How Woke Conquered the World & Why It Threatens Democracy, Tolerance & Reason

[Music] [Music] hello and welcome to so what you're saying is i'm peter whittle now there is never too much to say about woke fortunately for my guest this week dr joanna williams she's the author of how woke one has just come out it's in bookshops now and you can get it as well on amazon this is about the most thorough book that i've seen on the subject thanks very much for coming in joanna um i must start a bit maybe a bit of a harsh question how woke won so is it game over it's a harsh question but it's a fair question and a very very good question to kick off with because it's the number one thing i've worried about ever since i hit send on the final draft of the book i've worried well maybe i've called all of this wrong and you see things have happened like elon musk's potential takeover of twitter or even ricky gervais's new netflix special and you think well perhaps i've got this wrong the pessimist in me though thinks i am right i don't i don't i don't think these things are pushing back against woke are significant enough just yet um when i say that woke has won i don't mean it's one for all time i certainly think there's potential for us to push back and for us to change things but but i guess what i mean when i say woke up one is that they what people woke ideas more to the point have become the dominant way of thinking within our major institutions so i would say particularly within the education sector within even nurseries schools universities woke ideas are really dominant but also within the civil service the police the health service every every institution that helps run our society particularly the media the bbc um is really um imbued with woke ideas so i guess by saying how woke one it's a bit of a stark pointer that for us just to recognize that fact and i think we need to recognize that so that we've got an accurate assessment of where we are so that we can then push back more successfully um i would absolutely agree with you you know when people say oh i feel the tide is turning you hear this quite a lot um i don't actually see that at the moment obviously nothing stays the same it will what do you think what do you what would you say john are we talking a generational thing here i mean when will things maybe start well not i don't just mean balance out but actually when will these ideas be seriously challenged do you think well i think there definitely is a generational impact here and i do blame the education sector for that in a way because i think we have got a cohort of young people growing up now who've been so imbued with woke ideas through their schooling that they don't even see it as being political they think that the fact that gender is fluid or multiple um the fact that you should see people's skin color they think that this is just a common sense starting point they don't even see that as being a particular political position so i do worry that the next generation coming up um will be thoroughly woke but having said that i think things can change quite quickly i mean if somebody had said to me even 10 years ago that britain would no longer be in the eu i'd be very very surprised at that fact so it seems to me that if you do just have a few individuals even who can push and shape a conversation and you get some democratic momentum behind that the power of people to change things in the ballot box is absolutely phenomenal and and when that's put into effect things really can change quite quickly yeah i mean i i've that example of brexit i think i've used myself it but it's an extremely uh uh pertinent one you would have been considered a nut job in 2000 20 years ago maybe if you said we actually would join would leave the eu um the actual term woke which we use all the time on this channel and i know obviously it's your bread and butter at the moment um because obviously you are uh an academic and i i must say as well a much published author of other books um when you use the term woke i suppose that for many people at least i sort of see it as a kind of bastard child of political correctness and everyone knew what that was but still a lot of people wouldn't you say what is this what is it would you say that's true i think not only do i think that's true but i also think that's quite deliberate i think it's something which does defy a very clear definition and i think the people who are most woke kind of like it that way it suits them not to have this label applied to them and that's another way if you like another reason why i did put this word into the title of my book because i kind of think you have to own the fact that you've got this set of ideas you've got to own the fact that you do think this way and you can't deny it and actually the label woke then becomes quite useful for us in being able to pinpoint um this is a particular set of ideas this is a particular outlook on the world and um you know i think extreme form of political correctness correctness is one way of looking at it but to me it's a set of ideas particularly around key issues like race and gender and identity and it demands that we put um divide people up into identity groups and then arrange them into kind of hierarchies of privilege and act in relation to everyone we see accordingly we judge everybody by their their gender their sexuality their skin color we rank them and to me that's a really ugly and horrible thing to have to do but but that's what woke um demands now people who are woke they tend to be quite if not defensive they tend to just say oh you know we're just going completely over the top all it means is just being aware of inequalities and um hoping for social justice but i think that's a bit disingenuous you call it gaslighting don't you i'm being polite if i say it's a bit disingenuous yeah i think it's absolute rubbish um because it doesn't just mean this or just being aware of injustices it it tells us to act in response to injustices in a very particular way so like i said you could look at the earlier civil rights movement you could look at the suffragettes if you want to go back far enough as being campaigns for equality but they were campaigns which weren't about um actually the opposite really it seems to me so we can get into the criticisms of what's wrong with this but but you know it's that very kind of authoritarian insistence that not only must we be aware of racial inequalities but we must respond to them in a very particular way that's set down by kind of woke thinking also there's this element of blame that uh which is crucial it seems to me that we don't we can't just recognize social justice we are to blame for it uh in our case by virtue of being white say for example that um and the way that they use the language is to actually make it even worse if you deny this then this is actual proof isn't it like alice in wonderland this is actual proof that you are part of the problem when did you actually first you personally hear the term woke do you remember um i don't um i guess it was probably around four or five years ago particularly with the black lives matter movement um and i know at that point if you go back to maybe 2017 2018 it was a term woke was the term that people were quite proud to be associated with so i guess now you now you've asked me that question i think the first time i would have come across it would have been in some of these online kind of listicle type things that you have um the 10 10 kind of hot men on why being woke makes them more sexy this kind of thing um why woke is cool and um they were very again very kind of didactic almost lists of these are the correct views that you must hold and these are 10 people who hold these views and why we love them so it's the kind of teen vogue kind of thing but you'd also see at that time kind of jack dorsey then ceo of twitter wearing a t-shirt on stage kind of how he was proud to be woke and it was a time that people were really quite pleased off the back of black lives matter to be associated with and it was only then when people started to you people who were criticizing them began to use that term that you suddenly got this kind of rejection of the label this gaslighting that they'd never said they were woke to begin with you know it's kind of become a political football since that point i mean i think it's it's like you made the point i think with political correctness it's one of those things you never came across somebody who said i love being politically correct you know it was always oh you know i don't mean to be politically correct or whatever um you never hear it i think i've heard one person use it unironically and that was on um question time actually a while ago i can't remember quite who it was i think it was a might have been a comedian but he was generally genuinely surprised to be criticized for being called work you know and i thought well that that tells you a lot about people that you're mixing with um in so you've mentioned it there but there's a subtitle in your book the elitist movement that threatens democracy tolerance and reason elitist this is this is the thing isn't it that basically this seems to be very much the code of the privileged yes absolutely and again that's another reason if you like for the title to actually point out to them that they have one that they are a kind of new elite nowadays i think we've had a complete transformation in who is in a position of power in this country and what the powerful actually believe in and i mean i make this point in the book but i think it it's a really important point that the people who are most woke are the people who are most likely to deny that their work but also the people who are most likely to deny that they're powerful they kind of exploit the victim status i think of genuinely disadvantaged people and they appropriate that victimhood and trying to say that they are victims themselves so i'm on about you know your kind of your guardian journalists your bbc hacks you know if you look at say the way the women at the bbc i'm on about the female presenters who earn huge salaries are able to use the gender pay gap to argue for yet more money for themselves whereas the women at the bbc who really own very little money are the cleaners the the caretakers the makeup people the people behind the scenes and nobody's really arguing for more money for them um but but these top women are able to exploit the disadvantages the genuine disadvantages of some to say oh look this is terrible sexism or you've got people of color who are in very powerful positions who are able to say look this is terrible racism we can point to these racial disparities which which sure enough do exist but they can say look these racial disparities show that we are disadvantaged too whereas these are people who've been kind of privately educated top universities really powerful positions of influence earning stacks of money and yet are able to present themselves as somehow this victimized minority and i think woke kind of allows them to do that and it allows them to deny that they are in very powerful positions have you yourself ever been i was a victim of woke um i mean amongst your colleagues and friends have you lost any friends whatever by the position you take on this um yeah i mean i guess i guess i probably have but um realistically i probably lost those friends quite a few years ago but i know there are lots of people lots of people who i know who i am i guess family members i suppose more than um i've recently asked by the way i don't mean to be i think it's interesting because you know anyone who's involved in brexit you know and indeed in some ways with the pandemic after that you know this was a fact of life for them oh definitely and i think i think more i think people who really know what i think are probably self-select and just don't be my friend to begin with um but but family who have no choice in the matter i think they'd probably rather i just kept quiet so i say it's all very well you can think those different things if you want to if you're a bit odd um but could you not just not say them the thing is this is the point isn't it you say but you know i don't know or presume to know anything about your particular social circle but you know you're on the side of the angel i mean you're on the you're on the side of the majority of people you know this is the i mean because the point is made here you know that this is a minority of people with extraordinary influence really but then i was wondering when i thought about that john is is it such a small minority because when you look at these polls of young people coming out of college now in school um not only on the actual issues do they agree with what would be considered work but they also for example don't believe in free speech particularly i mean i i find it so worrying i mean you mentioned the political uh aspect in in schools uh uh a minute ago and i mean i think this is truly worrying this is when it stops being just if you like a small group of highly influential academics or something no i think i think you can divide the population up a little bit and i think there are a small and i would say genuinely small group of people who really buy into these work ideas who are absolutely at the forefront of pushing them forward and and i think actually really do know what they're doing and know the power that they've got and know how they can influence and change society then i think you've got other groups who kind of follow in their wake some of whom have just never really thought critically about these things have never been questioned have never had it put to them that these views are actually well of you like so not just the only way of looking at society and i think that particularly about younger people nowadays i think there's also a group of people who recognize what's going on recognize that that particular woke ideas are being pushed through and they're a bit too cowardly um i'll just think you know i'd rather just have a quiet life i do not want to speak out and and challenge this and when i say cowardly you know in some ways that sounds very harsh and and i think some people deserve that label you know some people are cowardly know what's going on are able to stand up to this book but choose not to because then maybe they like the social approval on on twitter or something like that but but i guess the people i feel a little bit sorry for are some of the people who you know have got just got families works maybe not the most important thing in their life they're told you have to start wearing a pronoun badge now deep down they're a bit critical they'd rather not wear a pronoun badge i'm on about people who are working so behind the counter in a bank for example they're like why should i have to wear a pronoun badge they don't want to but then they think if i kick up a huge fuss about this i could lose my job actually i'd rather just get the salary get home see my kids forget all about work once i get home and i feel really sorry for those people because they're being pushed into doing something that they don't agree with and i can understand why they just want a quiet life and it's really unfair that we're making people people kind of have to um own political views that they don't actually buy into it so it becomes a form of compelled speech yes i think a very good example of what you just said would be the recent example of the girl who was hounded out of her school i mean this is a case where uh you might remember she she took issue or she argued with someone who was giving a talk about gender and i think she she argued in favor of biological sex but what happened after was that about 60 of her peer group classmates whatever uh started to bully her quite badly the teachers started off by defending her and then backed off and then stopped defending her now i mean to me that's in there are so many appalling parts of that story but that's cowardice surely well it is it absolutely is cowardice i mean it's morally reprehensible how those teachers i mean how those teachers can go to bed at night and actually sleep easy i don't know because i was a teacher at the start of my career and and bullying was a really big deal and we were clear that as teachers our role was to stamp out bullying i actually think a bit too much was made of that and we were kind of ended up spending all our time a far too much time i think i was sorting out who said what to who um during a playtime rather than actually getting on and teaching the kids stuff but to me this is as clear an example of bullying as it comes 60 people surrounding one girl for having asked a difficult question you know this is really outrageous and and you're absolutely right rather than siding with the victim in this and again it's another word which i think gets thrown around far too much nowadays but i think if you're surrounded by 60 um fellows then you clearly are the victim in that situation rather than siding with the victim she got blamed she was the one who was told to go and have to isolate in the library she was the one who told she had to stop asking awkward questions now that's completely morally reprehensible the only way i can begin to make sense of what happened there you know rather than just completely hating on the teachers which i am very tempted to do is to look at how the how woke has completely twisted around the language that we use so i mean i'm sure everybody's heard the phrase silence is violence nowadays or words violence silence is violence it's like everything is violence other than actually punching someone nowadays which is perfectly legitimate it seems in some circumstances um and the word harm as well and kind of emotional harm has become completely redefined so that it's almost as if the people who were considered to be um at risk of harm in that situation were her the 60 girls who'd had their views challenged people who were questioning their gender identity even though they could have been one of the mob of 60 surrounding this girl they in this twisted warped morality of woke those 60 came to somehow be seen as the victims and that's what's so bad about this so for all i'm taking the moral high ground and saying i don't know how those teachers could sleep at night i think unfortunately they could probably sleep very well because a lot of them will no doubt think they've done the morally right thing they've protected the disadvantaged people here which in their twisted imaginations will be the transgender pupils or the pupils who might be transgender at some point in the future you you go through all the different aspects you know whether it be what we used to call culture wars you know in ways i think slightly moved on from that all the way through the institutions free speech um and there is a chapter about politicization of children known schools uh it seems to me that that is the most wiring thing of all i mean we've had an example of it there but how on earth would one go about stopping that i mean how is it what does it does it mean taking on the teaching unions what does it mean well i think taking on the teaching unions definitely but more fundamentally i think getting back to what's the purpose of a school what what are schools for because to me school should be have only one purpose which is education and i think what's happened over the course of a long period of time i mean we're probably talking almost 100 years really um but gradually over this very very long period of time schools have taken on much more of a socialization role for young people and they've edged out the parents in some ways and bringing up a child nowadays is seen as being an intrinsic part of the teacher's job rather than the sole responsibility of the parents almost to the point i used to my children are old now but when my children were young it was the point where i thought it it had flipped completely full circle so i was in the bizarre position of teaching my children when they were young how to read how to add up these things would come home from school you know books and and maths homework and things like that and i didn't object to that but i thought the role of homework naively was to reinforce things that children had already learnt at school whereas what i was being expected to do as a parent was to actually teach these things for the first time it seemed meanwhile i was packing my children off to school where they were learning about fair trade and they were learning about the need to protect the environment and they were getting what i thought was the morality and the values that i should have been instilling in them as a parent and i think this is the fundamental problem that we've got in our education system that the education if it happens at all is kind of the lowest priority above and beyond socializing children so when you look then as a teacher at how how do you go about socializing children if this is your responsibility you're you're looking for a set of moral values that you can impart and this then goes into every aspect of what you do and it actually even infiltrates into the subject teaching do you i mean do you have any structure with the idea that one way around this would be home schooling it could be but i have to say i mean i i i slightly skeptical i mean that that's been put to me a lot particularly by people in america um are very big and simple they're doing it more there aren't absolutely i think there's a much more long-standing tradition of it than in the uk um but i mean i i'm reluctant and obviously it wasn't something that i've got three children and it wasn't something i did with my own three children i think it puts a great deal of pressure on parents you know to i know just during the experience of the pandemic that sense of having to be everything um to my child who was still at home at that point to be kind of teacher and friend and mother i mean i guess at heart i do think that the roles of mother and teacher are fundamentally different roles the teacher should be an authoritative figure well i think the mother should as well but essentially i think the mother's job is to love the child and to nurture the child and to instill morality and values whereas i think the teacher's job is to instruct to instill discipline and to be a subject specialist yes you know this has happened with my own niece recently you know she's got her little kids i think the oldest is eight and uh there are these workshops starting up that we're going to start up this year about gender and and race i think and uh she just wrote a letter saying you know um of course we are uh the people who uh accept uh diversity and all of it but i have don't feel comfortable about children this young being and um she got quite short shrift about it and in fact she's totally powerless really isn't she in this situation no completely i think the interesting thing as well is as as i was saying you know how this actually even comes to replace subject knowledge um you know this is a really silly example my daughter is doing her gcses at the moment and she told me one of the questions on the gcse biology paper um i don't know if this is true or not i have no reason to i to assume she was lying to me um gave the nutritional content of a veggie burger and a beef burger and the question was which was the best one and i said how would you even begin to answer that question because how do you define best in that content if if you're starving then the best one's going to be the one that's got the most calories in it it could be the best one that's got the most protein in it i mean my instinct is they were expected to say that the veggie burger was the best one but that's a moral judgment you know that that's not an educational biological question and i mean if he'd been told you know this is the person's nutritional um profile or you know this person's lacking in this particular nutrient which would be the best burger for them to eat it would be a scientific question but you're saying which is best that's a moral question you've obviously had a a great career academic career writing and journalism and and you also were associated at spite is that right associated um politically where would you put yourself now do you think yeah anywhere i mean increasingly people feel homeless no absolutely so i'm in full full confession i'm a member of the sdp cameraman so that that's i guess is where my political allegiances are um over the course of my adulthood i voted for every political party going um and i find it a really i probably find that the most difficult question to answer however people label me i tend to object to it and say no i'm not that whenever i've applied a label to myself um i've turned around and i found a few years later that kind of the world's moved on and this label say humanist for example or even libertarian um i then kind of feel a bit comfortable with that label for small a short period of time but then politics seems to move on so quickly and the outside world seems to move on so quickly and suddenly i discovered that what i thought i meant by say being a libertarian no longer seems to have that same meaning in the outside world would you would you be how would you be very active with stp i mean would you stand for them no i mean i do go to meetings i live in canterbury and we have monthly meetings and i do attend those meetings i you know i i guess my reasons for not standing are i guess i think it was tony benn who said when he was leaving parliament you know i want to um leave parliament so i can concentrate on politics yeah i've probably completely bastardized that quote but i think very very true i would worry that and because it is something i've thought about but i would worry that two things and the probably just say more about me really than politics but i would worry i don't have the i just there's a kind of contrarian instinct in me that would find it very difficult to tell a party line on anything as soon as somebody said to me this is the party line this is what we must say i think that the kind of devil in me would want to argue the exact opposition for five years i mean you know you you also find that you are um expected to have a view on virtually everything and we don't often we don't have no no that's true but the reason is because the main parties uh simply do not take what you've just written about seriously i don't care what they say no i think a lot of them just simply don't understand it uh or actually i'm i'm completely going to contradict myself there the labour party seems to have taken it on on board entirely um but they weren't presented that way you know so in in an elect in an electoral sense there's almost no way nowhere for people to turn to really is that no i think you're right and i think the conservative party as well they make some kind of stands every so often to appear to be pushing back against woke particularly in schools for example and i think that's good you know i definitely welcome that but at the same time i don't think we can trust them or rely on them and i think like you say it's almost as if it's a kind of sop to what people want and it's almost as if you can throw those crumbs out there in order to carry on pursuing what they think is the main agenda and i think some of them as well seem to genuinely believe that in order to win the next generation they're aware that that something is happening generationally and you look at the kind of the karen johnson winger for conservative party for example i think they're much more inclined to think that you have to be woke yourself in order or appear to be woke in order to win over young voters which i don't think is true i think young people can cope with being challenged and being questioned on what they think um what do you think is at the basis of woke i mean we all we've been talking about it for the past 20 25 minutes but would you say it's like cultural marxism would you say that the actual result of the point of this is is to basically be revolutionary in the end or is it just about maintaining a kind of your elite status what do you think is the reasoning behind it so good question um if i was going to answer in two words i think what's behind it is contempt and where it's going is authoritarianism and i know those are two very dramatic words so i'll kind of explain them a little bit but i think what what drives woke and and as you pointed out on the subtitle yeah i do think this is an elite i do an elite way of thinking i think what drives it is contempt for the working class and i think it comes from a left wing or it appears to be left-wing i i wouldn't use the phrase you use cultural marxism but i can see why people do um and it appears to kind of come from the left wing but but it's actually a reaction against many left-wing positions from um several decades ago that were grounded in a sense of the working class as a positive force for change for example um grounded in a sense of working-class agency that's flipped on the left and it seems to me that a lot of left wing people nowadays look at the working class with complete and utter contempt you know these are people who if it wasn't for sugar taxes would become obese um if it wasn't for uh you know in scotland and whales smacking bands would abuse their children you know these are people who don't know what's best for themselves need us to control and monitor every area of their lives these are people who without our elite input our racist sexist homophobic transphobic we can't trust them with politics so we've got to get decision-making puzzled out to the eu was what the left wanted and still wants you know so these people are not allowed to have any decision any agency over their own lives any impact over the direction of the country so i think it's contempt that drives woke thought you know we need to impose our ideas around challenging racism challenging homophobia gender i mean you know completely wacky ideas about gender being a feeling rather than having any grounding in biological sex we've got to impose these ideas on people almost just as a moral stance to show that we are right and they are wrong i i think you know i i completely agree with you that i this came up during brexit um and in this country you saw a kind of blatant snobbery which uh i i took it back actually i mean i thought it you know once one time people would even have covered it up you know whereas now it was these who are these awful people and i think that was why there was this extraordinary kind of and still is bitterness it can't believe that they have been gainsaid no absolutely just can't get over it no and you see it all the time i mean it was even just last weekend um jamie oliver outside 10 downing street holding up his eaton mess trifle you know absolutely horrified that the government is not going to ban buy one get one free deals in supermarkets and and i mean i wrote about this on spike this weekend i think it looks as if he's having a pop at the tories it looks as if he's got an angry protest outside downing street but really his problems not with the tories at all he just wants him a bit more in line doing what he says his problem is with these plebs who you know will go around and buy cheap food and feed their kids cheap food you know these disgusting hoards these masses they need controlling they need raining in they need to be force-fed carrot sticks and cucumbers because if we just let them choose for themselves who knows what they'll get up to they need saving from themselves it's it's a very curious thing kind of pity and contempt i think they go hand in hand two sides of the coin you know not he presents himself as being kind of caring and just pitying these poor people but it's very contemptuous it's interesting you know if you look back to the time of the bloomsbury group uh going way back to 100 years well uh obviously far less influential than what we've got now but they uh they're kind of snobbery bordering on fear actually of the masses if you read the virginia wharf and we've we've about to have the jubilee she was talking about i think it was george the fifth coronation or something and she said these people sort of with their ugly clothes and their you know coming over you know just us a sort of contempt you know i mean it's extraordinary um i don't want to give away everything in the book which you must get it's great um but if you go back you know to this central issue of what what can people do what do you think i mean people have got to stand up what does that actually mean do you think then i mean i think the number one place to stand up is the ballot box which obviously does beg the question and you know goes back i feel a bit ashamed and embarrassed because i know that then takes you back you need the people to stand for parliament who are going to challenge these views and then obviously it raises questions to put myself forward um but i think i think speaking out um is in a way the only thing we can do and it's as soon as one person sticks ahead above a parapet it gives other people confidence to say that that's what they think too so a completely silly example just as i was walking here like i live in canterbury walking down to the train station 11 o'clock this morning um a neighbor who i very rarely see i you know met her ever so often um i stuck her head around oh hello hello joanna hello i said i've watched you on gb news yes i really agree with you you know so lovely to see you it's brilliant that chad no i had no idea that she would have kind of watched gb news and it was so heartwarming to hear her say that um and but you feel like you've got this kind of little conspiracy going then almost um and i think clearly if if she hadn't seen me on gb news she wouldn't have maybe felt empowered to say you know are you i think it does just take people to be a little bit brave more people to be a little bit braver to stick their heads above the parapet and to push back and you know you you start a momentum you start a conversation where there wasn't a conversation and like i do appreciate this is not as easy um for everyone and there's a reality of having to go to work pay the bills you know people have got busy lives but i think any opportunity you get just to even just ask a question you know just be the person who is going to ask a question when you look at kind of online forms that you have to fill in even just to join onto your kind of skype chats or these kind of things nowadays often it gives you a drop down box to include your pronouns and when you see that you think oh i must have to do this but actually you don't you can just bypass this and and often you find when you do just bypass it it then does leave other people feeling that they can bypass these things as well yes and uh i think you know your point is well about um just the small things even when people come out with sort of words like problematic you can sort of laugh or or oh problematic you know just to just to try to diffuse it slightly you know because it's a it's a tough one but the thing is as you say people have got to stand up and more and more people are i think definitely certainly you um the book is called how work one thank you so much john will you stay because we have some questions a few questions for our exclusive members to answer but uh in the meantime thank you very much and um we shall see you next time on some what you're saying is thanks for joining us bye-bye hello if you're enjoying the new culture forum channel and you believe in our mission may i invite you to join our membership scheme at the link below or on our website newcultureforum.org.uk our work is more important now than ever and we have great plans ahead for the future but we can't do it without your support from as little as three pounds per month you can help ensure that we continue on our mission as a member you'll receive a range of benefits including access to exclusive content invitations to our private events including here at our studios free copies of our books and much much more including of course our famous ncf mug if you aren't able to become a member then please help us by clicking this button and subscribing to our channel it's completely free just remember to also click the bell icon so that you can get notifications when we post new videos thank you [Music]

Channel: The New Culture Forum

Views: 29,691

Keywords: New Culture Forum, Peter Whittle, So What You're Saying Is..., Culture Wars

Id: aR7O877P9TU

Length: 41min 12sec (2472 seconds)

Published: Sun May 29 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/ElCidVicious]

Wokeness is the cancer making us 24ak and a easy target for nonsense.