Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts

The British Social Attitudes survey misunderstands social attitudes

It defines the ‘culture war’ as a battle between liberalism and authoritarianism

‘I’m not sure I even know what woke means,’ tweeted barrister Chris Daw at the weekend, ‘but if it’s just treating all people fairly, and with kindness and dignity, it doesn’t seem so bad.’ This is the perfect example of the faux-naïf, head shaking sadly, cosy boast – well, when you get right down to it, isn’t my political ideology just being nice?

No, Chris. Let me clear this up for you right now. No. You are thinking of the mixture of residual Christianity and social liberalism that, for better or worse depending on taste (and I was quite fond of it generally) dominated Western discourse for much of the previous century. Woke is very much not that.

‘Treating all people fairly and with kindness and dignity’ is about as far as you can get from what’s happened to Kate Clanchy or to Gillian Phillip or to Maya Forstater, to name but three.

Wokeism, in the context of those three, is a vindictive, unfair, bad faith ideology which is the exact opposite of custard cream tweeness. It is chippy, entitled, cruel and snarky, and regularly combines those two loveable qualities, arrogance and self-pity.

Taking the entirely unremarkable position that people deserve equal treatment is neither ‘woke’ nor ‘liberal’

It’s for people who (rightly) laugh at conspiracies such as QAnon and the WEF globalist agenda but who in their very next breath have difficulty stating that there are two sexes. It has stolen the valour of the great human-rights movements of the last century, pretending to be the next step up on the great progressive ladder while actually having more in common with the tactics and the demeanour of friendly entities like the Stasi or the Chinese Communist Party.

The very irritating new British Social Attitudes survey from NatCen gets itself into a similarly terrible muddle on this, particularly in its chapter

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