Wokeness is a ‘contagion’ which is ‘taking over’ the West

well statute toppling d platforming historical revisionism it's all part of this pernicious new cancer culture that's tearing through institutions across the west but where did the madness start and how can you fight back new anthology with contributions from tony abbott anthony dillon ian plymer goes a long way to answering these questions and providing a road map out of the woke the book's called cancel culture in the left's long march it's out on april 13 and it's edited by a fearless academic well known to you all dr kevin donnelly he joins me now from the capital of woke here in australia a wonderful old melbourne now help me out here we've talked about work it seems to come from nowhere but it absolutely dominates the conversation now where does australia sit in relation to the woke movement around the world are we as bad as other jurisdictions or are we an epicenter here in victoria well unfortunately uh we are as bad as everywhere else i mean it's a contagion i wrote an article last year comparing wokeness or political correctness to covert or as i call it the wu flu it's just as bad it's an infection which is taking over mainly western nations england america canada new zealand australia what we used to call the anglo-sphere before it became politically incorrect but melbourne in particular if you look at australia melbourne is the epicenter so it's been there since joan kerner was premier an education minister and in fact she wrote an article when she was education minister about using education to overthrow capitalism to overthrow the status quo it's this cultural left neo-marxist long march so it's been there for some years and it's very destructive yeah i remember when i was at a university in early working life coming out of the keating years it seemed to be put to bed by john howard and a real push from conservatives and even though the liberal party is in power it has been for eight years it doesn't seem to have made much of a dent in pushing uh this work culture you know back in any way and it runs counter in australia i don't know about britain you know they've got class structures still there and a whole range of divisions in society but we've always been really egalitarian so why has it got such a foothold in australia it uh there are many reasons why it's so pervasive i mean it goes back to education in particular uh during the 1920s just very quickly the history of this there was a frankfurt school in germany where a number of academics realized that the west in the west the workers would never storm the barricades if you want a revolution it has to be through the institutions so as michael gove the english politician said the campaign switched from economics to the culture wars and in australia that has been evident for ever since i started teaching uh that was over 40 years ago it's really a long march through education schools universities the media you only have to look at things like the abc the old fairfax press it's very pronounced and when i reviewed the national curriculum uh during the abbott years it was obvious to me as one of the people looking at that that there was an issue there as well well we saw the circumstance just recently in britain piers morgan was was forced off air um they've had a huge drop in audience share since he has left the morning program uh we've had other examples where people have stood up against the left and actually got a lot of support for it so you know the recent case actually was six books or so i think it was dr zeus books were cancelled in the united states um but they quickly rocketed up and they were the number one books i think was nine out of the ten books sold uh in big numbers that week were all doctors lose books so do you think do you think the community is starting to fight back it is and uh it was quite interesting last year the abc did a survey australia talks and that was abc listeners and viewers and it quite amazed me when i saw the results that up to 68 of those surveyed said they'd had enough of political correctness and these are alp uh even alp uh supporters 52 there's a reaction against it and i'd suggest that the last federal election one reason scott morrison did so well north of brisbane in western sydney but also parts of melbourne is because people australians are generally down to earth no uh i won't use the expression no bs no bs and they like to take the p from one another i mean we get on with life we don't worry about whether cheese is cheese or street you know gay time is gay time there are issues that the the cultural left uh you know reflect upon uh for so long but there are more important issues and hopefully if you look at the book we go through a number of those whether it's climate change anthony dillon has written an excellent one on indigenous uh disadvantage uh jennifer auriel about universities the long march how it's impacting on academic freedom another chapter about religion freedom of religion you only need to look at what happened to margaret court israel to know that christianity is being banished from the public square and and that's a great threat to australia because it underpins so much of our political legal systems so there are sort of silly examples like cheese but the issue is far more important i guess the challenge is for people to feel brave enough to speak out for people in their workplace to speak out without fear of losing their job or or perhaps being put into sort of the stream that's you know not for promotion what can you say to people at home how do they take up the fight because you know it's one thing for the government i wish they'd get in the ring a little bit more but in the end the standard we accept becomes our culture so how do we arm ourselves up i mean that's a an excellent question and one that the book does address at the final chapter but i remember john howard as pm said it was all about the battle of ideas and if i go back further to uh president abraham lincoln he argued what happens in the classroom will decide the future of the country i mean it was amazing uh even this week last week rather in melbourne uh uh all the boys at the school were made to stand up right and apologize to the girls for being what misogynist sexist no for being male and a mother god bless her went public about that her 12 year old son came home and complained about it was concerned and anxious parents need to stand up especially what's happening at school university students need to be stronger we need to call it out we need to rely on rationality and reason and get the debate going rather than being overly concerned about being politically incorrect and and that's why you know i started talking about this in the mid 90s it's a long battle but we need to take that uh strategy as the left does we need to take it as seriously as the left do you're absolutely right 13th of april the book said i've got my copy i'll make sure everyone gets these kevin donnelly as always well done on this well done another fight and thank you for your time my pleasure peter

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Length: 7min 39sec (459 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/VenGxJon]

its a disease thats for damn sure