Enough is enough: we need a confrontation with the woke zealots

The latest example of crackpottery compels us to start pushing back against the pernicious ideology of cultural progressivism

Photo: Ian S / Wikimedia Commons

You think you’ve seen ‘peak woke’, and then the bar gets raised higher still. Some person or committee within the multitude of institutions, corporations and public bodies so keen to parade their commitment to ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ at every turn will come up with an initiative designed to outdo everything that came before. It’s as though a ratchet effect has been created, with each new action or idea more radical than the last.

I suspect the natural reaction of many ordinary citizens when they witness the increasingly extreme examples of cultural progressivism – spilling forth, as they do, from the worlds of advertising, entertainment, retail, academia, the media, public services, in the workplace, and pretty much everywhere else – is to tut, shake their heads and get on with their lives. But though a sense of resignation might, in the face of the onslaught, be understandable, the time has surely come to put up some resistance – to write a letter of protest, join a demonstration, speak out on social media, organise a boycott, or whatever else is within our power.

After all, if individuals or bodies with great clout in public life insist on imposing from on high their own radical and unrepresentative ideology – one which then percolates throughout the rest of our society, even down to our schools – they should not get a free ride. They should, in fact, feel the heat a lot more than they currently do.

The latest example of unadulterated crackpottery, which attracted some (though not enough) media attention last week, was the work of an institution that really ought to know better – one that you might have expected would understand the importance of not elevating ideology over objective truth.