Which is interesting. In Britain, the woke left is a political movement which is pro-censorship, anti-Jew, thinks women should stay in their place, and that the main purpose of the police should be to enforce the right way of thinking. Add in a relaxed attitude to big business, providing they support the right ideological causes, and a weakness for charismatic leadership. It’s all starting to look a bit like a particular political movement from the mid twentieth century...
I’m really grateful to the commentators from the left who are pointing this out. There are very few of them. Paul Embery, Matthew Goodwin, Andrew Doyle, Brendan O’Neill. That’s about it (there are numerous women writers and academics coming to the same conclusion via a slightly different route, of course). The other sensible voices are conservative (albeit mostly small C) like Douglas Murray (James Kirkup is a good example).
One of the more frustrating conundrums is that commentators on the left are having to pitch articles to titles that are not their natural homes, due to the infestation of wokeism. This the. entrenches the idea that even people on the centre/soft left are dismissed as Tories because they’ve been published in the Times or the Telegraph.
I’m now happily reading stuff sites like Quillette and Spiked because the Guardian and the Independent are so obviously not presenting the whole picture, yet a relatively short while ago I was in a ‘oh, I shan’t bother following that link, it’s a right wing rag’ rut caused by laziness and the smugness of feeling good about myself for being one of the good, lefty guys.
The fact that some of the shittier tabloids cover stories about violence against women that the civilised press ignores has also been a massive eye opener.
I no longer automatically apologise for sharing a link to the Daily Mail, instead I expect everyone to read every article on every source with an enquiring reasoned mind, and I’m ready to discuss the topics further with anyone from any angle, as long as they come in good faith.
I cannot tolerate anymore ‘If you disagree with me on this, delete me’ nonsense, but the only way to fight that attitude is to be open and willing to engage with disagreement, and not automatically link disagreement with disapproval and dislike. They aren’t the same thing.