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

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Joanna began her career teaching English in secondary schools and Further Education. She started working as a lecturer in Higher Education and Academic Practice at the University of Kent in 2007. She was Director of Kent’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education until 2016. It may be that the word ‘woke’ is irrecoverable, that it has fallen too far into the hands of people who want to use it to stoke division, rather than illuminate injustice. The intention of this word was for it to have a positive outcome for a minority group,’ he explains. ‘But when other groups feel threatened or challenged by it, they might want to subvert it in some way. And by using the enemy’s weapons, that makes it an even more powerful tool for them.’ How does this impact people of colour? Nonetheless, Williams guides the reader through the tangled ideological undergrowth while never losing her focus on the significance of the threat that woke poses. “Woke might be difficult to pin down,” says Williams, “but it is a useful concept. It allows us to describe the outlook the currently dominates our social, cultural and political lives.” 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.

How Woke Won by Joanna Williams | Waterstones

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.If a Sinn Féin first minister is elected this week, very little will change in practical terms. The offices of first and deputy first minister are joint positions. In practice, they are joint prime ministers. In my time as special adviser to first minister David Trimble, all major decisions had to be jointly approved. Executive (ie, cabinet) meetings were always preceded by a last-minute pre-meeting to barter the final disagreements. With a Sinn Féin first minister and DUP deputy, the balance of power will be little different from the other way around. Woke has conquered the West. Identity politics, cancel culture and trans ideology reign. The values of “inclusivity” and “diversity” dominate politics, academia, the media, the judiciary, big business and the very language we speak. Censorship and public shaming are the price paid for dissent or even staying silent. The book is a comprehensive and detailed survey of the ways in which woke thought and practice have corrupted so many of the institutions comprising civil society. It has done this by adopting the intellectual architecture of Critical Theory which holds that imbalances of power in society are hidden from view by dominant cultural structures, such as language and the way knowledge is imparted. Only by exposing these structures is it possible to reveal the extent to which the ‘oppressed’ are held in subjugation by the ‘oppressors’. Jonathan adds that what has happened with the meaning of ‘woke’ comes down to the original intention of the word itself. Whatever happens next in Belfast or London, the protocol will continue to dominate Northern Ireland’s politics.

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This book sets forth the idea that Woke has become the ideological justification for an Establishment which has lost its moral bearings and sense of purpose. It gives them a reason to maintain their power and position over the rest of society. Splintering society into smaller and antagonistic groups prevents ordinary people from uniting and bringing about real social change. Thus Wokeness is not truly Left wing. He said it could be, in part, down to what is lost in transatlantic translation. In other words, this American word just doesn’t sit right with British mindsets.This word has power, and the people who use it as a weapon are all too aware of the underlying connotations of racial and social ideologies. It is used to undermine and disparage the voices committed to fighting for social justice and the rights of minorities – and to silence these views without engaging with them. It was a remarkable rant, not least in the implication both that the “woke” are migrants who don’t truly belong, and that challenging historical narratives amounts to having “anti-British thoughts” that cannot be accommodated by “free speech” – or even in this country. Such is the reactionary end of reflexive unwokeness.