Minister slams perils of ‘woke psychodrama’
WOKE culture has given the West’s enemies ‘fresh confidence’ in their war against freedom, the Tory chairman warned yesterday.
Oliver Dowden denounced the ‘painful woke psychodrama’ sweeping the West, claiming it was a distraction from efforts to stand up for democracy.
He warned that ‘social justice warriors’ were threatening to rob the UK and its allies of the ‘self-confidence we need to uphold our values’.
Mr Dowden also took aim at activists who see free speech as a ‘dangerous weapon’ that should be curtailed to prevent ‘harm’ – accusing them of engaging in a form of
Maoism. He said a West ‘confident in its values’ would be pointing out to ‘would-be aggressors’ such as Russia the strength of the values of a free society rather than ‘obsessing over pronouns’.
The Conservative Party chairman made the comments in a speech to The Heritage Foundation, an American Right-wing thinktank, during a visit to Washington DC.
Mr Dowden invoked Margaret Thatcher by arguing that the task of conservatives was to remake the case for the West.
He said the former prime minister ‘refused to see the decline of the West as our unavoidable destiny. And neither should we’.
He said: ‘Just when our attention should be fixed on external foes, we seem to have entered a period of extreme introspection and self-criticism. It really does threaten to sap our societies of their self-confidence.
‘Just when we should be showcasing the vitality of our values and the strength of democratic societies, we seem to be willing to abandon those values for the sake of appeasing this new groupthink.’
Mr Dowden said the West was letting itself be ‘obsessed by what divides us rather than what unites us’ while rogue states sought to challenge the international order. ‘At the precise point when our resolve ought to be strongest, a pernicious new ideology is sweeping our societies,’ he explained.
‘An ideology that, if not confronted, threatens to rob us of the self-confidence we need to uphold our values. It goes by many names. In Britain, its adherents sometimes describe themselves as “social justice warriors”. They claim to be “woke” – awakened by the socalled “truths” about our societies. But wherever they are found they pursue a common policy, inimicable to freedom.’
He added: ‘For all their fury at so-called “imperialism”, these activists have nothing to say about Vladimir Putin’s modern-day empire-building.’