How Woke Won: The Elitist Movement That Threatens Democracy, Tolerance and Reason: 1 (None)

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Nonetheless, the Census data released in June 2022 shows the highest proportion ever — 50 per cent — of Australians are born, or descended from those born, overseas. So it’s also hardly surprising that claims of persistent racism by anti-racism activists do not fit with our experience of living in what is now, by far, one of the world’s most integrated multicultural and multi-ethnic societies. To me and many of my Gen Z peers, who were born after 1996, such talk feels increasingly silly: a millennial trend that’s got old and tired. The absurdity has become too glaring. If being distantly related to the Irish can engender self-compassion, could not my white Englishness be reframed as a form of victimhood? How can there be an end to oppression when the opportunities to be oppressed are so endless? How Woke Won looks at what lies behind the woke world view. It asks how one way of thinking about gender and race has won out over all others. It considers the influence of identity politics and the lure of victimhood in shaping how we relate to others. It argues that elite condescension towards the working class translates into an illiberal and censorious culture. The intention of this word was for it to have a positive outcome for a minority group,’ he explains. ‘But when other groups feel threatened or challenged by it, they might want to subvert it in some way. And by using the enemy’s weapons, that makes it an even more powerful tool for them.’ How does this impact people of colour? Remember when radio host Eammon Holmes ranted that Meghan was ‘awful, woke, weak, manipulative and spoilt’? Where does the word ‘woke’ come from?

How Woke Won: The Elitist Movement That Threatens Democ…

Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar, a defender of the British empire as a moral good, claimed that Rhodes “was an imperialist, but British colonialism was not essentially racist, and wasn’t essentially exploitative, and wasn’t essentially atrocious”. Rhodes was merely “a supporter of the British empire as a modernising force for good”. Defenders of woke will always cloak their efforts to denounce and cancel their critics with claims of protecting freedoms of the vulnerable; opponents of woke see through this ruse, and must gird themselves for another long march if they are to reverse woke’s advance. As Williams reminds us forcefully, there is a great deal at stake. Pedants might point out that Joe Davis won the world title 15 times in a row between 1927 and 1946, but the World’s Professional Snooker Championship, as it was known from 1935, was a rinky-dink affair by modern standards, involving as few as two players battling it out while taking a break from the supposedly more serious game of billiards. Fred Davis – Joe’s brother – won a somewhat more coherent version of the competition on eight occasions after the war. John Pulman won something that was technically the world title eight times between 1957 and 1968, but the game was in the doldrums by then and these matches were little more than exhibitions, with a lone challenger allowed to take on Pulman. Three of his titles were won in a single year (1965). On every other measure, O’Sullivan had the better of the Scotsman. Thirty-eight ranking titles to Hendry’s 36. Seven Masters titles to his six. Seven UK Championships to his five. When they played head-to-head, O’Sullivan had 30 victories to Hendry’s 21. Hendry was the King of the Crucible. After O’Sullivan’s 18-13 victory over Judd Trump last night, that is an honour he must now share. As for the question of who is the GOAT, there can be no more argument. Woke activists are obsessed with race and gender identity to the exclusion of almost all other issues. Woke describes a moral sensibility that insists upon putting people into identity boxes and then arranging the boxes into hierarchies of privilege and oppression, with some groups in need of ‘uplifting’ while others must beg atonement.” (p. 2)Williams, a columnist with spiked, a former academic at the UK’s University of Kent, and founder of the think tank CIEO, is a fearless critic of contemporary phenomena, such as ‘cancel culture’, ‘diversity’, and ‘gender neutrality’ — all manifestations of woke. Wokes does not seek to engage in reasoned debate but simply to denounce and tear down those deemed to have transgressed the norms of identity politics. But the problem is more pressing because “woke thinking has come to be accepted as common sense” by a cultural elite that dominates the media, corporate life, and the academy, making dissent increasingly difficult and perilous. Earlier this year, former actor Laurence Fox caused a stir on Question Time by claiming to be ‘anti-woke’ and repeatedly slamming ‘wokeness’ on various media platforms. His comments won him hoards of followers on social media and he used his fleeting relevance to criticise Oscar-winning film 1917 for including Sikh soldiers. If a Sinn Féin first minister is elected this week, very little will change in practical terms. The offices of first and deputy first minister are joint positions. In practice, they are joint prime ministers. In my time as special adviser to first minister David Trimble, all major decisions had to be jointly approved. Executive (ie, cabinet) meetings were always preceded by a last-minute pre-meeting to barter the final disagreements. With a Sinn Féin first minister and DUP deputy, the balance of power will be little different from the other way around. In the 1960s, ‘right on’ was a positive thing, a compliment. But over time it changed and things became ‘too right on’, or people would use the phrase with a roll of the eyes.

Introducing… How Woke Won - spiked

She writes that holding the wrong opinions – or even being unaware of the latest correct language – can lead to the loss of livelihood, being ostracised and even the threat of violence. Teachers in Brighton are told that even the youngest children are ‘not racially innocent’. A Labour MP receives death threats for defending women’s access to single sex spaces. Sensitivity readers remove ‘problematic’ views from books. It is often followed by the similarly negative term ‘snowflake’ – a word that has divisive connotations in the UK – and is frequently used in arguments online and debates in the media to belittle people with left leaning viewpoints. Frequently people of colour. This word has power, and the people who use it as a weapon are all too aware of the underlying connotations of racial and social ideologies. It is used to undermine and disparage the voices committed to fighting for social justice and the rights of minorities – and to silence these views without engaging with them.Jonathan adds that what has happened with the meaning of ‘woke’ comes down to the original intention of the word itself. The other day, in a bar in London frequented by students of the infamously ‘woke’ Goldsmiths University, I met a young white cis-male who said that the English were to blame for his inherited trauma because of their historic oppression of the Irish. The only problem was, he wasn’t Irish – he was American and so were his parents and probably grandparents. ‘Pain lasts a long time,’ he assured me. I have long been critical of ideas that some may call “woke”. Of viewing white people as the problem. Of seeing racism where the problem may be other forms of discrimination. Of the concept of white privilege. Of presenting disagreement as bigotry. Of the politics of identity.

How Woke Won: The Elitist Movement that Threatens Democracy How Woke Won: The Elitist Movement that Threatens Democracy

HOW WOKE WON: The Elitist Movement that Threatens Democracy, Tolerance and Reason. Joanna Williams, (London: Spiked, 2022) We feel as if we’ve run into a mental wall, and the whole woke business is running out of road. ‘Intersectionality’ – the academic word for the game of victimhood top-trumps which has dominated our discourse for so long – seems to have metastasised so much it makes no sense to anyone. New neurodiversities, new genders, new sexual orientations, new disadvantages are spawned every day. Woke has adopted this ambiguity about truth which allows words — such as ‘racism’ and ‘hate speech’ — to take on whatever meaning the user intends without regard to the possibility of countervailing evidence. As Williams remarks: The presenter is so fond of using the word ‘woke’, he even argued with radio host James O’Brian about its true meaning. All too often, the sense of virtue that comes from claiming to act on behalf of the disadvantaged and oppressed legitimises a refusal to countenance dissent – and a ruthlessness at dealing with those seemingly in opposition to the woke mission.If being ‘woke’ is a bad thing, the subtext is that speaking out about racial inequalities is a bad thing. The use of this word is a convenient veil.

woke culture | The Spectator Why Gen Z is turning against woke culture | The Spectator

Many view such blindness to antisemitism as a product of “wokeness”. But the unwoke can be equally unseeing. Woke has conquered the West. Identity politics, cancel culture and trans ideology reign. The values of “inclusivity” and “diversity” dominate politics, academia, the media, the judiciary, big business and the very language we speak. Censorship and public shaming are the price paid for dissent or even staying silent. The subversion of ‘woke’ is political and means the word can now be used to perpetuate the very injustices it sought to eradicate in the first place. For Piers, and his army of followers on social media, ‘woke’ is a negative attribute. It suggests a performative, insincere social consciousness, and inherent weakness. It’s a pejorative term used to make fun of socially liberal ideologies and position them as inferior or silly.Joanna’s writing has been published widely in the UK and the US including The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Spectator, The Guardian, The New York Post and American Conservative. Joanna is the author of Consuming Higher Education Why Learning Can’t Be Bought (Bloomsbury, 2012) and Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Her most recent book is Women vs Feminism (Emerald, 2017). Where this book stands out is when it focuses on how wokeness is an elitist movement. When the author discusses it from this angle, I’m like, “YES!”. She dives into how elites have altered language and other aspects of life to signal their status and then compares it to what’s going on now. I also really enjoyed when she wrote about how major companies are capitalizing on the woke movement while also mistreating and exploiting workers around the world. I’d say that this is maybe 30% of the book. Other than that, if you’re familiar with the topic, you’ll hear a lot of arguments that have been presented before and stories of why they’re issues. It was interesting learning a little bit more about how this is unfolding in the UK as well.