that’s because “wokeism” has become a right wing dogwhistle for basically ‘anything that forces us to confront our shitty and outdated ideas’.

Whether woke is good or bad depends entirely on how it's defined. I generally see it as an antithesis to ignorance. So a combination of both educated and rational thinking.

Sometimes it describes things that are educated and irrational thinking, which is ironically what the right does a lot. Basically fear mongering.

Then you just use the two interchangeably to make it sound like rational observations are radical.