It’s said that evil triumphs when the good do nothing to stop it. Whether or not wokeism is actually evil is a matter of perspective, but it cannot be denied that it is currently ascendant. Mostly, it seems, because conservatives aren’t doing much to stop it.
At a grassroots level, perhaps, a great many ordinary people, who sit more-or-less in the centre, have been simply gobsmacked by the sudden onslaught of vicious nonsense like Critical Race Theory and Gender Theory. A great many of them are being, belatedly perhaps, stirred into action. But if they’re looking for any kind of leadership from the supposedly “conservative” Establishment, they’re being rudely disappointed.
Conservatives have all but given up on taking a stand in the culture wars, adopting instead a position of ‘there’s nothing to see here’ and leaving the field to those who would strip Western culture of its greatest achievements. When conservatives do mount a response it’s laissez-faire to the point of paralysis.
It’s not that the good are doing nothing: it’s that the people who are supposed to be doing something are so completely gutless.
Politicians are nowhere to be seen in the culture wars, any whiff of controversy and they’re stuttering wrecks, assuring anyone who’ll listen that they knew all along that Dr Seuss was a closet racist, homophobe, sexist, etc, with no place in public libraries. No matter that JK Rowling introduced a whole new generation (and reacquainted quite a few of the older one as well) to the joy of reading, what you really need to know about her is that she thinks biological women are women, and is therefore a heretic. If you wanted proof that wokery is a religious movement just look at the treatment of Rowling and the fanaticism of her accusers.
Then there’s the near-complete desecration of science. As I wrote recently and bluntly for Insight: Science is fucked. What’s worse is that it’s so-called “scientists” who are doing the worst damage.
The scientific organisations which should be supporting, well science, have run up the white flag in the culture wars. The Enlightenment never happened and scientific rigour is an evil remnant of the West’s domination of everything – although even the woke are grateful for modern dental and medical practices, which derive from that scientific rigour […] Presumably even the fiercest critic of the West has used penicillin at some time.
When future generations write of the decline and fall of science, the ludicrous visage of the odious Siouxsie Wiles will be right alongside Trofim Lysenko. It was Wiles, remember, who drummed up an online witch-hunt against real scientists, for the shocking heresy of pointing out that Maori creation myths are not science.
There are exceptions to this. Douglas Murray and the late Roger Scruton, along with commentators in the print and electronic media and academia, have pointed out the absurdity of the woke position, and denounced its nihilism – but they are lamentably few.
And they are abandoned by cowardly Establishment conservatives and mention gutless leftists who know what the woke loons are doing is wrong, but haven’t the fortitude to say so. For all the self-righteous Je Suis Charlie hashtags, the simple fact is that Charlie Hebdo were targets for Muslim savages because they stood virtually alone. If everyone who tweeted the witless hashtag really had been Charlie, the barbarians wouldn’t have known who to shoot first.
The culture wars are a war of retreat, of disengagement on the conservative side, and ultimately of surrender. Woke absurdism has silenced those who are supposed to be defenders of Western culture, a culture that has taken thousands of years to develop and has enriched millions of lives. If their children’s heritage is destroyed by the pressure of the latest tweet, so be it.
All cultures have contributed to the richness of human experience, but only one is singled out for destruction, and its natural defenders are acquiescent in the process.
Spectator Australia
The worst for humanity is that the culture singled out for destruction is the culture which has given the most of value to the world.
Has it been an unalloyed good? Of course not – no culture is. But it’s the culture which gave the world science, democracy and human rights. The culture which stamped out slavery. The culture of Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Victor Hugo, Dickens, Tolkien, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven; Galileo, Newton, Pasteur and Einstein; Gutenberg, Marconi and Lumiere; Socrates, Hume, Mill, Voltaire and Locke.
The vandals tearing it all down have nothing remotely comparable to offer in return. Evil, as Tolkien said, cannot create, it can only corrupt and ruin. “It cannot make, only mock.”
And it can only do so as long as it’s not stopped by those who should know better.