‘Anti-woke Citizens Advice service’ opens
New service will support workers fearful of ‘antiliberal’ policies such as unconscious bias training
A new “anti-woke” version of the Citizens Advice service to support workers threatened by the culture wars launches today. The organisation, Counterweight, will “support people at work, school, and university who feel under threat from the imposition of anti-liberal policies and ideas”. The service was conceived by Helen Pluckrose, a British author concerned about “unconscious bias training” and other forms of woke “critical social justice ideology” in the workplace.
A NEW “anti-woke” version of the Citizens Advice service to support workers threatened by the culture wars opens today.
“Counterweight” will “support people at work, school and university who feel isolated and under threat from the imposition of anti-liberal policies and ideas”, say its founders.
The service was conceived by Helen Pluckrose, a British author who became concerned about the imposition of “unconscious bias training” and other woke “critical social justice ideology” in the workplace. Ms Pluckrose said: “We want to empower a groundswell of knowledgeable, compassionate, evidence-based opposition to woke extremism, by supporting people brave enough to defend liberal values in their day-to-day life.”
Counterweight has designed online materials to advise people who encounter “woke activism” and help them to make the case for “universalism, humanism and viewpoint diversity”, organisers said.
Ms Pluckrose said she first became concerned about the culture wars when she heard about a BAME employee who was frustrated by emails from white colleagues apologising for their “privilege” and lamenting his “oppression”.
Another employee faced disciplinary action from their company after they refused to take part in unconscious bias training, she said. The Daily Telegraph revealed that an unconscious bias course for civil servants was to be scrapped after a government review found little evidence that it worked.
A Cabinet Office review of the training found that requiring employees to attend a course to explain social justice concepts such as white privilege and systemic oppression had no effect on equality in the workplace.
The training, designed to alert people to hidden prejudices that could affect their decision-making, was rolled out to nearly 170,000 Civil Service staff at an estimated cost to the taxpayer of more than £370,000. A similar course for MPS was boycotted by Tory backbenchers including Ben Bradley, who called it “undemocratic”.
“What I doubt here is that these things are somehow buried deep in all of our subconscious, steering us at every turn, and that with the help of some genius ‘educator’ I can be cured of my unseen evil,” he said.
“I’m yet to see the evidence of it achieving a great deal, apart from big profits for the training company.”
Other unconscious bias training has been rolled out at Oxford and Cambridge universities and at the BBC, amid resistance from conservative commentators.
Will Knowland, a former teacher at Eton College, was sacked from his position last year after he refused to remove a video from his Youtube channel which challenged feminist theory on “toxic masculinity”. He lost an appeal against his dismissal in December.
A launch video for Counterweight argues that “woke” activism is a “restrictive ideology” that judges people based on their gender, race and sex rather than their actions.
“This doctrine is often at odds with empirical findings that contradict its core principles, and there is little evidence that it solves the problems that it aims to fix,” the group said.
It promises to provide “resources to casualties of the culture wars”, including mental health support and “expert guidance”.
The group, which began as an online community of sceptics, launches on social media and on a website today. Its project co-ordinator, Carrie Clark, is a former Citizens Advice employee.
‘I doubt that these things are somehow buried deep in our unconscious, steering us at every turn’