The Coming Woke Catastrophe

A Critical Examination of Woke Culture

Chris Heitzman

• Publisher: Academica Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781680532753
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Woke culture sells itself as the great progressive awakening of our time. Its proponents and followers believe that wokism is spreading love, defeating hate, and creating a better world without oppression of any kind. Those who refuse to subscribe to woke culture are dismissed as hateful people who must stand for the opposite of what woke culture stands for. Increasingly, anyone who questions the woke message is shouted down, de-platformed, and even cancelled. No wonder people are increasingly queuing up to be seen as woke, and to adopt its language. Who would stand against more love and less hate? And who would want to be cancelled? But beyond the superficial message, is there something less attractive about woke thinking?  The Coming Woke Catastrophe   is a timely exposé of what woke culture really is. It examines whether wokeism aligns with its own superficially attractive labels, or whether it is something rather darker that we all ought to be challenging rather than mindlessly adopting.

1Introduction: the world according to the woke

I trained as a lawyer and in studies and in practice I always followed the facts and evidence, considered and debated, in order to reach informed, tested and reliable conclusions. That is what the Courts do in their bid to achieve justice: the documentary evidence is made available, the witnesses are heard, and tested in cross examination, and every party has the opportunity to have their say. Democratic Parliaments are supposed to do the same: debate is had, every opinion is heard, everyone gets their say, and hopefully most of the time more reliable laws and policies are the result. It is what has set the free democratic West apart for so long: an enquiring mind, freedom of speech, and informed opinion and decision-making. What I have found myself observing recently is the emergence of an ideology we all colloquially call woke which is a challenge to all that. It represents a failure of reason – the power of the mind to think, understand and reach logical conclusions. It takes a utopian view of the world – one where division, inequality, unfairness, and other such ills do not even exist – rather than seeing the world as it is. It is more interested in labels than substance, and takes a simplistic view of the world and issues. Its principal narrative is the battle between ‘love’ and ‘hate,’ and everything is often labelled as one thing or the other. It dis-likes and avoids debate because debate detracts from the simplicity of the imagined struggle, and is un-utopian. It labels as ‘hate’ anything un-utopian and seeks interest groups or people to blame for the prevention of that utopian state of affairs, and pursues them vigorously and in unattractive ways such as seeking to having them ‘cancelled’ – de-platformed or silenced – in a bid to end free-speech and give rise in Western society to the ideology’s woke world view without dissenting voice.

That is how I first came to woke ideology, or culture: as a trained critical thinker, seeing something totally different emerge. Politicians and political commentators may have already clashed with woke ideology where it may have been at odds with certain political issues. I am less concerned with the politics of the woke and more concerned about the risks the ideology poses to freedom of speech, reason, our ability to properly debate and interact with each other, sound decision-making, and all of the ills that follow from a breakdown of those things.

But how would woke ideology introduce itself? Society is undergoing an awakening, the woke movement would have us believe. For generations before woke culture, so we are told, humanity was asleep to its ideals. We were living in the dark ages. Hate ruled over love and hope. The new ideology of the woke is a whole new way of thinking and behaving. Like the birth of a new utopian world. Hate, unfairness, discrimination, and an imperfect world are being slowly cast aside as we undergo the great awakening in which love and hope win instead. The woke message of love-not-hate is changing everything for the better, but it is not yet a battle entirely won. We must continue the fight, to supplant hate with hope! That is increasingly the accepted narrative of the woke element of Western societies in 2021. It is not hyperbole to say that a cultural revolution is going on.

Woke culture is taking over every aspect of life and society. Everything and everyone is labelled as either ‘love’ or ‘hope’ on the one hand, or ‘hate’ on the other. And the mob cult followers are out with the placards. They are marching down your high street. It’s on the front page. And leading on the TV news. Hash tag love-not-hate! Down with the haters! Spread love! It is a cult that has captured many and to which many more are subscribing all the time. It was even the theme of the two most recent US Presidential campaigns. Prince Harry recently said we are in a “global crisis of hate.” Hate must be erased. We must all have more love.

You might have already succumbed to it, for all of its superficial attractiveness (yes, more love sounds better than more hate), or you might have just seen it in the news and be curious. Either way, the time is right for an assessment of the new cult of love-not-hate that is trying to take over every aspect of society and our lives.

It is not a political party. It was not elected on a manifesto. But it is seeking and gaining new subscribers every day and it is spreading through society by word of mouth and action. It is perhaps the biggest unelected movement in modern history. And it infects society’s approach to anything and everything.

No serious examination of the ‘woke’ trend has yet taken place, and its effects have not been questioned. Yet like an unstoppable rollercoaster it daily gains pace. It might be noisy, but it has crept up on us fast, and so far largely unchallenged.

An analysis is now timely, and urgent. This book examines (for those not yet entirely familiar with the cult) what it means, how it happened, and why it is one of the biggest issues modern society is facing.

What is woke culture? In the course of writing this book and talking about its topic, I discovered that few people are able to attempt a definition of it. Anyone can be forgiven for struggling for a definition because the language of the woke is deliberately vague. Since it doesn’t really want you to see what it is really all about. After all, who stands for hate rather than hope, either now or generations before? Is its message of love and hope not a trite one? It wants to suck you in with its superficially unchallengeable labels and language, so as to be unquestioned and unopposed. By saying ‘we stand for love and hope not hate’ the cult gives itself the status of being unchallengeable, because who would go against that. But wanting love and not hate is nothing new or surprising. The woke cult labels itself as something radically new, and there is no doubt that it is. We need to scratch beneath the simple labels it uses in order to find out what its radical truth is. I would attempt the following definition:

• A utopian view of the world, rather than seeing the world as it is.
• A strongly moralising ideology which over-simplifies the world and arguments and conflates issues or topics with the people involved, so that for example woke culture would say anyone advocating that the government of a country should have the power to control the levels of immigration into that country is a hater of would-be migrants, or that anyone advocating the need for improvement to the NHS is criticising hard-working nurses.
• A zero-sum view of the world, ie, someone’s gain must always be someone else’s loss. Woke culture encourages everyone to identify with a particular identity group – female, minority race, or whatever – and sets those groups against others. This gives rise to tribalism, division, victim-culture and blame-game.
• An idea that it is discriminatory (and not to be done) to draw any comparisons between anything or anyone, or prefer one thing over another, as if by ceasing any expression of comparisons we will erase discrimination from the human mind and the planet.
• A total rejection of debate, analysis and reason. The utopian ideology must not be questioned, debated, and it does not need to answer for itself. It does not wish to be debated.
• A denial of objective truth, so that there is instead only ‘lived experience,’ ie, ‘truth’ from an individual perspective. What the cult followers see as their truth is the truth: the truth is no longer something objective to be discovered through rational thought, evidence and debate.
• The utopian ideal is a dogmatic ideology which its followers buy into, repeat and apply to the world. The ideology must not be questioned. Anyone who tries to disagree with or question the ideology is rejected as both an idiot who lacks the intelligence to ‘get it’ and attacked with negative labels and there may even be calls for that person or organisation to be ‘cancelled,’ ‘deplatformed’ or sacked and ostracised by society.
• An almost religious zealousness and fanaticism in the belief and spreading of the ideology, perhaps to (i) make up in noise for its feebleness in substance, and (ii) to try to embed it in as many institutions and societies as possible before the majority of people see it coming, have chance to analyse it, see it for what it is and reject it.

Woke thinking is the increasingly dominant outlook among young people, by which I mean millennials born in the 1980s and later generations. It is not exclusively the preserve of the young, and some older people buy into it as well. It is also dominant among the ‘intelligent’ classes of the media, popular culture and the education sectors.

Am I just another old white middle-aged Establishment-loving OxBridge man trying to bury progress? Definitely not. Let’s bury that idea right at the start. I was born in a working-class English Midlands town in its declining era after the end of the industrial revolution. I was State educated at a comprehensive school. I am myself a millennial by era of birth. I was lucky enough to be the first-generation of my family to study at university, before tuition fees increased to anything like the level they are today, and worked my way up in the legal profession from a trainee at a small high street firm in a working-class town, to a senior lawyer in major national and international firms. From as young as primary school age, I had classmates and friends from first-generation immigrant families. I am now a member of the intelligent professional class. As an employer, I have employed more women and minority ethnic groups than is the average in law, or in the workplace generally. My partner is an immigrant, having been born in another country and moved here in adulthood. Nor am I an advocate of the status quo or a stuffy opponent of change. On the contrary, I am no advocate of the status quo and, as anyone who knows me will firmly agree, I am passionate about progress, and about making anything and everything better. Irritatingly so, at times. My credentials identify me as someone who, on paper, should be woke. So, why am I not?

I will argue that far from being ‘woke,’ the woke are asleep. And far from being the spreaders of love, they are doing things the consequences of which are more likely to look like hatred of society. The woke cult has hijacked for its own message the labels of love and hope and awakening, but if we haven’t yet completely lost our skills of analysis and reason, we must look behind the labels to check if they accurately describe the reality. I’m sure Adolf Hitler also thought his ends and methods were ones of love, hope, and a new awakening. We have lost our collective intelligence and reason if we don’t examine whether the labels were right, either then or now.

If woke culture is about equality and love, must a questioning of it inevitably be discrimination and hate? Is this just a book in favour of racism, sexism and discrimination against the woke and preferable ideals of love and hope? Definitely not. That misses the point entirely. I am certainly not racist, sexist, or any such thing. The point goes to the very heart of what this book is about. We are cultured to believe the woke message that love and hope is the way, and that anyone who questions the woke message must be full of hate, and a racist, sexist bigot. That is how woke culture has and continues to gain popularity. Superficially, why would anyone reject love and hope? Superficially, the attraction of being woke is irresistible. Why would you stand against it unless you were just full of hatred, and a sexist racist pig? It is this very idea that you are either woke or full of hatred or discrimination that I want to challenge. And I want to challenge whether woke culture really stands for what it says it does (love and hope) or instead whether it is in reality the very opposite. Woke culture, I will say, is like a classic Shakespearean villain, smiling and saying the right words, but with a dark evil lurking behind the veneer. It stands for, in truth, the opposite of the good things like love and hope, and if we genuinely want to pursue those things we need to reject woke culture. We are falling for woke culture like the hero who allows the villain to manipulate and poison his mind with evil intent dressed up in the cloak of love. I am asking the intelligent reader to consider whether love and hope are best achieved through wokeness, or whether woke ideology is actually destroying love and hope.

Is this a big deal, and does it matter? It is an enormous deal. It is, I would say, one of the single biggest issues of our time, but possibly the least discussed. Woke ideology is applied to everything in personal life, work life and society as a whole. It is not a single issue. It is a question of the way we approach everything in life. It is a big deal because it is an entire departure from the way the free western world has operated for generations, which is grounded in freedom of speech, and reaching conclusions through debate, consideration and reason, rather than an unquestioning belief in a fixed ideology. That is an enormous shift and deserves discussion.

You might think oh it’s just a bit of fun and a new generation playing with labels, just as anyone has in different ways in the past. But before dismissing the hazard as merely playful or insignificant we should consider its real agenda, and its impact on society. Alternatively, you might think this is all a bit trivial: just kids playing with words and expression? By the conclusion of this book, you may be more wary of ignoring or letting the trend expand unchecked.

2Woke language: the new definitions of love and hate

Woke culture speaks the language of love and hate. Traditionally, love and hate were classically defined in the manner we can still just about remember. Love meant an intense feeling of deep affection. To love society and one’s fellow man meant to want it to be the best it can, and to steer it through or around adversity. To improve it. To nurture it. In the way a parent might have brought up a child a generation or two ago. One might work hard on improving performance in any subject the child struggles with. Bad behaviour might have been discouraged on the basis it would have adverse effects in adulthood if uncorrected. Today’s love-not-hate parenting style might however take a very different direction. All behaviour, and all performance, should be hashtag loved. Down with the haters! My child is naughty and failing in school but, hey, embrace the love. Only a hateful parent would impose boundaries and, like, totally put limits on their creativity and development. Love has become a sort of entitlement to do as one pleases, to not be questioned, and to live a utopian existence by ones own definition without boundaries.

Hate was a feeling of intense dislike. You might hate the taste of sprouts. We all had our loves and hates. No problem there. It was part of what makes us unique individuals. Disliking something didn’t necessarily make you some toxic individual to be outed as a ‘hater,’ a discriminatory person to be locked away from polite society. But that is what hate has come to mean in woke ideology: any question or restraint operating on the woke utopian ideal. It is perhaps not stretching reality too far into the near future to imagine woke culture marching against ‘sprout hate’ on Christmas Eve. Sprouts might taste like an old sock, they might have the texture of toilet rolls, but they are vegetables like any other and they deserve our love! We must punish the sprout ‘haters’ and ‘cancel’ any public figure cruelly mocking the unloved vegetable.

You might love and hate something at the same time. You might have once spoken about your job in such a way. I love meeting clients and helping them in my job. But I hate the administration and form filling. We’d have a little moan over lunch about the pesky paperwork, wouldn’t we, and in a way that brought us together. Our hates can be innocent and can even unite us.

Increasingly, however, love and hate are being defined by a dangerously narrow and superficial juxtaposition to each other. Hate is defined as speaking negatively of anyone or anything. Love is being defined as being nice (however fake) about everyone and everything. Discussions are artificially framed in the positive and negative, so that the positive side can be painted as ‘love,’ and the other side as awful ‘hate.’ People become tribes behind one camp or the other: you’re either for more love, or for more hate!

All-embracing, because you are, followers of the cult imply, one or the other. Either love or hate. There is no middle ground. We are rapidly becoming a tribal society, with new divisions emerging and existing ones widening. Superficial because dressing everything up in terms of love and hate is a poor fit when describing most people, words and things, and because much of it is mere virtue signalling or irrationality.

Dangerous because love isn’t always ‘good’ and the opposite always ‘bad.’ I hate over-congested motorways, for example. I hate the overly bureaucratic slow pace of some things, too. This doesn’t make me a ‘hater,’ a nasty man, a spiteful git responsible for everyone’s misfortune: it makes me passionate about positive change for our country and its people. Hate isn’t always bad: it can be a catalyst for good change. And love isn’t always good: love of the ‘I am enough’ variety can be a recipe for complacency.

The followers of this new woke cult of ‘love not hate’ shut down any opinion they don’t like with the shout-down ‘hate.’ Anyone who thought EU membership was a bit rubbish ...