Woke is a new religion without tolerance

Further to columnist Ed McConnell’s comments on the definition of ‘woke’, in my view it has become a byword for a new intolerance of dissent for the prevailing view of the wokerati.

It is a new religion without a God or forgiveness.

Dare to disagree and you face ‘cancellation’.

It sees all matters through the prism of race, feminism, LGBT and an intersectional hierarchy where any and all straight, white males are deemed to benefit from privilege regardless of their personal circumstances.

Martin Luther King’s dream of being judged on the basis of character rather than skin colour has been junked, ironically in the name of anti-racism.

Any views we might express are judged based on our place within the league table of alleged oppression.

Free speech, the cornerstone of enlightenment thinking is under attack from this force with only a few brave souls including Piers Morgan and the Free Speech Union willing to stand up for it.

Politicians, the universities, the media, institutions, big business, etc, have fallen into its orbit.

However, their motivations are little more than short-term self interest.

They have virtually no irreducible core and would easily have adapted to any fashionable belief system to preserve their place in society.

We may have once banned abortion and homosexuality, used so-called racist, sexist and homophobic language and had Christianity and the monarchy pushed down our throats 50 years ago but the illiberality of those days has been replaced by a new illiberality that brooks no more dissent than the thinking then.

The intolerance switch has been flicked the other way and the cause of true liberalism, tolerance, viewpoint diversity and inclusion is still to be fought for.