Woke

There's a lot of noise in the media (particularly social-media) about being "woke", not so long ago it used to be a positive thing, i.e. being "woke" meant that you were interested in, informed about and perhaps even campaigned for justice for minority groups that were being unfairly treated or having their rights denied by a majority or authoritarian regime, this all sounds well and good! These days though, it would seem that being "woke" is a bad, if not dangerous thing, how can this be? It sounds so unfair to oppose such a state of mind, how could anyone be anti-justice? 

I think the problem was best captured many years ago by that cultural and political soothsayer George Orwell, if you read this summary of Orwell's position on Nationalism vs. Patriotism (above) by Ian Dunt, and think about how the word "newspaper" can be substituted for "social media" today, you can start to see how "woke" easily and naturally morphs into "identity politics" which then morphs into "authoritarianism" and finally you end up with the gulag. It's a slippery slope argument for sure, but there's lot's of evidence that many groups riding on the woke band-wagon today have and are developing authoritarian characteristics over time (BLM, Corbynista's, Antifa, Academia etc.) The term "cancel culture" is shorthand (and a right-wing dog-whistle) for how this ideological trajectory is playing out in society, i.e. the silencing of opposition or dissenting views, and the labelling of everything as "racist" or "fascist" that doesn't meet some undefined, unfalsifiable benchmark of "wokeness" but which is really only dissent from the orthodoxy.

Like all Human affairs, the problem isn't black or white, this argument isn't just about dictionary definitions, it's much more complex than that, with many shades of grey and many perspectives. Not everyone that is "woke" has an authoritarian streak, and not everyone that is "anti-woke" is a rabid "Francoist" in the making! There's plenty of room in the middle for societal improvement and a raising of the justice bar without compromising important principals like freedom of speech and conscience. In my view, we just need the actors in this debate, and it's subsequent fall-out, to listen to the other side (without shutting them down) long enough to see it.