I have written in previous essays of how wokeness has permeated the fabric of Western democracies. In many ways it has impacted on our sense of self with its promotion of identity politics and its denigration of our history and traditional culture.

Consequently we are encouraged by the left to view ourselves very differently to the way we have in the past. The insidious impact (and largely the intent) of the spread of wokedom has been to make us feel guilty and ashamed. The trashing of our history is designed to make us feel ashamed of our British heritage and the colonisation of this country and (for the majority of us) ashamed of our so-called “white privilege”.

As a consequence of this we have ignorant disciples of this erroneous view of our history tearing down the symbols of our past like statues of James Cook and other illustrious members of our historical heritage. These misguided people seem to believe that Australia’s colonisation was a particularly heinous part of history and as a result Australia’s indigenous peoples were particularly persecuted and maligned.

Unfortunately, in general, the proponents of wokedom have little real appreciation of history. What’s more they tend to judge our predecessors who lived in a far different age by the moral standards of today.

This is a surprising thing for those of us interested in history and human progress. The left have championed the notion of cultural relativism which posits that concepts and moral values must be understood in their own cultural context and not judged according to the standards of a different culture. I would argue that British culture in the eighteenth century is different from British culture of the twenty first century and if the left were to be consistent they should acknowledge that difference and therefore not judge our British heritage through the lens of postmodernism..

But proponents of cultural relativism believe that we cannot make absolute judgments about culture and therefore we must not conclude that any one culture is better than any other. But again the left ignore this when it suits them and are not shy in arguing that modern Western cultures are particularly egregious and are based on the “white” exploitation of indigenous peoples.

Interestingly under this abhorrent white colonialist umbrella they also include Israel notwithstanding that whites are minority grouping in Israel. You also have to hold a particularly perverse view of history to argue the Israelis are colonisers. Through these dubious ruses they justify their pro-Palestine and anti-Israel stances.

Nevertheless, the woke left have succeeded in  imposing their woke strictures on most of us and people don’t protest because they know opposition to their diktats inevitably ends in opprobrium and being shamed as racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or whatever.

The woke penchant for shutting down debate (culminating in “cancel culture”) has succeeded in silencing the public protests of many of its critics. This has given the impression that “wokeness” is more prevalent than it actually is. Many people play along with the game for fear of public humiliation and censure.

The strictures of wokedom are widely evident in our press, government bureaucracies, schools and universities. The overt display of these principles which go largely unchallenged creates the illusion that they are well supported. It is my belief that, in fact, they are not well supported at all.

When put to the test, as in the voice referendum, it is clear that when ordinary people can anonymously vote (and thus be free of personal reprisals) the general public doesn’t support the woke orthodoxy. They don’t support it but are afraid of publicly opposing it because they don’t want to be vilified by the left.

I would confidently assert that if the public could anonymously vote on such issues as transgender rights, the pursuit of net zero by 2050 or the support of indigenous “welcome to country” ceremonies they would again demonstrate their opposition to woke ideals.

But it would be wrong to believe that these dysfunctional views have not had an impact on ordinary Australia. One of the ambitions of the woke proponents is to denigrate Australia’s history and to make us feel ashamed of our country. In this they have been largely successful.

They have argued that the British settlement of Australia through colonisation has somehow rendered our nation illegitimate. This is of course despite the fact that the modern face of many countries has evolved from colonisation.

They have also argued that the European settlers were obsessed with performing atrocities against the indigenous peoples and even seeking their extinction. Even though we can’t deny that atrocities were performed by both the so-called invaders and by the indigenous people as well, in general indigenous people were treated fairly and often sympathetically. Again we should mindful of the temporal cultural relativism I referred to above.

This debate is clouded by the assumption of many indigenous apologists that somehow Australia prior to European settlement was some sort of Rousseau imagined paradise of “noble savages”. This is far from the truth. Apart from a few bountiful areas of our coastline and a handful of riverine sites indigenous people struggled for survival in this barren land.

Whilst many indigenous activists exalt indigenous culture as something wonderful and deserving of an almost religious fervour, the true marvel of indigenous culture is not in its spiritual significance but in the fact it facilitateded survival in a very hostile environment. Now whilst indigenous apologists might want to promote how wonderful indigenous culture was, we should also acknowledge that survival in this hostile land sometimes also relied on geronticide and infanticide.

But we also overlook the fact that however the indigenous activists might want to portray it, in many ways colonisation was a unifying influence.

If you look objectively at our history there was no “Australia” before colonisation. Indeed no matter how idealistically we might refer to “First Nations” there were no aggregations of peoples we could reasonably refer to as “nations” or even “states”. The indigenous population comprised of diverse tribes with different languages, cultures and belief systems.

As much as the activists on the left would have us believe otherwise, it took colonisation to unite us all as one citizenry. That is of course not to deny that there were not tragedies and injustices along the way. But, largely ignored by the “black arm band” historians, there was also considerable human progress and indeed some triumphs as well.

But the colonisation of Australia, much as the left like to rail against it, was not such a unique historical development.

Since the first recorded history of the world, colonisation has been ubiquitous around the globe. European colonisation peaked in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with European countries gaining footholds in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Indonesia and elsewhere, and was a rather late example of this phenomenon.

European colonisation followed hot on the heels of European discoveries of other lands remote from the European continent, led initially by Portugal Spain and Holland, soon followed by the English, Germans and the French. Indeed the Dutch discovery of Australia (which they named unimaginatively New Holland) preceded the English discovery by a couple of centuries. The motivations for such colonisation were mixed. It was sometimes a way to enhance the wealth of the coloniser, sometimes a defensive strategy to shore up defences against enemies and occasionally an aggressive tool for Christian evangelism.

In the wake of colonisation, Australia soon adopted a liberal democracy modelled on the Westminster style of government accompanied by market capitalism. Now while the left may argue against it, if they put aside their cultural relativism notions, history suggests this has been the most successful form of government ever adopted in terms of the freedoms it offers and the opportunity for individual personal and economic advancement. All of us, including indigenous people, are beneficiaries of this development. (The only possible exceptions may be those who have embraced the folly of indigenous separatism promoted by the idealistic “Nugget” Coombs.)

The inspirational Jacinta Price explained the main impediment to indigenous advancement in a recent article. She wrote:

We are all entitled to the dignity of being treated as individuals who can make choices and have responsibilities. Unfortunately this is not how the left see it. The left seek to divide us by pigeonholing society into two classes: the oppressors and the oppressed. They have carefully manufactured gender stereotypes for men and women while simultaneously generating brand-new gender constructs. They have also developed racial stereotypes enshrined within Critical Race Theory, to condemn the “white race” as oppressors, and subjugate “people of colour” as victims. If I was to follow leftist dogma and regard myself as nothing more than an oppressed Aboriginal woman, I would be wallowing in my victimhood and rationalising the notion that I am inferior to my oppressors. According to that dogma I have no agency in my life and no ability to make choices. This is dogma we must reject, for many reasons, not the least because it is patronising and deeply dehumanising.

We have grown up with the thoughts of Martin Luther King etched in our minds when he said:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

Yet the woke left demand that we must consider anyone who is not white as a victim!

But despite what Jacinta Price or Martin Luther King might say all the activists want to portray Australia, despite its racial tolerance, as somehow undeserving of its sovereign identity. This sense of illegitimacy as a nation and this shame about our history has consequences.

One such consequence is the ensuing lack of national pride makes our young people take our way of life for granted. Polls have shown for example that young people don’t believe that democracy is the best form of government.  What’s more, even as I write, the results from another poll has been published which shows our teenagers are so ignorant of civics they have little understanding how democracy works!  As a result of these influences that seek to denigrate our past and our traditions the ADF are finding it difficult to recruit young people with the desire to defend Australia.

It is not surprising that our youth, who have been inculcated with this woke indoctrination that Australia is an illegitimate, shameful country, might be unwilling to defend it. Now I am not one to promote jingoistic nationalism, but I am convinced we should be grateful to be Australian and not be ashamed of our nationality or our heritage.

Furthermore the woke activists seem to have a particular disdain for Christianity. That is no doubt because not only was Australia traditionally of British heritage but also of a largely Christian heritage. Consequently not only should our British heritage be demeaned our Christian heritage must be trashed as well.

Now, as you would know from previous blogs, I am not Christian but I am willing to concede that our Christian heritage has been beneficial to our national development. It seems to me that it is no accident that the liberal democracies around the world have largely emanated in Christian countries.

Christianity seems to have driven Western progress which was spurred initially by the Reformation, leading to the Renaissance and which led to the Age of Reason which provided the platform for our scientific and philosophical advancement.

(But we should also acknowledge that at various times Christianity also put a handbrake on advancement. The sad history of the Catholic Church’s silencing of Galileo is a case in point!)

The Rabbinic scholar Jonathan Sacks pointed out:

The test of faith is whether I can make space for difference. Can I recognize God’s image in someone who is not in my image, whose language, faith, ideals are different from mine? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake me in His. Can we create a paradigm shift through which we come to recognize that we are enlarged, not diminished, by the 6,000 languages that exist today, each with its unique sensibilities, art forms and literary expressions?

The underlying truth here is obvious even if you are not religious.

Most of those who adhere to the Abrahamic religions, (i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam), have come to the same realisation as Sacks, with one notable exception – fundamentalist Islamists. These radical Muslims allow no other belief than their own medieval concept of Allah (God) and are prepared to punish unbelievers with death and are happy to take whatever action necessary to coerce others to conform to their misogynistic, illiberal ideals. And of course they have a particular hatred of Jews.

The propagation of this historical Islamist hatred of the Jews has been aided and abetted by the woke notions of the left. Despite the long term history of the Jews in the Middle East, as we saw above they perceive Israel as one of the white colonialist powers that are oppressors who have exploited and suppressed indigenous Muslims – this despite the fact that Israel has created a liberal democracy where all its citizens both Muslims and Jews are treated equally under the law.

As Brendan O’Neill has written:

The truth about the left’s treachery towards the Jews is that it is not a glitch. It is not an oversight.  It is not just a failure among “anti-racists” to be consistent and face down all forms of hatred including Jew hatred, No, the progressive blind spot on anti-Semitism is actually in keeping with the left’s identitarian worldview. There is an ideological underpinning to their shameful moral neglect of the Jews.

Hence the left’s obsession with colonialism and white privilege has resulted in it providing support for the strident Jew-hating polemic of the radical Islamists!

So in both direct and indirect ways wokedom has deleterious effects on our liberal democracy.

As I have said before, I am not enamoured with Donald Trump but I am appreciative of the fact that he has stood up to be countered in countering wokedom. I can only hope his example might embolden Australian conservatives to follow suit.

Scott Morrison once said he was not prepared to fight the “culture wars” because that wouldn’t create a single job in Australia. But I would argue that we need to fight the culture wars if we are to deliver an Australia that ordinary Australians would want to live in. Consequently I think it is time to stand up to the left and demolish wokeness.