As of today, the Mallard is no longer publishing articles that include the word ‘woke’, in either print or online.
Too many submissions, not just to the Mallard, but other publications – have become reliant on this word to explain away current trends that people find unappealing, yet cannot articulate why beyond anything other than this word. It is the responsibility of all outlets to contribute to the public discourse, and when a word, concept, idea, or individual, fails to contribute to the discourse – they have to be removed.
When pundits of the right use ‘woke’, they are using a word spawned by the online Left to denote their being ‘awake’ to the ‘injustices’ of the world, which are usually spawned from an ideological conviction rather than an actual understanding of the complex issues of the world. It suggests these people – the ‘woke’ left – are awake to the things that we are not, as if they have some deep insight that surpasses the average person. It is simply the latest expression of ‘real consciousness’ derived from Marxism.
Of course, we all know that the word is used sarcastically – but to use it at all is to make the eternal mistake of the Right, and to fight the Left on their own terms. We have been making this mistake for seventy years, and to reverse this trend, we need to stop appealing to their language, their values, their goals.
But even when the word is used derisively, it adds virtually nothing. Issues around pronouns and bathrooms pale in comparison to the economic, cultural, and demographic changes brought about by the respective trends of globalism, liberalism, and immigration. There is nothing substantively different in the current cultural trends than in the previous cultural trends. What is happening today should not be described with a new word, because what is happening today is not new. That is the reality of where we are now – ‘woke’ is not sufficiently different from what came before it to really merit a separate topic of discussion. It is just an extension of the logic of the sexual revolution, the Civil Rights era, and the great liberalisation of the last sixty years.
One of our assistant editors, William Yarwood, last year recorded a short podcast begging us to stop calling groups like Antifa ‘fascists’ or the Left ‘the real racists’, and recognise that they are just communists. Stop calling the Left ‘woke’ as shorthand for a broad range of things you just ‘don’t like’.
It is useless to say ‘look, I agree with what they stand for, I just don’t like how they’re going about it’. Then your disagreement is technical, it is not fundamental, so really you’re just the ones putting the brakes on their movement. They will come for you eventually, so you might as well recognise that now.
Calling something ‘woke’ is a lazy caricature that lets (what passes for) the right wing commentariat get away with murder; the liberals of yesteryear are allowed to displace conservative voices in media, politics, and culture. They pretend, in their sarcastic overtones, that leftists are weak and hypersensitive, when in reality they want to put children on hormone blockers, let men into womens’ changing rooms, open our borders to people who hate us, and teach the next generation that they have nothing to gain from the civilisation that birthed them.
These individuals are not weak. These people are not hypersensitive. Instead, they pass laws to put people in prison if they so much as joke about them. The notion these people are weak is a reflection of decades of failure of conservatives to actually do anything about them. If these individuals were weak, they would not find it so easy to break down the barriers that protect the most vulnerable in society: women and children.
These are not just simple activists, by the way. They are in our institutions, running our universities, pioneering our civil service, ‘decolonising’ our curricula, all the while entrenching their culture by building parallel careers that have no real world purpose or function. The massive, tumorous growth of the ‘human resources’ machine has seen to it that busy body unemployable humanities graduates have a reason to exist once more, only now it is self-perpetuating cancer that simultaneously cannot abide the existence of leftist heresy whilst relying on it like a parasite.
And as we see continuously, the online right is just as bad. If there are necessary discussions about poverty, living crises, genuine injustices that actually harm peoples’ lives, the right shrieks ‘woke!’ in such a hypersensitive way that the actual discussion disappears behind parody and caricature. TalkRadio’s infamous Mike Graham recently told an Extinction Rebellion member that we can ‘grow concrete’ in an effort to ‘own the lib’ – to which the XR member, who is stupid for different reasons, was left speechless. By consequence, Mike Graham made XR look reasonable – an own-goal, if ever there was one.
When war broke out in Ukraine, it was necessary for the right to attempt to make sense of it. This was done well in some circles – with people drawing attention to the Realist school Regardless of your thoughts on the Realist school, it was undoubtedly an intellectual contribution to the discourse. If you looked at the mainstream discourse however, you would know nothing of this contribution. Instead, it became another flashpoint to discuss this word, those they associate with it, and how these people were ‘weak’, ‘hypersensitive’ and made it so we were incapable of fighting a war against Putin.
It couldn’t possibly be that nuclear war is a possibility, or even – as the neoconservative lobby implicitly recognises but refuses to admit – that we have nothing to gain from getting involved in the war. No, it must be the woke. We end up in some perverse eternal Spy vs Spy scenario, where ‘woke warriors’ seek out racism/sexism/whateverism in any place they can find it, while the ‘common sense rightists’ only try to define what they consider ‘woke’ to make it work, rather than criticise it on its own grounds.
So we are not publishing the word any longer. Here is a list of publications that are likely interested: The Sun; TalkRadio; The Critic; Compact; Breitbart; GB News. I am sure they will find your work fascinating. We won’t.
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In a Pandemic, Anarcho-Tyranny Reigns Supreme
Towards the end of February, the general public were graced with a brand spanking new billboard from the Merseyside Police Department. Was this new billboard highlighting the good work the police department was doing? Was it highlighting new Coronavirus guidelines? Was it alerting people to a new potential criminal threat that existed inside of the county? No. The new billboard brandished an LGBT rainbow flag and superimposed beside it lay, in large bold capital lettering, “Being Offensive is an Offence”.
To no one’s surprise, this turned out to be part of a new campaign by Merseyside Police to combat ‘hate crime’ in the area and invite people to report it to the department. This was met with outrage with many calling it out as a chilling and horrible act by the Merseyside Police; illuminating how authoritarianism, identity politics and ‘wokery’ had seeped into the uniforms of our police service. The department did retract somewhat and apologised for stating that being ‘offensive’ was a crime – which they admitted it wasn’t – but they doubled down on the need for the public to report so-called ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crime’, all the while stressing the need to show ‘solidarity’ with the LGBT community. Truly stunning and brave.
The issue no one seems to be addressing is why on earth is Merseyside Police putting efforts into combating ‘hate crime’ when violent crime, the county’s main source of crime, has increased by 5% in the last year alone? Surely their time, money and efforts would be better spent dealing with rising violence in their county rather than unsettling the people of Merseyside with an authoritarian and inaccurate billboard? Perhaps not. After all, catching criminals is hard; controlling ordinary citizens is easy.
The efflorescence of outrage over this event provides me an opportunity to bring back into the fold one of my favourite concepts – anarcho-tyranny.For those not aware, anarcho-tyranny is a concept which seeks to describe and explain how a state controls ordinary citizens in their behaviour but ultimately fails to enforce the protective rule of law; enabling crime and disorder to flourish while innocent citizens become ever more restricted and regulated. If you wish to learn about the origins and core examples of this concept, I recommend you read the first article I ever wrote for this publication entitled ‘Anarcho-Tyranny Reigns Supreme’. While the Merseyside Police billboard can be seen as a more traditional example of anarcho-tyranny, it enables an analysis into something more interesting, especially if one considers the context. The context that this billboard was erected in was the Coronavirus pandemic i.e. the largest national crisis that this country has faced for many years. So, while the actions of Merseyside Police may seem inappropriate considering the current climate, it does highlight two things. Firstly, that the real priorities of the state and its allied elites to control ordinary citizens remains the same; secondly, and most importantly, this pandemic has given a blank check to anarcho-tyrants whose only concern is regulation and control.
Take for example the infamous Coronavirus Act 2020. This act has facilitated a growth in the size and remit of the state that seemed impossible to most just a little over a year ago. While the British state has, in the past, taxed you, spied on you and regulated what you do with your own body, it now explicitly tells you how, when and where you are able to live your life. Except for the odd occasions when you need to go outside for shopping or exercise (or to virtuously bang your pots and pans together for our Lord and Saviour the NHS) you remain essentially under house arrest – unable to enjoy life as we normally understand it. This drastic expansion of the state into regulating every minute detail of people’s lives is a core tenant of the ‘tyranny’ part of anarcho-tyranny. As Samuel T. Francis, the originator of the term, writes, anarcho-tyranny extends and entrenches ‘the power of the state, its allies and internal elites’, so the more things that become offences – such as meeting up with others outside or going for one too many daily runs – the more power the state and its allied elites have over the citizenry. Thus the Coronavirus Act can be seen as a new zenith of British anarcho-tyranny, as it has given the state an unprecedented ability to not just regulate large aspects of an average citizen’s behaviour but effectively plan their lives. If you would like some to read some more in-depth analysis of the Coronavirus Act and its consequences for civil liberties, I’d highly recommend going through Big Brother Watch’s collection of ‘Emergency Powers & Civil Liberties Reports’ which highlight the extensive and draconian nature of the Coronavirus Act.
Another core pillar of anarcho-tyranny is that the rules only apply to the innocent and not to the ruling elites or criminals, and what has been seen during this pandemic highlights that the Coronavirus restrictions have only really applied to ordinary citizens and not to state elites and their allies. When journalists, celebrities and politicians were caught breaking lockdown rules they did not pay the same costs that ordinary citizens who broke the rules did. Many of the chief architects of these lockdowns were also caught breaking the rules and while, at worst, they had to resign their posts, it wasn’t surprising to watch government officials run to their defence. If one sees “anarcho-tyrants are the real hegemonic class in contemporary society”, as Francis did, this makes complete sense as those in power would seek to protect those that have made this pandemic such a shining example of anarcho-tyranny. The state always protects its own – especially those who enable its power.
While the anarcho-tyrants have been busy protecting their own during this pandemic, they continue to absolve the innocent of genuine protection against actual crime. While many celebrate the fall in crime overall in the nation, it is often ignored that this is not the trend for all forms of crime. On the contrary, violent crimes such as domestic abuse and homicides have risen dramatically with drug offences going through the roof also. During the first lockdown (March – June 2020) domestic abuse ended up accounting for one in five crimes during that period while drug offences climbed by 30%. The rise in drug crime is especially worrying, as lockdown has caused a litany of turf wars to break out in the country between competing drug gangs who – since being cut off from their international smugglers due to travel restrictions – have now turned to recruiting locally for dealers, smugglers and muscle; bringing ever more people into the dangerous narcotics black market. While police are busy breaking into people’s houses, arresting old ladies for protesting and shouting abuse at people simply for going for a walk, innocent people are being terrorised by violent husbands and drug gangs. As David Matthews points out, the neighbourhood drug dealer has essentially gone about his normal business during lockdown while the rest of us remain under house arrest. Currently, drug dealers are more of an essential worker than you are.
One might accuse me of sensationalism and claim, with a degree of optimism, about this all being ‘solved’ when restrictions begin to ease. But considering the last time restrictions were eased, police inevitably found themselves stuck between dealing with rapidly rising post-lockdown crime or regulating what Coronavirus rules are still in place. And if one considers the recent history of the British police, I wouldn’t advise putting any money on them dealing with the former. After all, many of the police have shown great enthusiasm in enforcing the laws of the Coronavirus Act and, in turn, have revealed themselves to be as horrible and unreasonable as some of our leftist adversaries have proclaimed them to be.The Scottish Police stand out to me to be particularly despicable anarcho-tyrants, with one now infamous and harrowing incident standing out amongst the rest; where police officers broke into a family home and arrested those inside because there were ‘too many people’ in the house. Even though many were outraged at the event – with various civil liberties organisations running to the defence of the family – the police got off without so much as a smack on the wrists, while the adults in the family got fined for ‘abuse’ and ‘assault’. To make matters worse, this event only occurred because a fellow anarcho-tyrant, this time from amongst the ordinary population, snitched to the police despite having no grounds to or evidence that this family was breaking lockdown rules. This pandemic has not just revealed the true nature of our state, our elites and our police but the true nature of our fellow Britons also; their authoritarian streak becoming finely tuned during this pandemic.
Worse still is the Sarah Everard vigil which quickly descended into a violent mess of arrests, fighting and screaming thanks to the Metropolitan Police; with Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball giving a contemptible statement claiming that the police “absolutely did not want to be in a position where enforcement action was necessary” and that they broke up the vigil “because of the overriding need to protect people’s safety.” Large sections of the right-wing commentariat are lambasting the Met for hypocritical policing but this criticism rings on deaf ears and fundamentally misses the point. The Met engages in hypocritical policing because that is the system we currently live under – anarcho-tyranny. The police refuse to deal with genuine threats to the public like BLM pulling down statues and terrorising London for weeks on end because it is hard to control; a peaceful vigil predominately attended by young women, on the other hand, is very easy to control. It is that simple. Furthermore, the politicians and journalists crying about this event need to shut their mouths as they are the reason this tragedy was even able to happen in the first place. Politicians don’t get to simultaneously vote for continuing lockdown – which inevitably curbs our civil liberties – and then cry about the police enforcing the rules they voted for; the same goes for lockdown fanatic commentators and journalists who have helped the state construct this atmosphere where fear and hypocrisy rule. Many in these camps seem to be rapidly developing amnesia; forgetting that they are the reason all this misery, abuse of power and statism is taking place. Do not let these anarcho-tyrants forget what they supported.
Regarding the police, they remain the greatest paradox of modern Britain as they are both terrifying and pathetic. One minute they’re forcefully breaking into your house, harassing your grandparents and confiscating all of your kitchenware; the next minute they’re off to twerk in a rainbow patterned skirt in the middle of their nearest cosmopolitan hellscape. While many relish in hilarity at the current state of the British police it is no laughing matter; especially for the ordinary citizen who is the one who suffers the most under the anarcho-tyranny state. In all honesty, in their current form, the police are not our friends nor are they worthy of our support as it seems increasingly impossible that the rot of anarcho-tyranny will ever be decontaminated from the uniforms of our police. If the last year of draconianism, abuse of power, hypocrisy and out and out brutality from our police hasn’t changed your views on them even a tiny bit, then I am certain that nothing ever will. And while this may be difficult for conservatives to hear – it is ultimately true.
This pandemic has only exacerbated this rot in our country because, like during all crises, the state and its allied elites have been allowed to expand, enrich and entrench their power. Worse still, the public seem to be none the wiser about it, our media none the smarter to understand it and our politicians none the braver to address it. Woe betide what elements of Coronavirus draconianism will remain with us post-pandemic. But while this pandemic continues, one fact remains abundantly clear – anarcho-tyranny reigns supreme.
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The Wire and Singapore
The small island nation of Singapore is like the American TV program, The Wire. I understand that is probably one of the weirdest opening sentences to an article about philosophy and global politics, but hear me out.
Co-creator of The Wire, David Simon, once stated the reason for the show’s success was its ability to mirror every conceivable political bias of the viewership. This was enabled by the many different themes and issues exhibited throughout the show. If you are against the War on Drugs, you will see evidence of its failings. If you support it, you will see evidence it should continue. If you believe that police failings are because of cultural or economic reasons, you will see those perspectives reflected too.
In short, within the entire series, you will see nearly every modern political issue at play as understood by every ‘side’ of said issue. What remains interesting is that, as noted by Simon, the show maintains an ability to “validate” and consequently reinforce the beliefs of the viewers.
As such, the city of Baltimore continues to hold a light to America-at-large and its ongoing issues, even if it aired 21 years ago, finishing just before the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Whether it’s urban decay, corruption, or the failure of the American Dream, what we see in the show are things that existed in the 1960’s and still exist today in this post-industrial broken city.
You can follow this train of thought into the world of global politics, which is not as far away from modern media as I would like to admit. Specifically, we have seen a similar situation emerge out of the success story that is Singapore.
Singapore is like a mirror to any political persuasion that one might have, from which also can “validate” one’s own personal politics. The only real difference is that The Wire (and by extension the city of Baltimore, I say this because the city itself is largely the main character for the entire show) are used negatively, while Singapore is used positively.
If you want to see a thriving multi-ethnic, multicultural, post-colonial state, then you can look to Singapore. If you want to see somewhere that champions free-market capitalism, then you can see it there. If you want to see somewhere with a right-wing government that places a strong emphasis on law and order, not to mention the death penalty, it’s right there between Johor and the Riau Islands.
It remains fascinating to me that a tiny island, one which most people could never find on a map, has sparked such a massive debate on what they ‘see’ when they think of Singapore.
A nation with a population comparable to Lebanon or Palestine, yet more than a hundred leagues above such countries. A right-wing free-market paradise with the best public housing in the world. Those who see its publicly-funded universal healthcare system, one of the most efficient in the world, argue to the contrary. A super politically conservative nation that’s current president is an ethnic minority Muslim woman, racial success story, model minority, etc, etc.
Is Singapore perfect? Of course not. Is Singapore used to reflect general political beliefs about the world? Well, yes. Are a lot of these views correct? Yes and no.
Politically, socially, economically, a lot of different political views and philosophies are validated by the existence of Singapore. Fundamentally, Singapore and Baltimore have a comparable effect on the politically-minded.
Do people get murdered and addicted to drugs in both places? Yes. Are both places being led by an ethnic minority leader? Yes. How we view subjects often depends on the viewer itself, as much as the subject matter in play.
Despite this, Singapore has become a symbol of success whilst Baltimore has become a symbol of failure. Singapore is a model whilst Baltimore is a failure, and nobody wants to see their political beliefs reflected or “invalidated” by the latter.
What is revealing is how two completely different places are so similar, while being so completely poles apart. Everyone can infer whatever they want from either place or still be generally, albeit not exactly, correct.
In conclusion, I think that David Simon is largely correct about this idea of how we as viewers of a thing can be so vastly different, yet so widely validated by its existence. Maybe, it’s more revealing for us, as viewers, to look at places or thematic issues within the greater context of The Discourse, whether political or pop culture, and realize we can all be somewhat right, while also being largely wrong.
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Lord Cameron and the ‘New Majority’
A soft “What the hell” was heard from a reporter as former Prime Minister David Cameron stepped out of the car outside 10 Downing Street on Monday. The significance of the moment was quickly deduced as earlier Suella Braverman was sacked as Home Secretary and former Foreign Secretary James Cleverly had already walked through Britain’s most famous door: Cleverly becomes Home Secretary and Cameron, returning from political oblivion, replaces him as Foreign Secretary.
The appointment of Cameron, who is not an MP in the House of Commons and had to be elevated to a peerage by King Charles III to take office, is not only something no one saw coming. It is also a manifestation that Sunak might lead the Conservatives back in a direction that does not resonate with the voters.
A Look at the Political Realignment
A political realignment has been evident in British politics for just as long as in US politics. And it was the Conservatives’ realigned political approach, which emerged with the Brexit vote in 2016, that gave them a large majority in the 2019 general election. The landslide victory of Boris Johnson and the Conservatives was ultimately deliverable thanks to a large number of traditional Labour voters who switched in the hope of getting Brexit done.
It showed that there was a large voter base that the Conservatives could not only win over, but also lead them to large majorities. I will call this voter base the ‘New Majority’. This ‘New Majority’ can be sketched as conservative to very conservative when it comes to social issues while supporting economic positions traditionally held by left to center-left parties.
In conservative circles, the realignment towards this ‘New Majority’ is frequently viewed critically, especially by people who were thought leaders in the years before 2016. Primarily because they do not see this new orientation as being conservative, but rather interpret classical liberalism as being conservatism to advocate liberal social policy and economic libertarianism. This interpretation of conservative politics, however, is not only not conservative, but also a formula for guaranteed electoral defeat.
The Case for Conservatism
That this ‘New Majority’ should be the Conservatives’ target voter base and can be turned into a lasting majority is shown in the recent report “The Case for Conservatism” by Gavin Rice and Nick Timothy at Onward. As they put it:
“There is significant political advantage to be gained in a political party moving towards the real centre-ground. A more culturally conservative policy platform would bring the Tory Party nearer to Conservative voters’ social values. Mirroring this, an economic policy platform emphasising greater fairness and security, rather than deregulation and individualism, would bring it closer to the economic values of both Conservative and Labour voters.”
The report shows that there is a major disconnect between Conservative voters’ attitudes to economic and social issues and what the Conservatives are doing in terms of policy. In order to deliver policy that serves the electoral base, the report establishes 12 new core principles that lead to a “form of conservatism that takes long-established insights and principles and applies them to very modern challenges and problems. It argues for a conservatism that is popular and democratic, seeking to serve the whole nation.”
This includes a desire for a more active state, moving away from the old Conservative emphasis on limiting the state as much as possible. Working towards a fairer social contract by doing more for workers and families rather than pursue tax cuts that only benefit the few – an approach that was the beginning of the end for Liz Truss. And for the preservation of the environment, including more action on climate change.
On Suella Braverman
So where does David Cameron fit into this vision? He doesn’t!
Lord Cameron represents the pre-realignment form of the Conservatives, a form that makes policy not for those who find their desires reflected in the Rice and Timothy report but for the liberal elite who have benefited from previous Conservative governments.
Not only that, this appointment must also be seen in the context of the sacking of Suella Braverman. Braverman is a prominent figure who covers many of the concerns of voters who put their faith in the Tories – often for the first time – in 2019. Furthermore, for many people who felt that Rishi Sunak’s policies did not sufficiently address the concerns of the ‘New Majority’, she seemed a possible successor.
She spoke out against mass legal and illegal immigration. The Rice-Timothy report states “Currently, 63% of voters say that inward economic migration is too high” and “Polling conducted for Onward shows that there is a migration-sceptic majority in 75% of parliamentary constituencies.”
She spoke out against multiculturalism. Rice and Timothy’s report cites a Demos study which found that “71% of British adults say they believe that immigration has made the communities where migrants have settled more divided, reaching 78% in high-migration areas.”
And she spoke in defence of national identity. The Rice-Timothy report states, “A 2021 poll found that 61% of voters said they were very or fairly patriotic, compared to just 32% who said they were not very or not at all”.
These three examples alone show that her views are in line with those of the British population and even more so with those of the Conservative voters of 2019, who form part of the ‘New Majority’.
The Meaning of David Cameron’s Appointment
Now Lord Cameron is given a place in the Cabinet, while Braverman is sent back to the backbenches. Although he has not directly replaced her, one has to imagine that the two personnel decisions are viewed hand in hand and show two very different pictures of Conservative politics.
The ‘new majority’ will certainly perceive this as a vindication of pre-2016 policies and refrain from voting Blue in the next general election. One can’t have a former Prime Minister in the Cabinet, especially in one of the Great Offices of State, without them shaping, at least in part, what voters expect from the Party would they vote for them. And in this case, they are likely to see a return of social and economic liberalism, which, as Rice and Timothy show, as a “political outlook represents just 5% of voters”.
Not only that, but the politicians in the Conservative Party who supported Cameron and often held up the Remain banner will feel validated by this and may feel the momentum in the party shifting back towards them. Now people such as former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine are saying that Rishi Sunak should even consider bringing someone like George Osborne back into the cabinet, or at least letting him work on the levelling-up agenda.
What does this appointment tell potential voters? As Matt Goodwin puts it, “It’s telling them the Tories would much rather return to the pre-Brexit liberal Cameroon era of 2010-2015 than reinvent and renew themselves around the post-Brexit realignment, that they are simply incapable of reinventing who they are.”
