The Waning of Woke?


Whilst in my younger years I was much more progressive in my political point of view, as often seems to be the trend (we can only hope for the same with Greta Thunberg!), But as I’ve grown older I must confess I have become more conservative in my thinking (in case you haven’t noticed).

My father was a fervent supporter of the Labor party and a loyal unionist. If you were a working class person in the 1950’s and 1960’s it seemed obvious that your interest were best served by such ideological alignment. He was convinced that capitalism existed by exploiting workers and the most abhorrent people were “bosses”.

This made life a little uncomfortable in family circles when I progressed quite early into management and managed my first enterprise at the ripe old age of twenty-six! Suddenly I was a boss!

But, in retrospect, my father’s tutelage helped me be a better manager.  Accordingly I tried to create workplaces that were good places to work. But as I got older I learnt that I must do more than that. I was brought in to turn a poor performing enterprise around. It took six years to do that properly and in the process I had to manage the traumatic process of downsizing the workforce.

So in the end it was obvious if an enterprise was to be sustainable it not only had to be a good place to work but it had to be productive. I never again wanted to see workers put off because their workplace was insufficiently productive. And that provided a template for a successful management career.

But I digress. In my father’s day, the prime interest of the left was to advance the welfare of the typical working man or woman and to provide support to their families. In those days Labor politicians were drawn from the ranks of workers and these political representatives had first-hand knowledge of the needs and aspirations of the working class.

Since those times the left has drastically changed its focus. If you look at the backgrounds of today’s Labor MP’s, there is virtually no direct connection with working Australians. Most have come to politics from the union movement, being employed by the party and working as (what are euphemistically called) political advisors or recruited from Labor aligned law firms. They have hardly done a day’s work in a traditional working environment. Unsurprisingly with this reflects a change in political focus of the left.

But this movement of the left away from concerns about the working class has been a broad phenomenon. In the second half of the twentieth century the aspirations of the left in most Western democracies changed markedly. They created, and embraced post-modernism. This was initiated by the promotion of Critical Theory that eventually resulted in identity politics and political correctness. It promoted an obsession with race and gender, an abhorrence of Western culture and traditions.

Along the way this dysfunctional movement began to question Western history and Western values. It tried to make us ashamed of our history, told us we w were besotted with white privilege and excoriated our colonial past.

Consequently the movement tried to convince us that our past was shameful, our ancestors were driven by motives of exploitation and white supremacy and that Western civilisation, in general, was not a triumph but a scourge.

In the wake of this, the left turned from supporting the working class as they had done in my father’s day and transferred their attention to the inner city elites who were obsessed with gender, race and the protection of minorities and the promotion of victimhood.

It is no doubt easy to find things in the history of the West that should be regretted, but it is hard to see other civilisations that have provided such benefits. But slowly, over the decades, this assault on the West began to erode our self-confidence, tempered our sense of patriotism and national pride, replacing it with a sense of guilt and confusion about our traditional values.

As Tom Switzer from the Centre of Independent Studies, recently wrote:

For more than a decade progressives shaped Western public discourse and institutionalised a far left agenda with its guilt about Western cultural heritage, its obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion and its penchant for cancelling unfashionable (conservative, classical, liberal) opinions. As with all identity politics the objective was to make the majority feel ashamed of itself.

The British author, Douglas Murray has been an articulate voice, warning us of this retrograde influence on Western culture for some years. His seminal books, The Strange Death of Europe and The Madness of Crowds have outlined the demise of Western culture and highlighted the perverse effects of the woke obsession with gender, race and identity politics.

Murray also highlighted how the tolerance of European countries has been taken advantage of by allowing European countries to be flooded with Muslim migrants whose basic beliefs are antithetical to accepted Western values.

We are now seeing some manifestations of the same problem in Australia with our escalating anti-Semitism. Of course many of our Muslim immigrants have integrated well into Australian society and have not threatened our peaceful way of life. But it does highlight the necessity of properly vetting prospective migrants to ensure they don’t threaten our treasured culture and values. The Albanese’s government determination to resettle refugees from Gaza without proper vetting was a concern in this regard.

Fundamentalist Islam with its desire to entrench Sharia law is a threat to our basic freedoms.  No matter how much we might want to embrace immigrants that are suffering in their own countries, we cannot allow those people to bring their prejudices, hatred and millennial old religious intolerances to disrupt our society. We can’t resolve the injustices of the world by providing a platform for such people to propagate their hateful prejudices in our country.

At the same time as the erosion of traditional values was occurring, the West was also caught up in a wave of extreme environmentalism. The climate change cult swamped all reasonable efforts to continue economic growth and raise our standard of living. In particular it demonised the use of fossil fuels, on which we had relied on for a century or more to provide reliable and competitive priced energy. Any rational analysis of human progress will point to the pivotal role that the availability of cheap energy has provided.

But now we are beginning to see signs of a conservative revival. In 2023 there was evidence of a progressive reversal.

To begin with we saw the ousting of Jacinda Ardern. Ardern, when elected, had been New Zealand’s youngest prime minister for 100 years. She was lionised by leftist elites around the world. But whilst being held up as an exemplar of “wokeness” internationally, eventually she ran out of favour with domestic voters. In the 2017 election Ardern failed to win an outright majority for Labour and was forced to enter into a minority government propped up by Winston Peters from the New Zealand First Party.

During the Covid epidemic New Zealand took an extreme position of trying to ensure that there was zero incidence of Covid. This draconian response followed by a rapid deterioration in the New Zealand economy forced Ardern to resign in January 2023. Her government was replaced by a conservative government.

In 2023 we also saw the Voice referendum in Australia fail. This came as a surprise to the left. Because of their intimidatory use of political correctness and cancel culture, the left had immersed themselves in an echo chamber that refused to consider that ordinary Australians might not be so keen to ensconce in our constitution a provision that would favour one race over all others.

It seems to me there is an inherent conservatism in ordinary Australians that Labor would like to ignore but Peter Dutton is bound to exploit.

In Great Britain, labour ousted a weak conservative government and installed an ineffectual new prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer. Rather than being a triumph for Labour, within weeks of Starmer’s installation as prime minister, Britons began to rue their choice. The popularity of Starmer’s government has plunged in the polls. Britain, like most of Europe, is plagued with immigration issues. A recent report suggests that one in twelve of people living in London are illegal immigrants. As well more than 60% of sexual crimes in Britain are committed by immigrants. As Douglas Murray forecast, untrammelled immigration is changing European culture (including British culture) for the worse. Nigel Farage, who had previously led the push for Brexit is now the leader of the conservative Reform UK party which is rapidly gaining political support and will no doubt have a decisive role to play in the next election.

In Canada, another darling of the left, Justin Trudeau has fallen on his sword after being mocked by incoming US President Donald Trump.

In Germany a government aligned with renewable energy zealotry and which has resulted in job losses and energy insecurity, collapsed. Here again was another victim of “wokeness”.

It seems then there is at last a resurgence of conservatism in the West.

Around the Western world there has been a growing tendency for banks to refuse credit to perfectly legal industries on environmental, social and governance grounds. In effect this has allowed corporate Australia to be hi-jacked by tiny minorities of influential progressive activists. As a result of this perversity, legitimate business opportunities in fossil fuels, forestry and salmon farming for example, struggle to get funds for development. If businesses meet the stringent criteria the government demands, then surely it is not the role of banks to impose further restrictions limiting the development of such industries.

As Janet Albrechtsen writes:

    the real problem here is that the banks are effectively acting as the agents of unelected political activists who wish to impose their judgments on society

But around the world banks are withdrawing from their ostracisation of projects that don’t meet environmental and DEI criteria. It can’t be long before Australian banks follow suit.

Then of course, the great disrupter, Donald Trump has burst back on the scene. Immediately after his inauguration Trump took action to:

  • Withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord,
  • Cease funding the UN’s World Health Organisation,
  • Ensure that all government employment was done on the basis of merit and not to meet diversity targets,
  • Change the law so that only two genders were recognised viz male and female and to prevent those identifying as transgender from being employed in the Armed Services.
  • Call a state of emergency to deal with illegal immigrants crossing the southern border,
  • Call a state of emergency with respect to energy to cease government support for renewable energy programs and to promote the development of oil and gas.

Now that the US has withdrawn from the Paris Accord and bearing in mind that the other major emitters such as China, India Russia and Indonesia are essentially not playing in the emissions reduction game, it is hard to believe that other countries, including Australia can continue to pursue emission reduction targets with any credibility that they can influence climate change.

None of these international changes seem to have dented Albanese government’s determination to pursue its “woke” ideals.

The Climate and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, has vowed to continue his futile efforts to have Australia impact on climate change. This is despite the fact that none of the signatories to the Paris Climate Accord have come anywhere near meeting their avowed targets!

In the US, in anticipation of Trump’s reversal of climate policy, six of the largest banks, Citigroup. Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo have announced they were withdrawing from the UN sponsored Net-Zero Banking Alliance. In addition Black Rock announced it was pulling out of a similar UN sponsored fund, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative.

Such changes will inevitably reduce the capital flow to renewables projects and free up finance for more traditional power projects.

In Australia the Coalition is preparing a policy to stop banks from refusing credit on the basis of environmental and governance grounds. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, criticised the banks for refusing to lend money to a family owned Tasmanian forestry business with a long successful track record on ESG grounds.

According to journalist Janet Albrechtson:

Dutton’s point is that if banks refuse to lend on political rather than credit grounds, they are effectively usurping the role of politicians. If Australia’s elected politicians determine that an industry is fit to carry on business then banks – in business only because the government has given them a banking licence- should not be second guessing the government’s political judgment.

At a recent press conference Trump said it was his hope that not a single further wind turbine would be erected in the USA!

Writing in The Australian recently, Nick Cater from the Menzies Research Centre opined:

Sooner or later, Australia will have to confront the new realities of the climate debate and recognise that a transition to a net-zero economy cannot conceivably be achieved in the next 25 years and probably not in the next 50!

But now we are seeing strong signs that conservatives are beginning to rally behind an anti-woke agenda. Peter Dutton, to his credit, has declared that if elected prime minister he will only appear before one flag – the Australian flag! Prime Minister Albanese habitually appears in front of an indigenous flag, a Torres Strait Islander flag as well as the Australian flag. Dutton also says he will consider legislating to ensure Australia Day will only be held on 26 January.

As I write Australia Day is being celebrated. Predictably a motley coalition of pro-Palestine supporters and indigenous activists are protesting our celebration of Australia’s national day. To listen to some of the press reports from the usual anti-conservative sources, you would think this is a growing ground swell of the population to change or, even worse, to abolish Australia Day. But it is not. Latest polls suggest that 69% of Australians are happy to celebrate our national day on January 26. Press reports suggest that the anti-Australia Day rallies attracted far less support this year than previously.

The anti- Australia Day movement is a phenomenon similar to the voice referendum. It seemed then that the pro-voice supporters were in a majority just because their voices were shriller and more reported, when in fact a substantial majority of ordinary Australians whose voices were seldom reported took a far more conservative view. I am sure this is also the case with Australia Day with by far the majority of ordinary voters happy with the status quo.

Now I am not greatly enamoured of Donald Trump. He has character flaws that are not fitting for the dignity of the high office he has succeeded to. But I must admit that I will forgive his braggadocio and other failings if he succeeds in returning the world to more conservative ideals. And so far he has begun his term as president like a bombshell!

Brendan O’Neill, chief political writer for Spiked, put it this way:

It was not just the replacement of one president for another. Not just a right-leaning party pushing out a left-leaning one. Not just a switcheroo in vibes.

It was the ruthless dismantling of the entire ideology of the old ruling class. One by one, Trump consigned the tenets of the woke religion we have all laboured under for years – to the trashcan of history.

And further:

In torching these ideas, in submitting them to the flames of reason, Trump hasn’t only turned the screws on the Biden administration – he has turned the screws on the entire cultural establishment of the 21st-century West.

I can only hope that Peter Dutton might take some courage from this and promote an anti-woke agenda at our next federal election. He has promised some such changes as I related above, but I am sure he would profit if he went further. I wouldn’t be surprised that if he prosecuted this vigorously enough he could make history by ousting a first term pathetic government that seems to have no great ambitions other than to flounder in its handling of the Australian economy, placate the union movement, cowardly withdraw support from Israel and concentrate on woke issues that the average Australian has little interest in.

Dutton must understand that the biggest obstacle to achieving such change will be the bureaucracies who are inherently left-leaning. Both Tony Abbott and former UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss, have conceded that the biggest obstacle to their desired reforms was the government bureaucracy. Trump has been emphatic about changing his administration to ensure he conquers the woke ideology. Dutton might also need to be ruthless in ensuring that the administration delivered the required anti-woke changes!

Who knows, with a little bit of resolve from Peter Dutton we might even get to take Australia back from the perversity of the woke ideologues!

6 Replies to “The Waning of Woke?”

  1. Again – thanks Ted. Of course, I am in agreement with all you have written, even having had a dad who was a staunch Labor man in all the years I knew him. And he half-jokingly used to have a go at me for my ‘capitalist’ leanings…….”don’t know where you got that from girl!” I feel a bit excited at the prospect of what might be possible with the coming election. Hopefully, Dutton might be leaving his most hefty push for the later parts of the campaign, i.e. the riskier stuff of Trump.
    I can’t add further to your written piece, but ask if you have read Cynical Theories by academics Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, a 2020 publication, wherein they do a terrific job of highlighting how the universities were harming us all with their focus on Race, Gender and Identity- and how the unchecked proliferation of these beliefs present a threat to liberal democracy. Woo hoo……. we’ve finally arrived at the pushback.!

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