How Karen became AWFUL.

A new villain has emerged in right-wing discourse: the Affluent White Female Urban Liberal, or AWFUL.

Talking heads on Fox News and right-wing YouTubers describe AWFULs as smug, entitled, and even “a cancer on the nation.” AWFULs, their argument goes, are the reason that ICE activities in Minnesota have become so violent. These women are driven by their sexual frustration, their lack of real problems, their empty, childless lives. ICE Watch is full of them. Renée Good was one, which is why her death, while tragic, is ultimately not the fault of the man who shot her.

The acronym appears to have emerged around the end of the Biden years. In 2024, the Washington Examiner was bemoaning the influence of AWFLs (no U) on the mayor of Alexandria, Virginia, and musing over whether this demographic was “so annoying and repulsive that they’re driving centrist voters, particularly men, away from the Democratic Party.”

The idea appeared to be that rich white liberal women had gotten too preachy, too virtue-signaling. They wanted people to wear masks and get vaccinated during the Covid pandemic. They marched and protested over the death of George Floyd. They kept talking about the climate crisis. How annoying!

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