I've always considered myself a left-ish liberal. I was a teenage anti-racist (Great title for a film tbf), was pro 'old school' multiculturalism and wanted a decent NHS (and liked the minimum wage).
But it seems like everyone else who used to believe in what I did, now espouses the separation of people based on skin colour, the refusal to believe in biological sex and a level of self-hatred that can only come with growing up posh.
Seriously, I've no idea where I stand on the spectrum any more. Maybe I'm blue Labour or a German-style social democrat. But the more I read stuff like this, the more I realise how utterly insane my former fellow travellers have become.
Same here, though I was a Maoist in the late 60s; we despised liberals even more than Tories. The movie is a great idea; some mixture of film noir and grumpy old men would be most entertaining.
As regards one's place on the spectrum, might I commend the works of Locke, Smith and Mill? I find them invaluable in scorning extremists of both persuasions.
It has become a truism to say that the personality traits most associated with the left are novelty-seeking and openness. However, those traits seem most definitely at odds with the overwhelmingly close-minded, socially homophiliac and sclerotic nature of the Woke. Eccentricity does best in conservative times. How confusing it all is. People still use "blue haired brigade" as an insulting descriptor of conservative ladies, when in reality the blue-haired humans I see darting about offices and churches now are almost certainly pure left.
I am deeply sceptical of the idea that leftist/progressives/whatever are more creative than their opposites. It has NOT been my experience in life at all. What I do notice however, is that a lot of the novelty and openness that the leftists are said to have, are not really those things at all. Their modern art is crap, in all forms of media, their openness is really a thinly veiled excuse to destroy other people and their work. They produce very little culture that will last the test of time. Do we seriously imagine that in 300 years some Chinese scholars will be solemnly poring over the Gospel according to Gary Lineker, the Acts of the ACLU, or their children will be studying hours a day for the recital of Stormzy - perhaps opus no. 4 "Mel Made Me Do It".
And the interesting thing is, that while heathen, heretics and outright maniacs are capable of great art, they do need to be part of a broader sane culture to bring it to the fore. If Michelangelo has been left to his own devices, he's have just sketched nude young men in his studio and left it there. If he'd lived today, he'd have just photographed nude young men and had a 3-day exhibit in the Tate Modern, entitled "An Exploration of Queer Sensuality in a Heteronormative Culture".
Yes, you do get both. I’m not really familiar with the internal DIE politics but my kids’ school talk about equality, diversity and inclusion: maybe as an academic school they have deliberately avoided the particular insanity of “equity”
"if companies are making such overt political statements one might expect that dissenting employees will feel intimidated about expressing their opinions". To put it mildly. HR - the Commissars - are everywhere.
It remains unexplained as to why this has happened - apparently simultaneously - across the English speaking world.
How did something like Drag queen story time pop-up all over the place, more or less at the same time? In Canada, this year, nearly all the school boards have adopted the same themes and plans, all based around the same ideology.
There are lots of people ranting and raving about it, but everywhere the story is the same: all our institutions are currently under the sway of woke.
There is no conspiracy, but some strange species of social contagion that is at work. I have seen non satisfactory explanation for any of it.
The closest analogies seem to be historical religious manias. It seems plausible, but how did it take root here and now?
"a quarter of academic philosophers were unwilling to hire a Republican"
Honestly, I'm pleasantly surprised that it's only a quarter of them who feel that way (or will admit to it, at least). That means the rot isn't quite as deep as I thought (yet). I wonder what the numbers would look like in history or librarianship, though.
Probably, but the mere fact that they feel some need to be evasive about it implies that, on some level, they know it's bad. I'm damning with faint praise here, but at the same time, I know people in other academic disciplines who openly and proudly write off any and all "conservative" thought as worthless-if-not-dangerous. They aren't the least bit circumspect about it; they truly believe that it's a virtue to unilaterally reject all things "conservative", and I get the sense that they are fairly representative of their disciplines (again, history and librarianship).
In the US, a few Republican governors are actively legislating against DEI now. I don't know if that'll do much to change things tbh, but I admire the attempt. The utterly pointless Tories wouldn't dream of acting similarly - I doubt they could get the votes from their own side for any useful measures, even though it's one of the things that's destroying them.
Just wanted to add my 2 cents (16p?) as a new subscriber:
I've always felt that one of the main differences between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives for the most part get their religion from actual traditional religion, whereas for lefties politics IS their religion. At this point we all see and know the very religious aspects of Progressivism: the wild-eyed zealots on fire to change the world, the proselytism, the damned and the saved, the holy dogma, etc etc. In fact, progressivism (like its grandparent, Marxism) is more or less a secular form of Christianity, with Homo Deus replacing Jesus and Jehovah.
Also, EVERYTHING now is a result of the 2016 Brexit-Trump revolt of the Deplorables and the establishment of a new Church/State ruling coalition in response. By 2017 the global corporatists and the Soc Just theocrats were like that couple in a movie who spend 2/3rds of it hating each other and then fall into bed together: hey, it turns out that capitalism and progressivism aren't really that opposed, and just may make a great couple!
And I think this also explains why there's no more room for conservatives in our culture(s) and why a CEO can have Soc Just dogma on his shirt: as part of their marital arrangement, the corporatists receive moral legitimacy and protection from the Twitter mob while the Soc Just people get what every religion wants: official recognition, at least one of their commissars on the payroll everywhere, and their first and deepest need met: to destroy their ideological enemies and ruthlessly install their morality anywhere and everywhere.
Of course there's no room for conservatives—the entire point of the project is to eliminate them.
Happy Valentine's, Ed! As excellently soul-destroying as always. Curious to know what your predictions are for the future of all this. How does institutionalised wokeness end? Assuming it does end. Does the sheer tedium of it lead to collapse? Won't all decently rebellious lively-minded kids start to demand something more substantial and true, even despite the social penalties? Give us hope!
I've noticed that both my daughter's secondary school and son's primary school are really ramping up the race stuff.
I don't think there really is an end tbh, so long as the taboo remains solid and it does, the taboo mainly being anything but Kendist explanations for why there remain gaps in outcomes. I'm going to write a piece on it very soon - paywalled obviously.
Be interested in hearing how you deal with this as a parent, if you thought that was worthy of an article.
Thanks to Black History Month, one of my children came home & told me that the inventor of the lightbulb was Lewis Latimer. Edison didn't get a mention.
My youngest is keen on the BBC version of Horrible Histories, where every period of Britain is depicted using a significant proportion of black/coloured actors. From someone with my perspective, this is simply brainwashing a 6-year old's mind to believe that this country has always looked like 21st century London.
And a few days ago we received a school letter saying, "We also look forward to discussing how we might mark Stephen Lawrence Day (Saturday 22nd April), Windrush Day (Thursday June 22nd), Grenfell Memorial Day (Wednesday June 14th) and also Black Inclusion Week 8th - 14th May 2023)."
In other words, Black History Month isn't enough. Looks like there's going to be a practically constant background refrain about black victims and white oppressors.
I really don't know what the effects on white kids are going to be. Swallow it all and feel guilty? Become resentful and sceptical? Just switch off from boring adults droning on about the same things over and over?
I don't want to turn it into a battleground. But I can't just let it lie either.
Our secondary school also sent out that email with the list of new commemorative days, specifically aimed at parents of ‘global majority’ ethnic groups. I’m trying to formulate how I complain to the school because the whole thing is appalling.
There's a large theme to be explored here around relevance.
There are very few complete lies in politics; almost everything is half-truths (caveat: "half" is really more like "1%"). In addition to being the vehicles for lies, the "truths" in half-truths are often tiny and insignificant. They tend to be unrepresentative, which is why their emphasis is so convenient to the promoters of lies.
When you see insignificant or irrelevant historical minutia elevated in curricula, you should recognize that what is happening is an attempt to smuggle lies to the students. The liars will criticize resistance by insisting that what they are teaching is all technically true (at least, the true parts of the half-truths are).
We must learn that being "true" is not sufficient for being included in curricula. Not if something is an unrepresentative outlier, or a vehicle for drawing harmful conclusions. Most importantly of all, not if the majority of the truth of the subject at hand is omitted (which is key to selling a half-truth).
When your schools teach your kids about obscure historical figures (who happen to be black) and omit Thomas Freaking Edison, they should be recognized as liars, not merely as people with obscure areas of emphasis.
You are so despondent. We need a new term for the gloomy conservative.
Watching from the US I get the sense that the tide is beginning to shift against trans ideology in the UK, what with BBC now reporting critically on the Tavistock clinic and the revelation that a staggering high percentage of "trans" are actually autistic (which does undermine the concept there's something biological about transgenders) and now JK Rowling's interview to be expected soon.
I'd long noticed a strong overlap between wokery and trans rights and if one becomes delegitimized, it affects the other too. Could be interesting to see what happens.
Good essay, Ed. Thank you. However, I feel it necessary to add that another reason for the abject defeat of conservatism is that conservatism is dead. Notice I do not refer to the Conservative Party but conservatism as political philosophy.
Conservatism was roundly defeated by progressive liberalism (read 'Americanism') before WWII. By 1945, it was pretty much dead. The immediate onset of the Cold War necessitated a united front in the West so everyone pretended that conservatism was still breathing. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no longer any need to go on propping up conservatism's corpse and making it wave occasionally, a la 'Weekend at Bernie's'. It will never be resurrected.
So, yes, Americanism is now the only game in town. It's not hard to defeat a dead opponent.
At a guess: 1. reading up on all the latest doctrinal developments, 2. scrutinising their organisation's employment & salary data for any disparities (hours of fun on Excel), 3. running diversity training sessions, and 4. encouraging employees to "raise issues" & listening avidly to those complaints. Oh, and I'm sure there are a zillion conferences. Busy, busy, busy.
A nice journalistic rouse would be to contact a number of them in the guise of someone interested in the role, or perhaps for a fawning profile of some sort, and find out that way.
Like so much knowledge economy work I bet the majority of it is writing emails and attending Zoom meetings (the Wellcome Trust position you reference is WFH three days a week, if I remember correctly).
The NFL instituted a policy ~25 years ago that clubs must interview a minority coach for open head coaching positions. No requirement to hire, just an interview. Superbowl-winning coaches were the result. Teams can win through "diversity of opportunity." An equality program demanding "representation" equal to the percentage of black players in the league would destroy it. The players union would never go for such a proposal. I think that story contains so much about the false sense of emergency in "woke." Every workplace in America is integrated. Attitudes are very diffferent. But you elect one orange menace, and suddenly racism is the worst it's ever been and we must all purge our white guilt with rainbows and land statements. Things were already better, so the only way to "progress" was to pretend things were terrible.
I have previously found myself parodying DIE slogans and realised, good God, it isn't parody, this could actually pass muster in a NHS/civil service job.
Great, depressing, stuff as ever.
I've always considered myself a left-ish liberal. I was a teenage anti-racist (Great title for a film tbf), was pro 'old school' multiculturalism and wanted a decent NHS (and liked the minimum wage).
But it seems like everyone else who used to believe in what I did, now espouses the separation of people based on skin colour, the refusal to believe in biological sex and a level of self-hatred that can only come with growing up posh.
Seriously, I've no idea where I stand on the spectrum any more. Maybe I'm blue Labour or a German-style social democrat. But the more I read stuff like this, the more I realise how utterly insane my former fellow travellers have become.
I'm going to eat some Monster Munch.
Same here, though I was a Maoist in the late 60s; we despised liberals even more than Tories. The movie is a great idea; some mixture of film noir and grumpy old men would be most entertaining.
As regards one's place on the spectrum, might I commend the works of Locke, Smith and Mill? I find them invaluable in scorning extremists of both persuasions.
It has become a truism to say that the personality traits most associated with the left are novelty-seeking and openness. However, those traits seem most definitely at odds with the overwhelmingly close-minded, socially homophiliac and sclerotic nature of the Woke. Eccentricity does best in conservative times. How confusing it all is. People still use "blue haired brigade" as an insulting descriptor of conservative ladies, when in reality the blue-haired humans I see darting about offices and churches now are almost certainly pure left.
I am deeply sceptical of the idea that leftist/progressives/whatever are more creative than their opposites. It has NOT been my experience in life at all. What I do notice however, is that a lot of the novelty and openness that the leftists are said to have, are not really those things at all. Their modern art is crap, in all forms of media, their openness is really a thinly veiled excuse to destroy other people and their work. They produce very little culture that will last the test of time. Do we seriously imagine that in 300 years some Chinese scholars will be solemnly poring over the Gospel according to Gary Lineker, the Acts of the ACLU, or their children will be studying hours a day for the recital of Stormzy - perhaps opus no. 4 "Mel Made Me Do It".
And the interesting thing is, that while heathen, heretics and outright maniacs are capable of great art, they do need to be part of a broader sane culture to bring it to the fore. If Michelangelo has been left to his own devices, he's have just sketched nude young men in his studio and left it there. If he'd lived today, he'd have just photographed nude young men and had a 3-day exhibit in the Tate Modern, entitled "An Exploration of Queer Sensuality in a Heteronormative Culture".
Can we at least call it Diversity, Inclusion and Equality?
Couldn't agree more. I'm just waiting for the opportunity to deploy the acronym in anger.
Equality is not one of its principles. “Equity” is (and still works in the acronym!)
Yes, you do get both. I’m not really familiar with the internal DIE politics but my kids’ school talk about equality, diversity and inclusion: maybe as an academic school they have deliberately avoided the particular insanity of “equity”
"if companies are making such overt political statements one might expect that dissenting employees will feel intimidated about expressing their opinions". To put it mildly. HR - the Commissars - are everywhere.
It remains unexplained as to why this has happened - apparently simultaneously - across the English speaking world.
How did something like Drag queen story time pop-up all over the place, more or less at the same time? In Canada, this year, nearly all the school boards have adopted the same themes and plans, all based around the same ideology.
There are lots of people ranting and raving about it, but everywhere the story is the same: all our institutions are currently under the sway of woke.
There is no conspiracy, but some strange species of social contagion that is at work. I have seen non satisfactory explanation for any of it.
The closest analogies seem to be historical religious manias. It seems plausible, but how did it take root here and now?
I have just signed up as the posts get more and more interesting, if depressing.
'...the declining status of academics is one explanation for an issue that agitates many people, and by many people I mean me'.
I liked that.
"a quarter of academic philosophers were unwilling to hire a Republican"
Honestly, I'm pleasantly surprised that it's only a quarter of them who feel that way (or will admit to it, at least). That means the rot isn't quite as deep as I thought (yet). I wonder what the numbers would look like in history or librarianship, though.
A 1/4 of academic philosophers were forth-right.
There are more who would discriminate privately.
Probably, but the mere fact that they feel some need to be evasive about it implies that, on some level, they know it's bad. I'm damning with faint praise here, but at the same time, I know people in other academic disciplines who openly and proudly write off any and all "conservative" thought as worthless-if-not-dangerous. They aren't the least bit circumspect about it; they truly believe that it's a virtue to unilaterally reject all things "conservative", and I get the sense that they are fairly representative of their disciplines (again, history and librarianship).
In the US, a few Republican governors are actively legislating against DEI now. I don't know if that'll do much to change things tbh, but I admire the attempt. The utterly pointless Tories wouldn't dream of acting similarly - I doubt they could get the votes from their own side for any useful measures, even though it's one of the things that's destroying them.
That would be ‘starting a US style culture war’ ie anything more than total surrender.
Just wanted to add my 2 cents (16p?) as a new subscriber:
I've always felt that one of the main differences between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives for the most part get their religion from actual traditional religion, whereas for lefties politics IS their religion. At this point we all see and know the very religious aspects of Progressivism: the wild-eyed zealots on fire to change the world, the proselytism, the damned and the saved, the holy dogma, etc etc. In fact, progressivism (like its grandparent, Marxism) is more or less a secular form of Christianity, with Homo Deus replacing Jesus and Jehovah.
Also, EVERYTHING now is a result of the 2016 Brexit-Trump revolt of the Deplorables and the establishment of a new Church/State ruling coalition in response. By 2017 the global corporatists and the Soc Just theocrats were like that couple in a movie who spend 2/3rds of it hating each other and then fall into bed together: hey, it turns out that capitalism and progressivism aren't really that opposed, and just may make a great couple!
And I think this also explains why there's no more room for conservatives in our culture(s) and why a CEO can have Soc Just dogma on his shirt: as part of their marital arrangement, the corporatists receive moral legitimacy and protection from the Twitter mob while the Soc Just people get what every religion wants: official recognition, at least one of their commissars on the payroll everywhere, and their first and deepest need met: to destroy their ideological enemies and ruthlessly install their morality anywhere and everywhere.
Of course there's no room for conservatives—the entire point of the project is to eliminate them.
Happy Valentine's, Ed! As excellently soul-destroying as always. Curious to know what your predictions are for the future of all this. How does institutionalised wokeness end? Assuming it does end. Does the sheer tedium of it lead to collapse? Won't all decently rebellious lively-minded kids start to demand something more substantial and true, even despite the social penalties? Give us hope!
Thank you, and to you!
I've noticed that both my daughter's secondary school and son's primary school are really ramping up the race stuff.
I don't think there really is an end tbh, so long as the taboo remains solid and it does, the taboo mainly being anything but Kendist explanations for why there remain gaps in outcomes. I'm going to write a piece on it very soon - paywalled obviously.
Be interested in hearing how you deal with this as a parent, if you thought that was worthy of an article.
Thanks to Black History Month, one of my children came home & told me that the inventor of the lightbulb was Lewis Latimer. Edison didn't get a mention.
My youngest is keen on the BBC version of Horrible Histories, where every period of Britain is depicted using a significant proportion of black/coloured actors. From someone with my perspective, this is simply brainwashing a 6-year old's mind to believe that this country has always looked like 21st century London.
And a few days ago we received a school letter saying, "We also look forward to discussing how we might mark Stephen Lawrence Day (Saturday 22nd April), Windrush Day (Thursday June 22nd), Grenfell Memorial Day (Wednesday June 14th) and also Black Inclusion Week 8th - 14th May 2023)."
In other words, Black History Month isn't enough. Looks like there's going to be a practically constant background refrain about black victims and white oppressors.
I really don't know what the effects on white kids are going to be. Swallow it all and feel guilty? Become resentful and sceptical? Just switch off from boring adults droning on about the same things over and over?
I don't want to turn it into a battleground. But I can't just let it lie either.
Our secondary school also sent out that email with the list of new commemorative days, specifically aimed at parents of ‘global majority’ ethnic groups. I’m trying to formulate how I complain to the school because the whole thing is appalling.
Please let us know! (We might actually be talking about the same school).
Maybe best to email me edjameswest@gmail.com would be useful it is. I can’t seem to see your email
As if it's only one school...
Of course it isn't. But I happen to live in the same area as Ed.
My son knows who Rosa Parks is, but not John Adams. This is an absurdity under any rational analysis.
There's a large theme to be explored here around relevance.
There are very few complete lies in politics; almost everything is half-truths (caveat: "half" is really more like "1%"). In addition to being the vehicles for lies, the "truths" in half-truths are often tiny and insignificant. They tend to be unrepresentative, which is why their emphasis is so convenient to the promoters of lies.
When you see insignificant or irrelevant historical minutia elevated in curricula, you should recognize that what is happening is an attempt to smuggle lies to the students. The liars will criticize resistance by insisting that what they are teaching is all technically true (at least, the true parts of the half-truths are).
We must learn that being "true" is not sufficient for being included in curricula. Not if something is an unrepresentative outlier, or a vehicle for drawing harmful conclusions. Most importantly of all, not if the majority of the truth of the subject at hand is omitted (which is key to selling a half-truth).
When your schools teach your kids about obscure historical figures (who happen to be black) and omit Thomas Freaking Edison, they should be recognized as liars, not merely as people with obscure areas of emphasis.
My god. That sounds incredible about the primary school!
The end occurs when the Weak Men have created sufficiently Hard Times.
You are so despondent. We need a new term for the gloomy conservative.
Watching from the US I get the sense that the tide is beginning to shift against trans ideology in the UK, what with BBC now reporting critically on the Tavistock clinic and the revelation that a staggering high percentage of "trans" are actually autistic (which does undermine the concept there's something biological about transgenders) and now JK Rowling's interview to be expected soon.
I'd long noticed a strong overlap between wokery and trans rights and if one becomes delegitimized, it affects the other too. Could be interesting to see what happens.
Good essay, Ed. Thank you. However, I feel it necessary to add that another reason for the abject defeat of conservatism is that conservatism is dead. Notice I do not refer to the Conservative Party but conservatism as political philosophy.
Conservatism was roundly defeated by progressive liberalism (read 'Americanism') before WWII. By 1945, it was pretty much dead. The immediate onset of the Cold War necessitated a united front in the West so everyone pretended that conservatism was still breathing. When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no longer any need to go on propping up conservatism's corpse and making it wave occasionally, a la 'Weekend at Bernie's'. It will never be resurrected.
So, yes, Americanism is now the only game in town. It's not hard to defeat a dead opponent.
I’d love to see an hour by hour breakdown of what the f*** a Diversity and Inclusion officer actually *does* all day.
At a guess: 1. reading up on all the latest doctrinal developments, 2. scrutinising their organisation's employment & salary data for any disparities (hours of fun on Excel), 3. running diversity training sessions, and 4. encouraging employees to "raise issues" & listening avidly to those complaints. Oh, and I'm sure there are a zillion conferences. Busy, busy, busy.
Nice work if you can get it :p
Me too. Would be fascinating to know.
A nice journalistic rouse would be to contact a number of them in the guise of someone interested in the role, or perhaps for a fawning profile of some sort, and find out that way.
Like so much knowledge economy work I bet the majority of it is writing emails and attending Zoom meetings (the Wellcome Trust position you reference is WFH three days a week, if I remember correctly).
I look forward to such positions becoming hereditary, as traditional sinecures often were.
The NFL instituted a policy ~25 years ago that clubs must interview a minority coach for open head coaching positions. No requirement to hire, just an interview. Superbowl-winning coaches were the result. Teams can win through "diversity of opportunity." An equality program demanding "representation" equal to the percentage of black players in the league would destroy it. The players union would never go for such a proposal. I think that story contains so much about the false sense of emergency in "woke." Every workplace in America is integrated. Attitudes are very diffferent. But you elect one orange menace, and suddenly racism is the worst it's ever been and we must all purge our white guilt with rainbows and land statements. Things were already better, so the only way to "progress" was to pretend things were terrible.
I have previously found myself parodying DIE slogans and realised, good God, it isn't parody, this could actually pass muster in a NHS/civil service job.