Is woke really dead?

Who is going to fix the problems that woke either caused, or accelerated? How are we going to gain back all the precious time we lost defending ourselves against it?

There was a bit of a stir last month on British social media when self-proclaimed communist commentator Ash Sarkar came out with criticism of identity politics. “Woke is dead” claimed woke ‘news’ site Joe, which sat down with Sarkar to discuss her new book. In the interview, she gives two examples of the self-immolating nuttiness of identity politics and claims, hilariously, “at no point did anyone say, get a grip.” Actually, millions of us said, ‘get a grip.’ And we said it for years — in many cases, at great personal cost. But Sarkar steadfastly refused to listen until one month ago. Nevertheless, her breathless acolytes in the left-wing ‘independent’ media nodded in unison. Woke is dead! Long live woke!

The review of her book in the Guardian explains: “Instead of uniting minorities and the proletariat into an ecumenical alliance of the oppressed, [Sarkar] says, the present-day left has pitted them against one another in an Olympics of victimhood.”

As we used to say in the ‘90’s, no shit, Sherlock.

Sarkar is micro-famous — that is, very well known among a small circle of very online people. They are mainly British lefties and progressives, as well as anti-woke media types who regularly hold her up as an example of how batshit the left is. The Independent described her as “the queen of woke."

So naturally, her calling time on the toxic discourse she did so much to spread generated a lot of online commentary. Hilariously, and likely for the first time, President Donald Trump is - sort of- in alignment with Sarkar. In his address to Congress on Tuesday, he announced: “Our country will be woke no longer.”

Obviously, the fight back against this evil set of ideas has had massive victories. The biggest one being Trump’s election. But is woke really dead?

First, let me define what I mean by woke. I mean both a worldview that is centred around a few key points: Donald Trump is literally Hitler and will destroy democracy; there is such a thing called ‘whiteness’ and every white person guilty and needs to atone by putting the demands of people of colour above their own survival and self-interest; human beings can change sex; and national borders are to be ignored by all the wretched of the earth who want to cross them. And also it is a set of tactics by which you emotionally torment your opponent with things like cancellation (ie, financial ruin) in order to consolidate power.

Being woke means you not only have to believe its views on race and gender as self-evident. You also have to studiously, strenuously, avoid confronting the reality that those beliefs are not just wrong, they are on the verge of of destroying civilisation.

This toxic worldview is so widely loathed among normal, common sense people that it — together with a terrible economy, partly brought about by woke-influenced policies — got Trump re-elected despite his being a felon, and his love-it-or-hate-it personal style.

But despite that monumental victory, woke is not dead.

Maybe it is — at best — on life support. Perhaps in the United States the cancerous cells spreading through the body politic have been neutralised, for example with deep cuts to ideologically captured bureaucracies.

But how much damage has been done in these last two decades? Not only to the brave souls who spoke out against woke and had their lives torn to shreds as people like Sarkar cheered and hooted, but also to the people who still believe in it. The people who have ingrained this worldview are, right now, are living in real fear. The other day I saw a post from an American expat. This person was genuinely afraid because his/her adult child identifies as trans and wants to travel back the US. The post was asking: will my “trans child be safe travelling to America?” Adding that they had heard stories of trans people ‘being stopped at the border.’ (Similarly, last summer during the mass media coverage of the UK riots, including some minor property damage in Belfast, a rich American living in a rich country village, posted something along the lines of — “I am an immigrant living in fear, I don’t feel safe going into Belfast.” Recently, an American told me stories of grown men hitting their head off a table in upset over a therapist not affirming their fear and loathing of Trump. Of course you can dismiss all of these people as just foolish narcissists — and perhaps they are. But that is not good enough. They are also casualties of a sophisticated information war that exploits, at scale, human vulnerabilities.

It’s definitely not dead — not even close. In the increasingly unhinged and irrelevant UK arts world and youth culture it still has the power to hurt people. Just a few weeks ago, the after party for the ARC conference had to be moved at the last minute because a small contingent of leftie kill-joys complained to the venue that it was hosting a ‘far-right’ gathering. One of the dee-jays was famed American gonzo journalist James O’Keefe. He was able to fly back to a more sane America. The British dee-jay involved, though, is being cancelled.

And although, interestingly, I know quite a few teens who are not woke. So it is likely to go extinct as the woketards enthusiastically continue to sterilise their young people and abort babies. Yet the pathetic spectacle of the Democratic lawmakers with their cringe signs, the Oscars shit-show, and the insanity of European policies are proof that the much of the elite-prestige bloc still remains deeply unwell.

That’s not even to touch on the structural damage that has been done in the past two decades, and is being accelerated here in the UK and Europe currently. The cultural stuff, while important, pales in comparison. The situation here in the UK comes into focus more with each passing week, and it is dire. It is impossible to read this shocking article by Matt Goodwin, about the demographics of public housing in England, and not feel a distinct sense of doom.

He writes:

In this neighbourhood in Leicester, more than 80% of people who are living in social housing were born outside the UK, of whom only around half (52%) are currently in work. According to the latest census, only 43% of people who live here were born in the UK, compared to an average in England of 83%. A larger number of people in this area were born in the Middle East or Asia (51%), than in the UK. Three-quarters of residents here are Muslim. Less than two-thirds of people identify as British or English. Close to one in three say they identify with a ‘non-UK identity only’. And more than four in ten live in households that contain no adults who speak English as their main language. This is one of the most striking places in the UK.

How is this profound shift in the social contract anything other than a disaster? And there is no real opposition here yet. The cavalry is definitely not going to be led by the utter disappointment that is Nigel Farage. The longer I live on the island of Ireland, the more fondness and respect I have for England. (I am a contrarian to my very soul, that much is clear.) Like Italy is for all of Christendom, England is the source code for all of the Anglosphere. It cannot be allowed to be destroyed. It contains all of our cultural DNA. Yet among the non-left commentariat, the possibility of a civil war is now openly discussed as a very possible outcome.

It is very convenient that the left wing independent media is now walking back their previous extremism. It is a cunning signal to their followers to go back to sleep: guys, we said sorry, so just chill. So we must never forget that Sarkar and the many, many media figures like her, all contributed to this toxicity, this collective derangement, that is bringing us to the brink.

Who is going to fix the problems that woke either caused, or accelerated? How are we going to gain back all the precious time we lost defending ourselves against ideologues like Sarkar as ‘not racist’ or not ‘far right,’ when we were simply defending the principle of national sovereignty?