I am sure your language does have a word that is pretty similar to "pretentious" though it may not have all of the conotations. I recommend a real dictionary that has multiple good definitions or a good cross-language dictionary that can give you several alternate words in your language that map to the various uses of "pretentious".

"Woke" is even more complicated. It is a word that originated over half a century ago in African American culture as part of the civil rights movement. It meant being aware of and working to fight racial injustice. It was then coopted a decade ago by progressive people working on a broader range of social justice issues to describe awareness of those issues. It was then further co-opted by conservative people to mock progressive people as pretentious.

The poster is trying to pretend that only this last meaning is real and valid. They are either ignorant or a racist troll working to further the co-opting of the term.

I used Urban Dictionary for "pretentious" due to the OP explicitly referring to it to understand the meaning of woke.

But this got me intrigued now :) I still can't think of a phrase or word in Estonian that would convey the same (or even similar) meaning. I searched through a couple of dictionaries now and the translations provided there are really not useful. They mean either "complains a lot" or alternatively "has unreasonably high standards / is high maintenance", "braggy" and "pedantic". And these doesn't sound even remotely close to the English explanation of the word.. at all.

Any fellow Estonians wanna help me out here - is there a phrase or word that would capture the essence of "pretentious" in Estonian? :)

Another English word that is very similar in meaning is "ostentatious".

If I had to write out my own definition of "pretentious" it would be: Pretending to be higher class, more refined, more educated or more moral than you actually are and implying that makes you superior to other people.

You could argue that accusing a target of being pretentious is being pretentious, except that it may be a fact. So we have to keep digging, a quest for the truth rather than just adopting one of the existing interpretations.

Also to note, being pretentious doesn't imply conscious act. Like arrogance, the subject isn't necessarily aware, although it may be.

Are woke supporters pretentious? Either way, let's accept some may well be, and if so, it wouldn't be reasonable to dismiss anyone calling that out as pretentious. Not dismissing the fact some of the wokes opponents may well be the ones being pretentious, or as pretentious as the woke. In any case it has become a sided political clash, we will only settle to a predominant interpretation on this matter once fight is over.

It doesn't imply "deliberately trying to appear pretentious", but it does imply "deliberately pretending to be something"

For what it’s worth, I am a native English speaker from the UK and living in Germany, and I kind of agree with you about how the word “woke” appears to get used in practice. I’ve certainly never witnessed a member of a minority saying “your support for people like me is just insincere woke nonsense, stop it”, despite my ex being a stereotype of Champagne socialism and therefore getting the opportunity to see what happens when she did make mistakes while trying to support minority causes.

If this is a US cultural thing, that might also explain it.

Calling someone woke is discrediting the other person. Its like a signal to other people (especially the people who also often use this word), 'this person is politically aligned with X, this person cannot be right'. Its an insult, but so is the term 'wappie' (used in The Netherlands for people 'who don't believe in corona'). Faggot (when not in UK referring to gay person), nazi (when the person clearly isn't). These are all examples of insulting terms. They're polarizing. Even calling someone a communist when they clearly aren't is insulting, because communism is historically related to dictatorial regimes as well as purges (Stalinism comes to mind).

If they call themselves a communist (or a liberal, or a conservative, a nazi, woke, or whatever), fair game. But calling someone else that way when they did not identify with such is uncalled for. Because you put them on a political spectrum, with all kind of strings and assumptions attached to it.

Now, interestingly, calling someone a nazi or a faggot gets you downvoted or banned on most forums, but with a term like woke people still get away with. Not sure why.

According to Google Translate, pretentious translates to pretensioonikas in Estonian as the most popular translation, so it seems like it got borrowed from English (not implying it originates from English, I don't know about the etymology).

[1] $ dict pretentious

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Pretentious \Pre*ten"tious\, a. [Cf. F. pr['e]tentieux. See
     {Pretend}.]
     Full of pretension; disposed to lay claim to more than is
     one's; presuming; assuming. -- {Pre*ten"tious*ly}, adv. --
     {Pre*ten"tious*ness}, n.
     [1913 Webster]

  pretentious
      adj 1: making claim to or creating an appearance of (often
             undeserved) importance or distinction; "a pretentious
             country house"; "a pretentious fraud"; "a pretentious
             scholarly edition" [ant: {unpretentious}]
      2: intended to attract notice and impress others; "an
         ostentatious sable coat" [syn: {ostentatious}, {pretentious}]
         [ant: {unostentatious}, {unpretending}, {unpretentious}]
      3: (of a display) tawdry or vulgar [syn: {ostentatious},
         {pretentious}]

[...]

  pretentious translates to pretensioonikas in Estonian as the most popular translation

"pretensioonikas" means basically "one who has high demands / expectations" in Estonian :(