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

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Right, that’s quite enough from me. But if you enjoyed spiked’s output in 2022, and you want to make sure we remain free and fearless in 2023, please do consider making a donation today – perhaps before you get on the booze. Thank you! And to all of our writers, readers and donors, on behalf of everyone here at spiked, have a fantastic New Year. To say that Londoners deserve better than Sadiq Khan is a huge understatement. Rather than pontificating about American politics, Roe v Wade or his wishlist of free-speech restrictions, the mayor should focus on fixing the problems plaguing our capital. 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. But to keep spiked free we ask regular readers like you, if you can afford it, to chip in – to make sure that those who can’t afford it can continue reading, sharing and arguing. There has been much criticism of taking down statues as the “rewriting of history”, but little recognition that many statues themselves were erected to substantiate an often distorted historical narrative. Monuments, whether to Winston Churchill or to the Bristol slaver Edward Colston, or indeed to Mary Wollstonecraft, are not just dumb pieces of stone. Each is designed to tell a particular story.

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After a hundred years of continuous Unionist majorities, the prospect of an ex-paramilitary republican party coming out on top has a powerful symbolism, but perhaps no more than just symbolism. Far from gaining ground, Sinn Féin is confidently expected to lose support compared with the last Assembly elections in 2017. If it tops the poll this time it will be because the DUP has lost even more support. The latest poll puts Sinn Féin six points down on 2017 with the DUP down eight points. 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. But How Woke Won also points to a way forward. The good news is that whenever woke thinking is subjected to free speech and democratic scrutiny, it falls short. It was also a thrill to publish the great Lionel Shriver earlier this year – the world-renowned novelist who, in her political commentary, is like a heat-seeking missile when it comes to finding and blowing up lazy thinking. Her piece for us on Ron DeSantis was superb. (This long-read on DeSantis – by spiked US correspondent Sean Collins – is also not to be missed.) He claimed, too, that the Frankfurt School – a group of German and German-American Marxists that emerged in the interwar years – wanted “ to end Western Civilization and is almost wholly comprised of Jews. This allows antisemites to recruit new antisemites”. Critics who rightly condemned this as blaming Jews for antisemitism were accused of spreading “smears”. An obsession with wokeness, as much as with whiteness, can make you blind.Since becoming a spiked columnist in 2021, Joel Kotkin has swiftly become one of our most popular writers. Joel writes incisively about so many issues, from class to environmentalism to the fate of American cities, but this piece stood out to me: his inspiring call-to-arms to defend Enlightenment values against Year Zero wokeness. 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.

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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. Racial divisions are rehabilitated in the name of anti-racism. Women’s rights are destroyed in the name of trans rights. Ordinary people are demonised as bigots, while virtue-signalling (but exploitative) corporations pose as radical. Jonathan explains that these kinds of shifts can happen from over-use. That once a word slips into the mainstream it can fall out of favour with the marginalised groups who originally created it, as it is co-opted and misused by other groups.

the word ‘woke’ was weaponised by the right How the word ‘woke’ was weaponised by the right

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. Bigotry can be both woke and unwoke. So can censorship. Framing everything as woke vs unwoke makes it harder to challenge either. We aim to look at how, where and why individual and structural racism impacts people of colour from all walks of life. 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.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. These are the questions at the core of Joanna Williams’ brilliant new book, How Woke Won. Joanna will be known to spiked readers as a prolific author and one of our longest-running and most cherished columnists. And we are delighted to announce that spiked is publishing How Woke Won, in partnership with John Wilkes Publishing. It's vital that we improve the language we have to talk about racism and continue the difficult conversations about inequality - even if they make you uncomfortable.

woke’ was hijacked to silence people of colour How the word ‘woke’ was hijacked to silence 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?

You must buy this book before it’s banned by the new inquisition’ – Tony Abbott, former PM of Australia 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. 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. And it’s no coincidence that so many of the negative references to ‘wokeness’ are directed towards Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Until Russell Brand is found guilty of a criminal offence, we must assume he is innocent. This means taking the criminal allegations made against him seriously while, at the same time, not automatically believing those who claim to have been sexually assaulted by him, simply because they are women. With more women now coming forward with accusations against Brand, we need to maintain this scepticism.