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

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spiked is free for all to read. But to keep it that way, we ask loyal readers like you to support our work. How Woke Won: The Elitist Movement that Threatens Democracy, Tolerance and Reason is a timely call to arms. It is also a reminder that what critics of woke need is, firstly, courage to speak out in the certain knowledge that they are not lone voices and that woke is not popular. The second thing critics of woke need is determination to mount a rigorous and persistent defence of free speech. You don’t need to be a psychologist to see that downplaying your own talents is a way of taking the pressure off, but it is not wholly an act. After winning the World Championship in 2012, O’Sullivan dropped off the tour, stopped playing snooker and went to work on a pig farm before returning to the Crucible in 2013 to win the tournament again. Up to a point, he really can take or leave it.

Jokes are not violence – this is violence - spiked

Optimistically she goes on to propound that we have much more in common than the woke would have us believe, and it is time to come together to forge a freer, more democratic and truly egalitarian future. 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.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.

Sadiq Khan should stick to his day job - spiked

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). Perhaps the starkest illustration of how reducing everything to single frames of vision can distort understanding comes in the debate about antisemitism. In his new book Jews Don’t Count, David Baddiel shows how the view of Jews as “privileged” or “white” leads many progressives to ignore antisemitism, even collude with it. Baddiel seems more interested in ensuring that Jews can join the carnival of identities than in challenging identity politics; nevertheless, his central point about the failure of many to recognise antisemitism remains important. We use Printful for our print-on-demand shop. It takes 2–7 business days to create clothing products and 2–5 business days to create all other products. 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. The twisted consequence of the unwoke perspective was highlighted last week in an opinion piece in the Yorkshire Post by GP Taylor headed “Don’t let ‘wokes’ rewrite history, let’s learn from the past” told those with “anti-British thoughts”: “If you do not like the history of the country that gives you shelter, protects, feeds you and allows you free speech, then get out. Go!”

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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. No one appears to have told Khan that he doesn’t actually have the power to change national drug policy. But, with his eyes set on loftier heights, he is clearly trying to develop his national and international profile and campaign for policy changes he’d like to see.

Ban Nothing. Question Everything. Drawstring bag - spiked Ban Nothing. Question Everything. Drawstring bag - spiked

It is a must-read. But don’t take my word for it. ‘Anyone who wants to restore sanity, beauty or simple humanity to our public life should read How Woke Won’, says Jonathan Haidt, co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind. Paul Embery, trade unionist and author of Despised, calls it a ‘searing assessment of how the West succumbed to such a pernicious ideology’. ‘Williams is one of Britain’s sharpest and most eloquent writers on the “woke” phenomenon’, says talkRADIO’s Julia Hartley-Brewer. 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. Even when he is in London, Khan embraces every US fad going. Who could forget his ‘Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm’? It was launched in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, after which the West endured something of an identity crisis and statues were toppled in many cities. The commission set out to review London’s statues and landmarks to ensure they are sufficiently diverse and reflect the capital’s modern population. 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. 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:And it’s no coincidence that so many of the negative references to ‘wokeness’ are directed towards Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Woke warriors on the march? Don’t forget the bigotry of the Woke warriors on the march? Don’t forget the bigotry of the

At the same time, the charge of “antisemitism” can itself be stretched to punish or silence critics of Israel. An exhibition by Brian Eno was recently cancelled in Germany because of his support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Many critics of “woke cancel culture” are happy to applaud the cancelling of the wrong kind of criticism. Another form of blindness. 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.

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. 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. 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.