Free Speech Union: Is there a Left way back from Woke?

[VWdieselnightmare]

I stumbled across this video of a discussion held by the Free Speech Union. It's an interesting topic that covers a lot of ground. It contains some excellent material from Alice Sullivan and I was particularly taken by Alan Sokel's analysis of how and why GI has got such a foothold in academia.

He starts talking about it at around 30 minutes. He talks about why middle class white academics are drawn to GI as a means of discounting and ignoring and sneering at the views of the vast majority of ordinary, non-academic working class people. He sees it as the ideology of the left-wing professional and academic classes who can congratulate themselves for being deeply concerned about the most marginalised group in society while proudly riding roughshod over the rights of women and others. I think anyone who's been following the Jo Phoenix ET will instantly hear the voices of Jo's critics when he talks about the class issues. I think it's also closely related to Brexit and the way the Brexiteers were portrayed.

Nothing that hasn't been mentioned here before but expressed in a way that I understood it clearly.

Nope, not gonna watch something that uses ‘woke’ as a perjorative in the title. Right up there with my 12 year old using ‘gay’ as an insult and then trying to explain to me that the meaning has changed.

Ah, so No Watch is the new No Debate.
Carry on not engaging.

@RealityFan I engage every day by helping girls stay engaged in the sport they love, including black girls for whom ‘woke’ is not an insult. I have the decency not to misappropriate a word meaning that doesn’t belong to me.

Your work there is very commendable. So you would have watched the video if the word "woke" was replaced with "critical race and gender ideology" or "post modern gender and race deconstructivism" or "race and gender identarianism", or something suchlike?

Fwiw, I watched a "primer" from John Amechi on "white supremacy". I don't agree with the concept, likely as you don't agree with the concept of woke.

I found him self satisfied and highly patronising, and his ideas badly rooted in anti white racism, but I'm glad I gave the idea a go.

God no, sounds like a load of academic navel-gazing bollocks.

What, John Amechi on "white supremacy"? I'd agree after I watched it.

To the point where Conservative and/or Brexit supporting faculty keep their mouths shut.

In fairness the same could be said on mumsnet. Have you ever looked at the Brexit topic on here? Any Brexit voters were seen off years ago.

What exactly do you add here, on a thread specifically about this video?

How would you feel on a football forum if I chipped in on a thread about black girls in the game, and said it was all a bunch of bollocks.

What have I added to the discussion?

What's the point of you dissing a thread you have no constructive contribution to make? Plenty of posts have been left that haven't used the word "woke", but you have nothing of value in response to these either.

I've noticed in so many threads here that those who love to feign no interest with us recidivists always love to chip in and be chippy.

Too bad I wasn't a member then, lol.

It’s great there is being some pushback.
I find it interesting and depressing how GI gained so much power so quickly and how it has scared senior management in companies.
The fact that people can lose their livelihoods for disagreeing is terrifying.

It's also a self selecting mechanism. I've turned down quite a prestigious teaching post at my old college, because I know for a fact that GI is embedded in the department, and there is a trans lecturer who IDs as his correct male one day, and incorrect female the next (not even NB, male and female as the wind blows).

I'm not going to put my head in the lion's mouth and argue against pronouns and risk misgendering this person. Of course that means more and more only one viewpoint at my college becomes the norm.

@RealityFan mate, you’re the one who keeps banging on about “critical race theory” and “anti white racism” on a forum about women’s rights.

I think the women here can cope with multiple big topics, it's no just knitting and baking that occupy them.

Ah, right, got you. So you only read or watch or listen to things that confirm your own bias? Bit like TRAs.

That's fine, but refusing to watch and potentially learn from something, because you dislike their use of language, doesn't make much sense.

Even if you're correct that there is something objectionable about their use of "woke" it hardly means that they can't be making various good points.

I'm personally not going to refuse to read an article because it uses "woman" in a way I think is a nonsense misappropriation of the term. I may suspect that such an article will have low quality arguments, but I don't think I should just assume it isn't worth reading.

I'm certainly not going to post on a forum, "I'm not reading that article, I don't like how they use the word woman!". That's not really credible behaviour.

Btw, I must apologise to the women of MN in mentioning stuff like race and critical theory. I should realise that feminism absolutely doesn't stretch to these areas. Silly me.

@BCCoach

I have the decency not to misappropriate a word meaning that doesn’t belong to me.

As I understand it, the term originally comes from the black community. It was then briefly borrowed by white liberals, before conservatives turned it around and mocked the fuck out of them.

And this is politics. I think it's fair play if you can successfully shine a light on the other side's hypocrisy or moral or intellectual weakness.

Same as, if the left wants to mock sections of the right-wing for thinking or using the language that they are "red pilled" then that's also fair game.

Great post. I used to be sort of part of the PMC. I remember before my first mat leave feeling utter despair because in the organisation I was working in I was supposedly trying to improve the lives of real people but the conferences, the travel , the endless jobs in 'communications'- hundreds of thousands of pounds being spent and nothing really being achieved and even then I thought, just giving this money to the people we're supposedly trying to help would probably have more impact.

Then I had kids, got made redundant (after mat leave - so all the EDI stuff was bloody useless as far as that went) and fell out of it and now work in a job where I'm paid far less but am expected to do a lot more in the time I work in a private company. The productivity expectations are night and day, though I'm not using my education in a direct way, as I was before.

I think the proliferation of EDI departments in the NHS as it crumbles, ambulance waiting times soar, and people die really tells its own story. I wonder what it will take to reverse it. Those in EDI / PMC in arms length government bodies have too much to lose in comfort, money and sense of superiority to reign it in. The majority of the public absolutely do not support what they're doing.

When they had redundancies at my previous job I thought they absolutely were needed: they got rid of a lot of older women and women with kids though, I happen to know.

I do think that GI took hold at least in part as we no longer have a class analysis. GI so obviously particularly harms those from low income backgrounds.

I regularly go on the Novara Media site to get the genuine activist Left take on things, and my enthusiasm for Brexit has been tempered by regularly dipping into Chris Grey remain oriented blogs.

I'd like to think I'm reasonably rounded despite many jagged edges remaining. For my sins I'll even look at pro TRA articles.

Even if it's only to "know thy enemy". I'm even delving back into reading more on spirituality and organised religion, areas I vowed I'd never give the time of day to again in years past.

The dissenter who won't watch this video, the objection to Woke in a title is now the standard self satisfied "get out" clause. I'm happy to use "intersectionalism class analysis" or "critical race theory/gender ideology", but I suspect even with these terms replacing "woke", our new friend would still object to bollocks as she or he so lazily puts it.

Never before has the Western world been so full of silos and consciously isolating individuals, ostensibly so much information at their fingertips, yet choosing to be ill informed and conceptually short changing themselves. And so happy and self satisfied by their supreme acts of mental self harm.

Great post yourself.
What will change it? My pessimist side says nothing. Starmer is positioning himself as not really promising any meaningful change, his program is a mirror of the Tories. Just less chaos, and more order. Ie 2015-2023, minus the personalities and bombast and lying.
All he can meaningfully leave as a legacy is a hugely more bureacratised state, as he passes his Race Relations 2 act, and opens up GRCs, and infinitely long lists of crushing quotas.

Ironically, this will have to push the Tories back to a smaller state type party, Thatcher 2.0, but with a greater emphasis on neighbourhoods and communitarianism, the opposite of Thatcher.
And this is where there is a genuine opening for the Tories to provide the lead on lancing the boil on political DEI and politicisation of academia and our institutions.
I'm not a Christian, but Danny Kruger MP highlights some clues to this approach in his new book, Covenant.

But Starmer's weaponised DEI approach to govt will have to be tried and fail before any solution will be considered.

One of my peakings was reading a blog two years ago where the writer spelt out that TRA = MRA, and that it was the Socialist/Marxist Left that lost any chance of revolution in the West when the Wall fell in 1989, and effectively reconfigured to revolutionise society on two fronts, the drive to Left political PMCs especially DEI in academia, health, schools, and piggy backing to capitalism, effectively selling out to Amazon, You Tube, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Apple, to push the new Left class war, intersectionalism, not socialism via the means of production, but critical theory via the means of communication.

The Christian church exploded as the first printing presses made the King James Bible available to the masses, this is a parallel revolution with potentially the same outreach and potential for societal change.

I think I've mentioned before on MN that the way in which the TRAs have gained sway in universities reminds me very much of Antony Sher as the loathsome Howard Kirk in the excellent TV series. Now that's something well worth a repeat viewing!

Everyone should catch Andrew Davies' A Very Peculiar Practice, by far my favourite TV program of all time. It deftly catches the late 80s period perfectly where politically correct forces were starting to embed into universities, but not so toxic that good ol' fashioned liberal humanist ethics were still able to judge good and bad, and critically, call the bad out for what it was.

To compare that period to today, 35 years later, is to see a politics that has no relation, and ironically for a contemporary culture that prides itself on diversity, zero divergence of world views.

I urge anyone interested in a cut glass sharp satire, and the greatest ensemble black comedy acting ever in British TV history, to catch this program. As a comparator to today, it's hugely relevant.