Julie Burchill on Wokeness

Just what the doctor ordered-- a little Julie Burchill with your morning coffee. The following excerpts come from an article Burchill wrote for The London Telegraph two months ago. Link unavailable. 

Burchill is always fun to read. Lately, she has been taking out after the woke minions in the press and the academy.

So, for your edification, she begins by explaining that wokery was produced by universities. Academics brainwashed students in this leftist totalitarianism. Said students then went out and got jobs in the media and in publishing. They then allow their ideology to metastasize:

When we consider where we are today, mithering over the misgendering of a potato, it’s worth remembering that the whole silly thing started in our hallowed groves of academe. Snowflake lecturers raised snowflake students who are led to believe that contrary to the Latin root of the word, “education” is not “to lead out” but rather “to shut in”. The approved manner of learning in too many universities is no longer by listening and debating but by putting one’s fingers in one’s ears and squealing indignantly – removing them only when the rich history of the world is safely turned into a Good vs Evil struggle that makes Tom and Jerry look nuanced.

The second salient point about wokeness echoes an idea that I myself have been arguing. People who insist on shutting down debate by silencing their opponents are in truth too stupid to engage in any serious debate:

They used to say that socialism was the politics of envy – but it had a lot going for it, and lots of people involved, from Lenin to Jessica Mitford, weren’t poor to start with. Woke really is built on jealousy because, although its adherents are massively privileged, they’re generally half‑witted and unoriginal. 

The silencing comes from the intellectual inadequacy of the envious; well‑connected nobodies working at publishers bring down good writers while students too dim to convince de-platform great speakers. 

Of course, Burchill herself, a well-known author, did have a book canceled-- thus, her derision.

And yet, she is optimistic that this madness will soon pass:

Maybe it’s the weather, but it’s hard not to be cheerful at this sea‑change; the green shoots of freedom are poking through the leaden carapace of stagnation and soon the days when it is always winter and never Christmas may be done.

We can hope that she is right. Though we are less optimistic than she. If America’s failing culture is deciding that we need more wokeness, more indoctrination, more proselytizing-- it has learned precisely the wrong lesson.