlier forms of progressive cultural politics.
Schlein has not commented publicly on the exchange. Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra (Greens and Left Alliance) MP Elisabetta Piccolotti has rejected the idea that the left sacrificed social policy to civil rights, while PD MEP Alessandro Zan has said dignity cannot be divided into categories.
In the US, figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose comments prompted the debate in La Repubblica, have spoken of moving beyond “Woke 1.0”. Asked on ABC’s This Week on August 9 about past positions taken by progressive candidates, the New York congresswoman quoted a local councillor’s line that “Woke 1 was crazy” and said pandemic-era rhetoric was not language Democrats would use today.
Similar discussions about a possible “Woke 2.0”, more focused on material inequalities than symbolic cultural battles, are emerging in several European countries as centre-left parties reassess priorities ahead of coming elections.
Polling in the US and several European countries has shown declining support for specific policies associated with the more radical end of identity-focused agendas.
In the US, the second Trump administration has moved aggressively against what it describes as discriminatory or ideological programmes. Early executive orders in 2025 terminated federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices, preferences and equity action plans across government agencies, directing a return to merit-based hiring and contracting.
Subsequent measures have prohibited federal contractors from engaging in race-based DEI practices, restricted the use of disparate-impact theories in civil-rights enforcement, and required schools receiving federal funds to base discipline and admissions on neutral, non-racial criteria.
A prestigious French academic publisher, Presses Universitaires de France, has halted the release of a book criticising “woke ideology” in Western higher education, citing an increasingly hostile political climate. https://t.co/2Ud7zNzjkM
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) March 11, 2025
