The world of woke and taking on the ‘new puritans’

When political commentators declared that Chris Hipkins’ ascendance to prime minister was taking Labour from woke to Westie, it shone a light on a term that is both a weapon and pervasive in modern life.

Ironically its adherents eschew the term, while at the same time demonstrating the very qualities it implies.

Rather than shying away from the culture wars, British satirist and writer Andrew Doyle contends we should be fighting it.

He calls those who use terms such as ‘‘social justice’’, ‘‘antiracism’’ and ‘‘equity’’ the New Puritans who live in a black-andwhite world between sinners and saints where political differences are viewed as moral absolutes.

Doyle says his new book, The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World is about intolerance.

‘‘The new religion of group identity and ‘social justice’ has driven once rational people into a state of frenzied bigotry. I want to understand why,’’ he wrote on Spiked-online.com.

The book draws comparisons between the hysteria of the woke movement and the Salem witch trials in the late 17th century where 20 people, mainly women, were executed based on ‘spectral evidence’, in much the same way that the term ‘lived experience’ is used today.

Witnesses simply had to say that they had seen innocent people ‘sign the devil’s book’ and they were hanged in the village square, just as social justice warriors use the term ‘telling their truth’ today as the prince and princess of the movement, Harry and Meghan, have to justify their motives.

‘‘One of the key aspects of this ideological movement is that adherents treat all challenges as a form of heresy that must be quashed,’’ said Doyle, who satirises left-wing ideas on Twitter as Titania McGrath.

For the record, Doyle isn’t some raving right-wing conspiracy theorist, but someone who says he wrote the book as a defence of progressive and liberal values ‘‘which explicitly criticises those who resort to the ‘snowflake’ slur’’.

At their worst the woke engage in circular absolutist arguments that avoid critical thinking and impose restrictions on what can and can’t be said.

They criminalise comedians for telling jokes about religion, demand statues are pulled down and berate Pākeha for the colour of their skin, while describing women as ‘menstruators’, ‘‘people who bleed’’ and ‘‘individuals with a cervix’’.

This movement began in the halls of academia, its footsoldiers were students who believed they were fighting the unjust and oppressive power structures, then spread as all groupthink does like a virus to be accepted by government, media, corporates and the most vulnerable royals. It’s easy to see why. After all, who doesn’t want to see an end to injustice and inequality? But behind blandishments of fairness lie a darker reality. It is an ideology that is ultimately authoritarian that seeks to engineer a progressive society that, as Doyle contends, is ‘‘best understood as a clergy for a godless age, presiding over a dreamscape of their own making, rewriting our language, history and traditions as they go along’’.

Rewiring language and meaning lies at the heart of the movement, because as the science-fiction writer Phillip K Dick contends, ‘‘The basic tool of the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.’’

The New Puritans, according to Doyle ‘‘have embraced the belief that language is either a tool of oppression or a means to resist it’’, which he says accounts for its adherents’ hostility to debate.

Language manipulation, he says, is achieved through ‘‘concept creep’’ where words lose meaning through misapplication of terms such as ‘‘far right’’, ‘‘fascist’’ and ‘‘alt-right’’, which raises the temperature of political debate.

Our newly minted prime minister, Chris Hipkins, demonstrated his own example of language manipulation this week when he sought to redefine the meaning of co-governance.

‘‘In an environment of misunderstanding and uncertainty, it is easy for fear to be cultivated,’’ he said, neatly avoiding the point that that misunderstanding and fear was given fertile ground because his Government had failed to explain what co-governance was in the first place.

The reason that new puritans’ influence is gripping the West is because we allow them to, either because of apathy or intimidation.

Doyle says that instead of being Pollyannas, putting our collective heads in the sand, hoping it will go away, we need to take action.

‘Our newly minted prime minister demonstrated his own example of language manipulation... when he sought to redefine the meaning of cogovernance.’

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nd while culture warriors have only been successful because society’s elites have been happy to do their bidding, he says the Salem witch trials offer a way to navigate our way out of it.

‘‘The hysteria of Salem came to an end only once the population developed the courage to challenge the girls’ fantasies.

‘‘The fear of being ‘cancelled’ is very real, but if we remain unwilling to speak out, the power of the new puritans will continue to grow.’’