I DETEST the word ‘woke’. It’s become the modern-day equivalent of ‘politically correct’ – and I recall how that expression was deployed with mocking sneers in the 1980s and 90s against anyone trying to do even the slightest bit of good in society.
For a while, ‘woke’ was a convenient way of describing a certain level of fanaticism and extremism, particularly online – when it came to fighting modern-day monsters like racism and sexism – among a wearyingly authoritarian band on the left. Let’s call it the ‘unacceptable left’.
Now though, ‘woke’ has firmly migrated to be part of the language of the right – and by that I don’t mean your average decent Tory, but the nasty right, the hard right. Let’s call it ‘the unacceptable right’. ‘Woke’ is now a phrase favoured by those who see themselves a little too polite to call someone a ‘libtard’.