Democracy, Tolerance And Reason: Has ‘Woke’ Defeated Them All?
Should Society Be Wary Of The Rampant ‘Wokeism’ Of Our Dangerously Progressive Society?
H. A. G. Longstaff
THE WARRIORS OF WOKE wage their campaigns of ‘tolerance’ using the weapons of cancellation and contempt to silence their critics. Their aim is to impose on the rest of us an ideology to which, in fact, only a narrow band of elites subscribe, who purport to speak for the oppressed and disadvantaged everywhere. It should be deeply concerning to us, whose beleaguered Christian ethos is being continuously threatened. Across the globe a vicious wave of leftist activism has threatened the status quo, bringing to the spotlight; trans-rights, gender identity and racism. Although sometimes effective in tackling issues plaguing modern-day society, wokeism has now gone too far. Now, wokeism has become counterproductive. Many shrug off their cries for change as simply cries for attention.
What was once a movement that aimed to achieve real headway in societal change, the woke movement has become too radical for the majority of moderate society. Woke movements in the past have driven the most significant societal shifts in modern history, such as the fight for Civil Rights in America during the 1960s and the Women’s Suffrage movement of the early 1900s. These movements were real and conscious efforts to alter a deeply misguided society and should be rightfully studied and respected. Modern wokeism has an inability to be receptive to differing perspectives. Currently, the emphasis on maximising people’s feelings of acceptance has outweighed all forms of judgment and reason. Now the highly regarded J.K Rowling has been accused of “killing trans people with her hate” (Twitter) after simply liking (not writing herself, yes, just liking) a tweet stating a simple fact of human anatomy “male people are not women”. The absurdity of someone receiving such brutal exclamations of hate for expressing such her personal viewpoint is the epitome of the impotence of ‘wokeism’. The woke of the past would be ashamed of the woke of today.
It is rather concerning to notice the intolerance of the so-called woke to opinions that don’t align with their own. The woke movement characterises themselves as progressive and the most receptive and supportive to new, alternative ideas, except for when that opinion doesn’t align with their political agendas.
The woke movement can be unequivocally boiled down to beggarly bids for attention. “The woke, in majority, are not activists based on principle, but on public image and external validation” (The Falmouth Anchor). People now use the once commended term of activist as a guise to mask their insecurities and flaws, as their peers further pursue more radical forms of “advocacy”, they too seek to be more flamboyant in their approach in order to fulfil their feeble need for recognition. It reflects a slow-burning degradation of society where individuals have been deprived of genuine connections, relationships and recognition from the emergence of technology and destructive social media, that they need to resort to such radical actions to receive a minute form of temporary self-validation. In which they convince themselves they are combatting real issues just for their attempts to make no real changes to the society they attempt to dismantle.
No ingrained and divisive problem can be solved with only one side listening. It takes a dialectic with both sides, it takes logic, it takes reason. For the woke movement to be effective in positively changing the problems that trouble our society, they need to be able to appeal to all of society. There will need to be an exchange of their extremist grabs for attention with a moderate, intelligent approach to catalyse societal change.