“Peak Woke”

Until the industry reclaims its allegiance to free speech over ideological orthodoxies, both readers and writers will suffer.

News that Salman Rushdie had been stabbed on stage at a New York literary festival shocked the world. It prompted an outpouring of sympathy for the author, who has spent more than 30 years with a fatwa placed on his life. Amid concern for Rushdie’s health, some have begun to ask whether The Satanic Verses, his 1988 novel accused of blasphemy against Islam, could even be published today.

As the religion of “wokism” continues to grow, censor, and demand sacrifices in the form of shame-induced public apologies at its alter, former leftist-turned-conservative podcasters seek to unapologetically question its pervading narratives.

Evaluating the theories

Wokeness, most observers would agree, can be defined as the progressive worldview that views all racial and sexual disparities as proof of discrimination, and rejects liberal procedural traditions in favor of a totalizing politics that seeks to dismantle those disparities and silence dissenters. But nobody seems to agree on where it came from. Is wokeness an intellectual, religious, psychological, economic, legal, or institutional phenomenon? Its emergence over the last decade or so has been attributed to everything from academic intellectual trends, declining religiosity, victimhood psychology, corporate self-interest, white-collar class interests, the civil rights laws of the 1960s, and the copycat tendencies of large organizations. These all seem to have some explanatory power, but none seems on its own to account for the phenomenon fully. Let’s consider each in turn.

A BBC documentary attributes Islamic and African prejudices to — what else? — the British Empire.

Some people are foolish enough to take their political cues from show-business celebrities like Bette Midler, Rob Reiner, and Cher. Not me. I listen to athletes. So when I heard that 28-year-old British diver Tom Daley had made a documentary about the current status of human rights in certain former British colonies, I sought it out at once.

The U.S. Army is expected to fall nearly 40,000 troops short of its recruiting goals over the next two years. Fiscal year 2022 is expected to miss the mark by 10,000 troops, while the number in fiscal year 2023 could reach 28,000. These figures mean that this year is on track to be the Army’s worst recruiting year in almost 50 years.

The Army plans to circumvent the problem by offering $1 billion for its recruiting program and placing more emphasis on the use of its reserve units.

An 11-year old boy was recently called “shorty” by another boy on the street. As far as children’s taunting goes, this was fairly mild; further up the cruelty scale might merit some kind of disciplinary intervention from a parent, teacher or another allegedly responsible adult. What it almost certainly wouldn’t require is police action. Or at least it wouldn’t in the days before the world went mad.

Back in June, however, a Wiltshire police officer opened a “non-crime hate incident” file on the aggressor, also 11, for his jibe. Absurdly, the report could now appear in the kid’s criminal record checks for the next six years, hampering later employment opportunities and surely making him the sort with more, not less, time and inclination to bully others.