This is a really good book – very well written about an important and timely subject. It’s refreshing to see a Brit’s view about this American-cum-globalist ideological phenomenon. And what is most interesting is just how convoluted it all is – from its early 20th century inception as a black American reminder to be alert (to social dangers and racial injustices), to its late 20th century cultural appropriation by progressive whites, to its 21st century derision (by conservatives), subsequent disavowal (by progressives), and eventual incorporation by corporate elites in the new status quo…
“The values promoted by woke are today most associated with an emergent elite that is socially and geographically mobile, highly educated and social-media savvy. Woke may not be this elite’s self-descriptor of choice, but woke ideas underpin establishment decision-making and corporate mission statements. ‘Woke’ refers to the side of the culture war that denies it is waging a culture war, yet which repeatedly fires the opening salvos.” (p. 15)
“In other ways we have come full circle. The shift from white men in suits to trendy, young, transgender, bisexual people of color has been rather superficial. Today’s woke cultural elite has more in common with the century-old establishment the Angry Young Men pushed back against in the 1950s than with the Angry Young Men themselves. Today, just as it was a century ago, the privately educated are overrepresented in the media, music and arts worlds. Just like a century ago, today’s elites share a political outlook and is hostile to those with different views. And, just as it was a century ago, shared tastes and language allow members of the cultural elite to distinguish themselves from everyone else.” (p. 63)
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Michael Hallihane
The fightback starts here
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2022
Michael Hallihane
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2022
The book begins with a review of the etymology of the word ‘woke’ tracing its origins back to the era of Jim Crow Laws and black oppression in the American Deep South. ‘Woke’ had a specific meaning among black communities in the South connected not only to social and political awareness but to physically looking out for oneself and others during an era of vicious racial discrimination and prejudice.
Williams charts woke’s specific origins in the experience of an older generation of black Americans to its present-day iteration as the political philosophy of mostly middle class white liberals and Leftists. It becomes clear that the term has lost all resemblance to its original meaning and purpose. In its evolution into identity politics ‘woke’ has morphed into that which it claims to oppose.
Williams identifies a present-day cultural elite presiding over woke institutions. She observes that ‘woke ideas and identity politics justify a system of mass bureaucracy’. Woke values have penetrated every area of public life and all our institutions. Today, it isn’t far-fetched to say we live under a regime of structural and systemic wokeness.
But what is ‘woke’? And why is it a bad thing? These are the questions Williams sets out to answer. Ostensibly, woke is about ‘Social Justice’. It focuses on race and gender above all else and is mired in identity politics. Woke is regressive because in all the areas of public life it has impacted upon it has reversed or is attempting to reverse historical gains and hard-won liberties. It has introduced a climate of censorship and self-censorship and led to the cultivation of victimhood and dependency. It is an integral part of the Culture Wars. Woke is how the cultural elite wields its power over the rest of society.
In a chapter entitled ‘Woke Capitalism’ Williams reveals how the diversity industry with its army of ‘race experts’ benefits corporate elites by removing workers’ agency and solidarity. Workers are reduced to automatons. Speech codes, ‘Implicit Association Tests’ and HR Departments strip the individual employee of his or her subjectivity. ‘Unconscious bias’ training is used as a tool to achieve passivity. Workers are divided ‘according to identity, overriding social class and empowering employers to act as neutral, therapeutic arbiters in workplace conflicts’. Who is the winner? It is the capitalist class. That is why elites have embraced woke ideas and values so thoroughly.
Rehabilitating racial thinking and racial divisions is a deliberate woke policy. Woke activists see ‘colour-blindness’ and the original goals of the US Civil Rights movement as implicitly racist or aiding racism. Dividing people by race into perennial victims if they’re black or perma-guilty if they are white (to say nothing of the intersectional categories) is a lose-lose situation for the masses. Essential to the woke world view is the cultivation of vulnerability. The aim of Critical Race Theory for whites is ‘not forgiveness, but perpetual penance’. If anything, it is worse for black people who are cast as perpetual victims and supplicants.
The area most focussed on by woke activists is gender. In the case of children who identify as transgender the approach adopted by the Professional Managerial Class - in this case the educators, psychiatrists, social workers and health professionals – is ‘positive affirmation’. Parents are pushed to one side. The child is encouraged along the path of ‘social transition’ as they ‘change’ from one gender to another.
For older generations adolescent identity crisis or identity experimentation attached itself to subcultures, pop music, illicit substances, sex, experimentation in alternative lifestyles. This experimentation was seldom permanent. For which adolescent is settled in their identity or sense of self? Yet today children are swept along in a woke rollercoaster and encouraged to make life-changing decisions such as taking puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones and other medical interventions that they may come to regret in later life. By these means woke activists inculcate a new generation with woke values and separate them from the cultural legacy of the past. The past is dismissed as toxic and a Year Zero approach is taken to history. Hence the raging controversies about statues, books and children’s authors like JK Rowling.
The focus for identitarians is on appearance and representation. Williams writes: ‘To the woke, performance and principle are often one and the same.’ What this means is a layer of well-educated middle class, ethnic minority professionals are assimilated into the cultural elite. The masses of all races are excluded from this cultural elite and social network.
Williams points out that the ‘cultural turn’ isn’t a recent phenomenon. It has been decades in the making. The turn from class politics to identity politics has enriched the elite and marginalised the poor and working class. Today’s cultural elite are openly hostile to the working class. Their anti-working class animosity was on full display in the Brexit fallout and is revealed in their slurs such as ‘gammon’ for Leave voters. It is going down a blind alley to attack the cultural elite as Left or Marxists. They are neither Left nor Right. They are anti-democrats and authoritarians. They rely on authoritarianism to enforce compliance. The biggest threat to the cultural elite is democracy and its essential component part free speech. It is what they fear most.
It doesn't seem to matter what government is in office when the cultural elite hold the real reins of power and demand the government account to institutions rather than to the electorate. That is why we live with woke policies which no-one voted for or believe in. We must conclude the government is cut from the same cloth and there is a seamless relationship between the elected government and the cultural elite. The relationship gets rocky when the government tries to implement what its voters want rather than what the cultural elite wants. In the fightback against woke the demos must lead the way. Williams’ book is an essential starting point. It shows us what we’re up against.
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Marie O'Neill
Don’t believe the title - woke haven’t won, and here’s how to push back!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2022wendy howarth
one person's elitism is another person's orwellian animal farm
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 13, 2022