Great article in the Guardian about wokeism

[inkognitha]

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/jun/10/how-does-woke-start-winning-again

Good morning everyone.
Today, even the Guardian admits woke isn’t working.

« Yet Progressive Activists’ fatal flaw, the report argues, is that they’re further from mainstream public opinion on cultural issues than they realise. They’re the only group where a majority thinks that immigration should be as high or higher than it is now, and that protecting people from hate speech matters more than defending free speech (a key rationale behind “no debate” – the idea that trans identities aren’t up for discussion – and “no platforming”). They’re also the group most likely to think social change sometimes requires breaking the law, whereas two-thirds of Britons disapprove of protesters blocking roads or gluing themselves to things.
Tryl stresses that being outliers doesn’t invariably make Progressive Activists wrong – perhaps they’re just ahead of the curve, as the suffragettes once were – but it has important tactical implications. His polling shows that Progressive Activists overestimate by a factor of two to three how much others agree with their core beliefs, from abolishing the monarchy to letting children change gender. Consequently they tend to invest too little time on persuasion, focusing instead on mobilising the masses they wrongly imagine are on board. “If you’re reaching out to people, then you’re watering down,” is how Tryl describes this mindset.
While successful campaigns usually build the broadest base possible, Progressive Activists also tend to be purists, rejecting supporters who don’t endorse a complete worldview. (More than a quarter wouldn’t campaign alongside someone who believes – as a majority of Britons do – in Israel’s right to exist, for example.) Their yearning for grand systemic change means they can sound dismissive of other people’s small but well-meaning efforts, and they’re also unusually keen on correcting other people’s “mistakes” on diversity issues, something other groups consider likely to cause embarrassment. »

I hope some of the keyboard warriors/bullies roaming this board and the blue-haired, nose-pierced authoritarians will have a read, and at last, a think on how they do more harm than good.

Ok I’m jumping in on p6 HNRTFT but judgemental language aside, I feel the article is pointing out some things which are true, and which directly lead to hostility towards the campaigner. Overreach and dismissing legitimate concerns as bigoted, as in the case of TRAs, is one. The Just Stop Oil protests involving soup on paintings, or blocking roads are another. People need the persuasion, the space to ask questions, and they need to see the connection or the evidence.

It’s also true that there is much greater ideological purity now: I’ve got dear friends who publicly stated they would prefer to see the Tories continue in government last summer than see Labour in power under Keir Starmer. I don’t understand that mindset at all. As there is a spectrum of political opinions in the UK it’s really important to be able to compromise and take the wins- like Stonewall taking the win when they reduced the age of consent for gay men to 18 (from 21). It wasn’t equality but it was better than 21, and it opened the door to equality. Surely Keir Starmer is better than a Conservative PM even if he isn’t Jeremy Corbyn?

That's a complaint about people seeking a right to advance positions in ways that Lostcat disagrees with. It's a right I support and that you are opposing.

Absolutely not. This is a total failure to engage with the substance of what I wrote. You are absolutely free to hold and express your opinions, of course, including those I disagree with. As I am free to do the same.

The point I was making was that people wish to hold entirely hypocritical positions, without having their hypocrisy exposed, or called out for exactly what it is.
People want the right to express transphobic attitudes. Yet when I call those attitudes transphobic, they call me "intolerant" and insist I am encroaching their "rights to free speech". Which, in fact, is quite simply further hypocrisy.

You then describe as "entitled" the idea that if others want them to change their mind they should seek to persuade them.
You instead think it's "their own responsibility" to desist from these positions you disagree with.

Of course it is "entitled" to make it my problem that you think the things that you do (I use "you" here in a general not a personal sense).

Your opinions are your own responsibility - not mine, which is quite the opposite of an authoritarian perspective.

You, on the other hand, demand that if I am to disagree with you, I must only express my disagreement in a way that you find palatable. Otherwise you mock me for failing to being persuasive to you. And this is not to be called an entitled form of engagement? Or arrogant or self-centred perhaps?

That is not a liberal outlook. A liberal is someone who sees value in a pluralistic society where issues are settled in debate, and prizes the right to hold and advance a wide range of views. Including (or especially) views the person disagrees with.

Well firstly, I think there's a difference between liberalism (especially in the neo sense) and anti-authoritarianism. But in any case,

• in terms of seeing value in a pluralistic society, absolutely I do. Which is why, for example, I'm neither transphobic, nor anti-immigration, and speak out against these views where I see them expressed.
• And in terms of debate - I support free speech - and enjoy engaging in debate. That means when someone says something hypocritical and offensive - I will express my opinions of their opinions - without calling that person names like "woke warrior" or accusing them of having blue hair or nose piercings.

It's not me that a. Doesn't understand the article and b. Making unfounded accusations that people didn't believe victims of sexual assault. No apology, obviously.

The irony of the left getting worked up about insults, when they are the worst culprits.

Angry? Because I expressed my opinion too directly? I wasn't angry, just honest.

Patronising and sneery? Childish? Did you read the OP?

"I hope some of the keyboard warriors/bullies roaming this board and the blue-haired, nose-pierced authoritarians will have a read, and at last, a think on how they do more harm than good".

Yet I am the one who is patronising, sneery and childish?

And yet all I did was point out that OP's sentiments are a) unpalatable, b) hardly original.

The term "woke" is meaningless. I don't even understand the grammar of it. It looks like a verb to me, but people use it as an adjective.

I initially saw it being used in a lighthearted way to make people aware of certain issues in the work. At least that is how I understood it.

But now I see it only used to insult people and to shut down discussion. But I guess the term "TERF" has a similar purpose.

Ultimately, it's women ending up stuck between a rock and a hard place, whether or not they support either of this nonsense.

Why are you taking my post personally? I've seen countless threads insulting the Tories and Reform and their voters, yet heaven forbid somebody does the same. Its all just politics at the end of the day.

I took it personally because you responded to a pp who wrote "exhibit A" referencing my post. Therefore I understood your post as a common on mine. If it wasn't then fair enough.

No, I wasn't aiming my post at you, in particular.

Fair enough.

Just when I'd all but given up on the guardian, finally someone dares to print what so many of us have thought For years. I was as left as they come until the liberal elite came along and hijacked the space (and the party). I can't be defined as a leftie anymore apparently, because I don't believe in unfettered mass immigration and I unfashionably, champion the cause of poor, working class communities who've been left to carry the can as they've seen their home towns rot from within. We didn't leave the left, the left left us.

I bet you're ecstatic at the circus finally coming to town.

Not really, I'm saddened that we're going to potentially lose all the gains made over decades because a group of people just pushed and pushed at things that most people just don't want.
But honestly, the howls of outrage from rude, sneering professional scolds will be a silver lining at least. Don't say people didn't warn you.

Or you could just keep calling everyone stupid and insulting them and see how that goes.

People should read the comments with the most BTL recommends on that 2016 article. People were angry. The Guardian was shameful, only reporting on it when they could no longer avoid it. In Hinsliff’s mealy mouthed, grudging rape apologist article she acknowledges this desire of the righteous to avoid talking about it. And myself and other women who read the Guardian regularly and considered themselves “Guardian readers” stopped doing so at that time as @TheaBrandt1 refers to.

Insults, threats, cancel tactics, intimidation, bullying or aggression is not the way to win over the hearts and minds of the majority of the population. We have seen it with ‘Just Stop Oil’ basically annoying motorists who were inconvenienced or sports viewers having whatever they were watching disrupted, and then the behaviour of TRAs has just repulsed some people, nurses are forming new unions as they feel they are not supported, LGA has formed, Stonewall is in crisis and even the National Trust is throwing away its core membership in favour of wokeism.

Big business is increasingly aware they need to be more non-political. Customers vote with their pockets.

I admire your principles. 😊

Just looking at first first line

'be transphobic' when individuals accuse people of being 'transphobic' because they believe in biological reality and science that you cannot change sex or transform into the opposite sex. It's impossible. You can of course dress, act, mimic what you think the opposite sex behave, feel, look like but you can never BE the opposite sex. That's not transphobic that factual! Why does reality get called 'transphobic' it really isn't.

Not any more. It now seems to describe the opposite position to 'Gammon'.

Most rational people are about half way between the two, give or take a bit.

It's an interesting paradigm how this thread has gone. One of the problems for 'woke' is the assumption that if you are deemed 'woke' in one way, you have to be 'woke' in all ways, or suddenly you've become 'right wing' or 'a bigot' or a hypocrite instead.
The same is true to an extent the other way, but I'd say less so. I'm glad the Guardian is at least looking at itself a bit.

Things are crumbling. MN is a bastion of bekind and even here, the wall is cracking. Even on the Guardian, the wall is cracking.

Their Overton window got so small it should be called a monocle.

The only pity is that they have dumbed the Left down, blocked internal debate, made it bitter, angry, petty, superficial, to the point that indeed Reform looks more sensible and aligned with the population.

I know a few bits about WWII and the rise of Nazism, but it's only now I realise how much the Weimar Republic must have been epically sh*t.

It's the go to way of shutting people down. I'm talking about the idea of transphobia, in general. It backfired, big time when the wonderful JKR got stuck in, to fight back.

You can of course dress, act, mimic what you think the opposite sex behave, feel, look like

this is transphobic.

You hold certain beliefs which you think are “factual”- actually they are the product of a set of narrow and partial assumptions. And based on these presumed to be “factual” claims you’ve drawn transphobic conclusions.

It is right and appropriate to point out that transphobia is transphobia and there’s nothing intolerant , woke, angry or authoritarian about doing so.

The problem here is your definition of transphobic or anti-immigration. I would imagine that you define both of these terms as anyone who disagrees with your stance on them.

I would imagine the majority of us who are tired of either extreme sit around the centre somewhere. Whether it’s left of or right of. So our views are more nuanced than yours. I understand that we live in a varied society and that things need to be as balanced as they can to benefit the majority.

I would consider a transphobic person as someone who hated trans people. I don’t hate trans people. I support their right to exist in society, calling themselves whatever they wish and largely doing as they wish as long as (and this is the important part) they don’t encroach on others.

On immigration - there is a huge range between being completely xenophobic and believing in completely open borders. The problem is, you’re seeing these as binary opinions. That if someone doesn’t agree with unchecked immigration then they must be xenophobic. This is simply not the case. Most people in the centre (myself included) understand that immigration is a good thing and is necessary but with certain checks and balances in place so that it doesn’t become a huge issue.

Just because people don’t agree with you, does NOT mean they are far right. They’re probably more likely to be in the centre.

@inkognitha

to the point that indeed Reform looks more sensible and aligned with the population.

No it doesn't. The new Reform councillors look like a bunch of amateurs and Reform barely has any MPs. Desperately wanting something doesn't make it reality. Try looking at facts and ignore your echo chamber for a change.

@Lostcat

Absolutely not. This is a total failure to engage with the substance of what I wrote.

You may well have meant something different. But what you wrote, very clearly, was a complaint about people wanting to "reserve the right" to advance certain positions.

It wasn't about people who advance a position but object to disagreement. It was an objection to their right to advance X without also believing or stating some other thing Y that you think they should.

Let's look:

the right to "debate" the legitimacy of trans existence, while pretending they have no problem with trans people.

They want to complain about immigration, while refusing to acknowledge the broader injustices at stake.

They want to oppose environmental activism while claiming to care about climate change.

They want to defend a regime committing genocide, without anyone using the word genocide.

That's not about them objecting to disagreement. That's you complaining that they feel they have a "right" to make an argument in a way you dislike. You may concede them the right to say a, b, c, but only if they also say x, y, z.

But maybe you got onto the issue of disagreement later in your post.

You did. Was it to object to people who advance a position and then refuse to engage in debate?

Let's look:

They are also so entitled that they think it's the job of other people to persuade them to change their mind...

No it wasn't. The opposite in fact. Your objection is that they do, in your telling, expect argument back.

What should they have done instead? Well, it's:

[...] their own responsibility to behave in socially responsible ways.

Not only are they wrong to "reserve the right" to advance positions on terms they, not you, approve of, but they have an active "responsibility" to fall into line.

That's why I said your post suggests an authoritarian outlook. A closer reading, engaging with the substance of what you wrote, hasn't changed that.

You're doing a great job for Farage; do keep it up.