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How to defeat wokeism, with Helen Pluckrose
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It's easy to say that "woke ideology" is a nonsense. It's much harder to say that when your job, your social status, or your friendships may be put at risk by doing so. We need a practical, principled approach to fighting back against wokeism. Enter Helen Pluckrose.
Helen is a political and cultural author and speaker. She is the co-author of ‘Cynical Theories’, which was book of the year in The Times, Sunday Times and Financial Times. Her latest book, 'The Counterweight Handbook,' is a practical guide to help you survive and defeat critical social justice at school, at work, and beyond.
Follow Will Kingston and Fire at Will on social media here.
Read The Spectator Australia here.
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Transcript
Infiltration of Woke Ideology
00:00:21
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Fire at Will from The Spectator Australia, a safe space for dangerous conversations. I'm Will Kingston. On more than one occasion on this podcast, I've found myself and my guest flailing for answers. The scenario looks something like this. We both agree that critical social justice or woke ideology has infiltrated more or less every societal institution, schools, workplaces, the media, and politics. We both agree that's a bad thing.
00:00:50
Speaker
But when the time comes to discuss practical ways everyday people can push back against this dangerous movement, we hit a dead end. The reality is, no matter how principled or brave you are, the risks of being publicly shamed or fired or ostracized remain very real if you choose to question woke orthodoxy. That's why I'm so excited to be chatting to Helen Pluckrose. Helen is a political and cultural author and speaker.
00:01:20
Speaker
Along with friend of the show, Peter Bogosian, she was responsible for perhaps the greatest academic piss take of all time, now known as the Grievance Studies Affair. She is the co-author of Cynical Theories, which was book of the year in the times, Sunday times, and financial times. Her latest book, The Counterweight Handbook, is a practical guide to help you survive and defeat critical social justice at school, work, and beyond. Helen, welcome to Fire at Will.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, thank you for having me on. It's great to talk to you. We will get to the Counterweight Handbook, but you'll have to indulge me to start because I think the Greven Studies Affair is one of the greatest things of all time. Our regular listeners will be aware of it because of the conversation that we had with Peter, but some others may not be.
Grievance Studies Affair Explained
00:02:10
Speaker
What was the Greven Studies Affair? Essentially, we we were ah criticising the the scholarship that was coming out of certain identity studies fields in a street.
00:02:20
Speaker
straightforward way for for quite some time. and and And the response we were getting was, oh, there's always just a few mad papers. It's not a real problem. Or you just don't understand intersectionality. And so the the grievance studies are fair at that time. We were still having a problem getting um liberal lefties, as ah as I would call them, that the people who who lean left, but are not authoritarian, are not down with identity politics to see that this really was a problem. So the grievance studies affair was um
00:02:54
Speaker
was was our way of showing the the problem. Every single one of our citations is real and they are cited accurately. We essentially brought together the body of of the worst scholarship containing the worst ideas that are finding their way into activism and wrote the worst possible papers that we could.
00:03:13
Speaker
ah making totally and unethical, unevidenced claims and seeing how the um the reviewers would direct us, whether they would, and if one did, one that very noble person, and I don't know who it was, pointed out the the the flaws in our and in our
Flawed Papers and Ideological Biases
00:03:33
Speaker
papers. but We had some statistics in some of them, some data.
00:03:36
Speaker
But we only use data when it was impossible, extremely implausible, and when we were then going to draw our results from it that weren't there. And one reviewer said, pointed out the problems with it for all the right reasons. Nobody else did. They directed us to be more extreme, more ideologically biased.
00:03:56
Speaker
And and and that that was this. him the The grievance studies affair was showing the problem to exist. Cynical theories was explaining how how the problem works, breaking down the theories. And counterweight was ah trying to address the problem in society. What were some of the topics that you covered?
00:04:13
Speaker
People always want, the ones that they're interested in is the dog park paper where we we claimed to have examined, and I think it was 10,000 or was it 100,000 dog genitals in two dog parks. um And then they like look at how how dogs dog humping incidents and then derive from this using black feminist criminology um that we need to train men like like dogs and to so that nightclubs are no longer rape condoning spaces. There was no connection between any of that.
00:04:47
Speaker
also our Dildos paper. i'm I'm afraid that with this kind of topic, I'm going to have to blame the gentleman involved in the project. but and And this one claimed that that by um anally self-penetrating, men could become more feminist and less transphobic. I i think it it had a ah subject call of five people. Our flagship paper, which nobody ever paid attention to because it's it's straight theory,
00:05:13
Speaker
um a philosophy and it it was accepted in in nine days by Hypatia, the leading feminist philosophy journal. It's called The Jokes on You and that argued that it it is unallowable to criticise or mock critical social justice and ah and theories in any way and that that is just a way of perpetuating oppression on marginalised groups and that um academic and hoaxes in in particular should be penalised severely.
00:05:42
Speaker
Well, that's a nice segue because what the counterweight handbook does is it actually lays out some of the claims of critical Joe's social justice of which you are not allowed to criticize. Critical social justice is one of those that you so regularly hear. And it gives very practical responses that people can adopt to help them in those discussions. Before we get to that more practical side, a bit more of the context.
State of Woke Ideology in Academia
00:06:06
Speaker
So the grievance studies affair, those papers were written in 2017, 2018. Yeah.
00:06:12
Speaker
And you know the madness has well and truly taken hold by then. 2020 comes around and it feels like it hits this crescendo. What's the state of play today when it comes to critical social justice or woke ideology, both within academia, but I i think more importantly, across society now? Have we gone past peak work is the is the question that is often asked.
00:06:34
Speaker
So in in some ways we we have in certain countries. and Statistically, and Mr El-Gabi is particularly good on this, he's the sociologist who who's been tracking and this in various, various measurements. Yes, and we're seeing mainstream media, social media, a lot of the keywords of critical social justice, openness,
00:06:55
Speaker
and diminishing within companies, ah businesses, their they're and HL communications, which which started using the language of a woke and but diversity, equity, inclusion, racial justice and around 2015 has slowed down.
00:07:12
Speaker
doing this, we're seeing main mainstream outlets like the the New York Times ah start to publish some some criticisms of things to stand up for freedom of speech. So we're seeing, ah whip whip i would I would say what it looks like at the moment is that we're past the peak in the UK and the US, but it varies so much by it from country to country. I i think the that the UK is is doing doing best at coming away from it. The US, although it's past its peak, the extremes are still um are still rising and they're they're still polarising. Whereas in in the yeah UK, I think it's also a matter of national character, and that we've we've got more of a tendency to back away from things before it comes to a revolution. ah ah where I think we're going to see a much and
00:08:02
Speaker
stronger clash. I don't think we're past the clash point. and In and Australia and and and New Zealand there's still a very strong focus on and on feminism particularly and on in indigeneity and that also that that never had quite the intense tidal wave of the US and the UK, but it's very, very persistent, particularly in the arts.
Impact of U.S. Racial Justice Movements
00:08:27
Speaker
I don't see the arts particularly reforming themselves anytime soon. Canada is not showing the signs of being past peak woke. It's still escalating and we're seeing it hit northern Europe and rise at the moment. The UK is interesting and I think that the
00:08:49
Speaker
changing of the tide on gender ideology has played a really big role in a changing of attitudes more generally. The cast report obviously was a very big moment there. I've always thought that gender ideology is so important to woke ideology more generally because it is so foundational to the human experience. If you can get someone to believe that a man can be a woman and vice versa, you can by extension get them to believe all manner of things.
00:09:16
Speaker
And I think that that turning point in the UK perhaps has also... encourage more people to be more comfortable speaking out about all the other substrata that sits around work ideology? but that Yeah, there there was also in the UK a very large, you you don't really see it and I'm having to speak anecdotally because counterweight itself was of course and an organisation that we we set up to sort of emergency triage, people who were in immediate danger of being disciplined or fired.
00:09:46
Speaker
And so we we were certainly seeing that Black Brits in particular really weren't on board overall with the um unconscious bias anti-racist training. In one one month, 40% of the people of the Brits who came to us with help against that, having having to attend that kind of training were Black, even though only 4% of Brits are Black. So there was a resistance in workplace from Black Brits, also from South Asian Brits, from having this very American an experience of a racial history pushed on onto them, claimed to be their experience.
00:10:27
Speaker
And I think this this had a lot of impact on on workplaces in the UK that black Brits were just much less likely to be receptive to a lot of the the the sort of anti-racist critical social justice stuff than was anticipated.
00:10:44
Speaker
The way that, in many respects, quite unique problems from the United States have been exported to the UK and Australia and Canada is fascinating. I remember during the 2020 riots in the UK, you had several protesters putting their hands up in front of police officers and yelling, don't shoot, don't shoot, a la their American counterparts.
00:11:07
Speaker
Perhaps I assume in the knowledge that UK police officers don't have guns on the most of the time. ah it's It's a lovely little example of how this is and a movement which I think primarily started in America but has become an unfortunate global export.
Counterweight Agency and Its Cases
00:11:21
Speaker
That piece that you mentioned about how you set up the counterweight agency is interesting. take take Take me back there. Tell me the context behind why you set it up in a bit more detail and then some of the stories that you started hearing when when you got it up and running.
00:11:34
Speaker
Yeah, so the cynical theories and came out in in June of 2020, and in that book we had explained um and broken down the the theories and and how they'd moved into activism. And at that the same time that that came out,
00:11:51
Speaker
ah George Floyd died at the the knee of a police officer and the Black Lives Matter protests just really took off and and at this this point workplaces and celebrities and social media and mainstream media all started pushing a very very strong narrative of and we must do unconscious bias training everybody and all all white people are racist we have to unpick this And I started getting, and it's not an exaggeration, hundreds of emails a day. Some of my my colleagues were telling me they were getting so many more than that, that they they they couldn't even they couldn't respond to them or they couldn't even read them all from just at the the average people in in all walks of life saying, I'm being asked to affirm this thing, I don't believe, what do I do? And so my my my colleague, Kevin, set up a Discord
00:12:44
Speaker
a server, and we started pouring people into that. My my other co-founder, Carrie, and ah started organizing people into different groups. We were producing resources. So if you're if you're if you're in social work, we'll put you in this group. Here here is is what's helping people in social work. We had a thing in the middle called called the clinic, which was for people who were in immediate danger of being fired. and um And then we'd sort of take on their case individually, look at what the policies and the programs in in their place. ah either coach coach them through of responding to it or even better, it's always better to leave a paper trail of how to object in writing. and yeah it was We had about a hundred cases, ah two to four a day, that we were actively working on individually, but we had thousands more people in the Discord server offering each other advice and and support and and
00:13:36
Speaker
I met my colleague carrie did developing pathways for what help is available how to approach this and it it was it was really just but like an an emergency triage hospital almost. I think you may be heading in this direction make it real for me what is what did some of those cases look like what were the circumstances that that you saw arising.
00:13:55
Speaker
ah so I think some of the except the the problem is so many of them are very boring. they' um you You have to affirm this the this belief that all white people are racist and you are not an exception. You have to accept that gender identity exists and that that you have one. You have to state your gender identity. People saying I don't believe that and I don't want to do that and then let us back and forth. So that that's like 99% of the cases. It's not going to make the the news, it's just not exciting enough. But some of the the cases that that we had were were really, um I think, show the depth of of the problem. i've I've often mentioned our al fireman who who found himself in in trouble for saying that he wasn't going to stop and check what race or gender identity somebody had before cutting them out in a crushed car or rescuing them for a burning building.
00:14:45
Speaker
and And he he was ah accused by an activist group um within the the council of um not caring about the lives of black and brown people, being being a liability to them, not um acting, ah if that that he wouldn't act quickly enough, that he shouldn't be a firefighter.
00:15:03
Speaker
And this, um and he he found this, as you would when you've, he was ah an older an older man, when you spent 20 years risking your life ah to prevent people from dying in in horrible ways. and And then you were told that you are like ah psychopathically, genocidally racist almost. it It really is very, very difficult to deal with psychologically. So one of the the things that that we had on hand as well was was peer support. And these were people who were therapists in their real lives, but they weren't acting as therapists. They were acting as as listeners, as supporters for people going through this. We had a a young woman who had transitioned and had a double mastectomy. And then she had realized that, in in fact, she
00:15:49
Speaker
did not, she was not a trans man, she she was a lesbian and she had been and kind confused about that and as she was sort of really trying to overcome the that the trauma of having and no breasts and having her fertility but quite possibly damaged, her workplace responded to her detransitioning by sending her on a gender course where she had to affirm. No, and and and she she and she was so fersurfing at this point. she She could no longer function, she could no longer work. We had a very, very good case um then ah that we had lawyers ready to to go
00:16:31
Speaker
on it and and that that could have made a groundbreaking ah case except that that she had ah suffered a complete breakdown and and was not up to taking it to court and that that's what happens in a great number of of cases but sort of more more commonly we we had teachers discipline for including Glenn Lowry in Black History Month and ah somebody and disciplined for so saying that they they would not affirm the words, all white people are racist, and and I'm not an exception, and that she also did not see herself as part of a white affinity group, that that she was Jewish, and and that that she that she was if if she was part of an affinity group at all, that that was it, but she also
00:17:14
Speaker
didn't really think that that race or religion or ethnic background should define who you feel an affinity with. And these these kinds of of things are now our um Our engineer, ah a black man, and he he wrote in the in the mail, in the end, anonymously, because he he really couldn't deal with... He'd he'd got to quite a high position on on his own merits, and his workplace kept saying, we are ah we are holding back black black workers. that We all need to acknowledge our white privilege. White white people were were then acknowledging their white privilege to him, which he found frankly insulting.
00:17:51
Speaker
And when the um the the company announced that it was going to try and fast-track black people into more managerial positions to to even things up, and he he was already in that that position, he left because he knew that it would damage his his CD if this this was if if this this policy were went into place.
Performative Woke Practices by Companies
00:18:15
Speaker
These series of examples raise a question that I struggle with to this day, despite having thought about it a lot. Companies for hundreds and hundreds of years have been pragmatic, focused on efficiency, process driven. They're meant to be quite rational, driven by a profit motive.
00:18:33
Speaker
give or take, you know, with ah with some, some exceptions. And everything you've just said is so dogmatic, is so extreme that the, the detransitioner story, if you actually just look at what happened there, it is so extreme, it is inhumane, it is bonkers. So the question is, how have companies not just bought into this stuff, but how has it spread in, in these environments so quickly and taken on such a foothold?
00:19:00
Speaker
Well, I think and so much of this is performative. this This is the way that this is my perception, having spoken to employers, having having looked at a lot of conversations going back and forth between employers. Vivek Ramaswami, whom i I believe to have gone quite mad now, but when he he wrote Woking, he made a very interesting point which totally tallied with what I see, which is that I think it was Goldman Sachs or ah somewhere where he works originally, they would have these things and promotional things where they'd say, we are all going out and we're going to plant trees today, then they'd have some photos taken of them standing around with spades, and then they'd go to the pub. Now, that doesn't actually sort of achieve anything, but it looks good. And I think taking on these and
00:19:49
Speaker
these anti-racist training programs and and making these kinds of commitments is the same kind of thing. In order to appear to be addressing a systemic ah racism and transphobia and misogyny in in your company, then you you set out this range of training and things. This then takes the response puts the responsibility on the workers ah But it doesn't actually do anything. By the time i i I published the counterweight handbook, there'd been sort of five years worth of of of research into how productive days these are, and Dobbin and Caliv are particularly good. So it found, for example, that companies that had had run these kinds of unconscious bias training programs for five years had 90%
00:20:34
Speaker
fewer black women in positions of management than companies that hadn't. As you would expect, dividing people into groups like this, making it a a zero something, see it making them see each other as and as as As in competition, as one one group oppressing the other, it ruined workplace work productivity. So we saw at the end of 2023 some really good books coming out on unconscious bias, like Pamela Fuller is particularly good. I i find she she writes about why.
00:21:05
Speaker
the The critical social justice approach doesn't work. Unconscious bias, yes, we we have them. We have ah but that we have universal and biases like confirmation bias. we We have individual biases as well. Like so if somebody reminds you of your school bully, you may really feel an antagonism towards them and not want to employ them. And we have a load of those, so many of those. And we have some cultural biases. So any company that wants to actually look at productivity And she does some really good advice on, um and and this is what the advice was overall, which is when we're talking about being inclusive, include the dominant groups, include men, include white people.
Unconscious Bias Training Explained
00:21:44
Speaker
They are all part of the group, bring people together, make them feel as though they are part of a team, give them a shared goal. This improves morale and it and it decreases any any prejudices that there may be. Let's go to Unconscious Bias because you spend a chapter in the book on it.
00:22:02
Speaker
What for people who may not have heard the term, and and I'm almost certain if you work in an office, you have heard the term by now, but if you haven't, what is unconscious bias? And then what does the training look like that is provided by companies to try and address someone's unconscious bias?
00:22:17
Speaker
So um um and the unconscious bias training that comes with critical social justice relies very, very heavily on the Robin DiAngelo approach. And she she is the the sort of forerunner here. And she argues that we are all unavoidably socialized into so certain prejudices. we we all We have all internalized white supremacy. We've all internalized patriarchy. We've all internalized homophobia, transphobia. And it's very deep within us.
00:22:45
Speaker
and we need to become aware of it in ourselves we need to ah ah admit it and that's the only way we can dismantle it so it's a bit like you know that you the the first step to addressing a problem is admitting that you have a problem and so instead but rather than saying oh my name is so-and-so and I am an alcoholic you have to say my my name is Helen I'm a racist and then then you you work on on having to um pick this and this is very very troubling to me because I don't see much difference in practice between a training people to accept that they um subconsciously believe Black people to be unintelligent and criminally inclined and actually getting people to believe that. And this is what well what the results have found, that they did did result in more racist attitudes.
00:23:36
Speaker
So the the unconscious bias training will typically, as and I'm talking mostly now from clients in America, and but that also also from some in the UK, it will will first of all get but people pulled to and ah affirm this this idea that we're all unavoidably socialised into the same prejudices. It will get them to recognise Can I interrupt? The problem with that as well, my understanding is, is if you deny your unconscious bias, that is further evidence of your unconscious bias. You know, that it is something which is you literally cannot argue against. You don't have a leg to stand on if you disagree with this ideology.
00:24:12
Speaker
and No, and and this this is where Woke comes in as well. That maps on roughly to to critical consciousness, this this idea, all red-pilled. It's all the the same kind of thing. Kehinde Andrews, in his his new book, The ah the Psychosis ah of Whiteness, he uses the red pill example where we're all going through our lives just with these these racist assumptions we're all blind to them we need to take the blue pill or we need to dismantle our thinking we need to decolonize our minds detoxify our masculinity all all of these things and in order to see it and if you say well actually
00:24:48
Speaker
I don't, when i I encounter a black person, I don't immediately assume that they're they're unintelligent or or or a criminal. Or if if I meet a woman and I'm a man, I don't automatically assume that I'm i'm more intelligent and rational than than than she is. That isn't a thing that happens. This means that you are still in that asleep state. You have not taken the red pill. You have not awoken your critical consciousness. And so this means at best that you need this training ah to to to wake you up, or it means that you are selfishly promoting your your own interests. So yeah, so that that that's written into it and that that's part of the problem. With Robin DiAngelo, she says that white fragility, which is is the name of of when white people say, well, actually I don't
00:25:38
Speaker
think that's true about her her ideas. White fragility shows up in arguing, staying quiet or going away. So the only way not to and be fragile ah is to stay exactly where you are and locally agree with her. This this is not a, um like this is the epitome of ah of a Kafka trap. The thing where we're saying, where we're denying that that you have a particular problem, that that you are guilty of a particular way of thinking is evidence that you are.
00:26:09
Speaker
advocates of unconscious bias will point to studies that have been done that basically, you know, they're done with say like flashcards and you know, they can say that people who see a black person are and and more likely to associate them with criminal behavior and people who see a white person are more likely to associate them with a CEO. And there's all these sorts of studies which are meant to prove out those unconscious biases. How have you gone about responding to that?
00:26:36
Speaker
So pseudoscience that underpins unconscious bias training. Okay. There's two things there. So first of all, there's the implicit, implicit association test and your best source on the problems with this is Lee Justin.
00:26:49
Speaker
a social scientist and he he actually has a repository of why the implicit association test cannot be used to test an individual's biases reliably. And yes, and as you say, it thrashes up different things and you're supposed to ah see how quickly you can associate positive things or negative things with people of certain identities. And it made very strong claims at first that something like ah over 90% of people associated positive things more with with white people. But this it This does not show what it claimed to show and and the the invent the creators of the test have walked back their claims now because it could that but it doesn't stand up to testing at different times. it doesn't show um imp you You could be racist in the morning and anti-racist in the evening. it It depends as well a great deal on how how
00:27:43
Speaker
dexterous you are with and with things like computer games. So somebody who spent a lot of time playing ah playing sort of gaming and platform games would actually probably test as much less biased than somebody like me who consistently walks a character into a wall and is is generally um uncoordinated. And it doesn't show whether people are associating that. So somebody who is very strongly anti-racist and how had gone into what brought into the critical social justice view, would be very likely to associate negative stereotypes with black people simply because they think that those stereotypes are per pervasive throughout society and their brains immediately go there, not because they think they they hold them themselves or they think that they should be held, but because they associate them. So there's so many flaws with that. Then when it comes to the to the actual results,
00:28:38
Speaker
then where where we we have some good studies which which show that that that cultural biases exist, then we have to look at those um with but as as empirical evidence. So so there are that there is empirical evidence, for example, we don't know why exactly, but in in the US, lighter-skinned black women are more likely to gain promotion than darker-skinned black women. But so are taller men. ah sure Shorter men are are less likely to gain positions of leadership than than taller men. And there are and and fat fat women fat women are are regarded as as less capable and competent than than thinner women, even in ah a job in in which you know you don't have to run a marathon. i think so So there are certainly cultural biases there. And I think people who who would like to say, well, it's all nonsense and there isn't any racism, sexism, or and any kind of prejudice left to talk are probably not not helping the cause. We need more of
00:29:37
Speaker
of empirical scholarship to to show us what what is there and and then we need to address it in ah in a way that actually helps not by um blaming invisible power systems of white supremacy, patriarchy and transphobia in permeating all of society. I want to get to some of the practical suggestions that you have for how you actually deal with these ideologies in particularly in offices but before we do I think it's worth touching on schools because this is also prevalent in schools, both seen from kindergarten all the way through to tertiary education now.
Woke Ideology in Schools
00:30:12
Speaker
In what ways does this story play out in schools? How is it different to the corporate world and and what have you observed in ah in education?
00:30:21
Speaker
and So this this varies again from from country to country and because organisations sort of grew up, very good ones but specifically and groups specifically looking at schools, we we didn't focus quite so so much on them but I'm sort of working with a school at at the moment who's who's having this problem. and We certainly did have a parents group, a teachers group and the the kinds of problems there that so that were affecting children was and a narrative that that white supremacy pervades all all of society, that that and that white children will have been raised to believe that they should take all positions of power. Black children will have been raised at two but to believe that they should have a ah lower status and that we that they need to ah to dismantle this. In some cases, children have been separated
00:31:12
Speaker
into groups depending on what race they were perceived to be. This had a particularly upsetting effect on mixed race. Children, one one child in in in England and who had blonde hair and and and light light skin and was this discovered that she was white apparently, even though her mother was and was was half Caribbean and her grandmother was Caribbean and she she was raised in a Caribbean culture and she was suddenly put into a a white affinity group and and told how she was oppressing black people. And and this this really well had was particularly upsetting for mixed-race children. And it also had some some really awful, um but I think
00:32:01
Speaker
ah ah Results that could have been expected. So we we had one father come to us, an American father, because his his son, who I think was eight or nine, had had come home as white and was play acting, slavery in in the garden with with his friends. And in his mind, his childish mind, he seemed to have imagined it a a bit like Despicable Me.
00:32:25
Speaker
with ah black black people being like the minions and um white white people being like and and he he was playing a game that that was really had been very and offensive that he was he was eight or nine and he'd been expected to absorb this racial hierarchy thing and he'd experienced it a bit like finding out that he was actually aristocracy or something and and his father had to to go to the school and and say, ah you are turning my son into a white supremacist. We advised him not to say that but suddenly his son had this idea that white people were superior.
00:33:00
Speaker
Yeah, these are the unintended consequences which continue to pop up. Brendan O'Neill wrote about the recent riots in the UK and whilst not condoning them, he said, what do you expect when you make race such a pivotal part of the social fabric for decades and suddenly racially motivated and culturally motivated riots erupt on British streets?
00:33:23
Speaker
It's not a good thing, but this is always going to happen if you are continuously telling people that race matters, that you should be segregated on the basis of race in certain situations. It's entirely unsurprising that it has perverse unintended consequences. I think that this is is part of of of what I called the um reactive overcompensation because all the years of of not allowing people to have reasonable conversations about immigration, about cultural integrity, and having any and having such a ah strong focus on race. and the the The biggest problem is ah associating critical theories of race with
00:34:05
Speaker
with black people and critical theories of queerness with same-sex attracted people or gender non-conforming people. Because then we're seeing the the backlash from people who have probably always been inclined and to to have racist or homophobic ideas taking on that that language um under the guise of being anti-woke. So we we we see things like and a man A black man was skiing, for example. he He tried a difficult trick and it failed. And there was this this post from a leading American politician saying diversity on the slopes. And by using diversity or terms like this, they couldn't pretend that this isn't being racist. So we've we've got to to kind of separate this now. And we're we're also seeing, particularly in in the US, and a threat to the converger.
00:34:55
Speaker
of Urgefell, I'm never quite sure how to pronounce it, that that enabled same-sex marriage, which is coming in reaction to some quite reasonable objections to authoritarian trans activism. And so the support for same-sex attracted the same sex relationship has dropped 7% in a year in the US, 15% among Republicans, because they're their hands there there always has been white identity politics and straight identity politics and and and you know very socially conservative or nationalistic ethnic, nationalistic views. But these have now been kind of enlivened and and added to by this kind of left and identity ah politics. And and this is this is what we wrote in a piece, I think, in going on and on. I will finish this this ah this sentence in a minute. and In 2018, we said that if you continue to have these these identity groups and to put them as having different interests and to set them against each other, this goes very much against
00:35:58
Speaker
the positive parts of human nature which which see us being having an individual sense of justice, of reciprocity. It will bring out the tribal territorial aspects of our nature. It will justify rolling back the progress that we have made on accepting that that women ah have to have the place in the public sphere just as well as men, that that people of all races should have the same opportunities, that same-sex attracted people are just same-sex attracted and don't have any agenda to take over society. And and that is what what we've seen. It has kind of spoiled that that that growing acceptance that we should treat people as individuals and it's enlivened a kind of reverse identity politics.
Free Speech and Language Policing
00:36:38
Speaker
Well, at the start of that answer, you said we haven't been allowed to have reasonable conversations as to whether this is the right way to organize a society. We've just been told to fall in line by many parts of the media and politicians and CEOs and and whatever. And this raises the question of free speech and and policing language, which is one of the central claims of social justice advocates. And it's one that you put forward in the book.
00:37:01
Speaker
and then you offer a suggestion of how you can actually combat this claim that policing speech is not just necessary, it is a good thing. This is something which is prevalent in workplaces, but more than that, this is something that the UK is having a national, common well, arguably having a national conversation about at the moment to the extent that it can. Why isn't policing language and silencing speech a good thing? I'll tee that up for you to to hit it for six.
00:37:28
Speaker
Yeah, so first of all, that that this is the way that we produce knowledge. So even the the worst ideas that that people can possibly have ah need to be accessible to us. We need to be able to have those conversations. So as we have, that when when people speak of wanting to preserve Western civilization, they're talking essentially about the liberal democracies that we have set up, which has enabled that marketplace of ideas.
00:37:56
Speaker
So within that that marketplace we we try to keep as we should try to keep as many ideas as possible because that is the way that the worst ones die out. The very best book on this is Kindly Inquisitors by by Jonathan Roush and he he looks at denial of the Holocaust and anti-gay rhetoric and and how by allowing people ah to make those comments, people could respond to them and the instances of them reduce over a certain number of years. If we do not allow certain ideas in the mainstream marketplace of ideas, this doesn't ever make them go away. It's never
00:38:37
Speaker
achieved that and Greg Luciano is very good at on on this. he He looks at how censorship of the art Nazi party, their publications enabled them to present themselves as the party of true Germans who were being oppressed by the state and who couldn't tell you the truth and what the things they don't want you to know and and what happens if you get alternative marketplaces of ideas. they They crop up and you get some very very good ones as we see now on on on Substack and other places, people, but you've got the heterodox space, you've got the gender-critical space, you've got the anti-woke space, and these are all for platforming the ideas that the mainstream spaces won't have in them. But the problem is that they're no longer really talking to each other. they had they they Even with the best will in the world, the that heterodox spaces can't get
00:39:23
Speaker
the woke people to speak to them. So we we just see a greater amount of polarisation. Things never get resolved. So the the problem with with um ah trying to stop people speaking about things is firstly that it never ever worked. My background is in in Christianity in England. ah 1300 to 1700. Nobody has ever managed to suppress an idea. There are 45,000 denominations of Christianity now. We are an argumentative species. we This is what we do. What we have to do, the the purpose of liberalism is to keep it in the mainstream space. So it denies individual liberty.
00:40:02
Speaker
And it prevents us from correcting things when we are wrong. There has never been a case when the dominant moral orthodoxy running any society has been right about everything. So we need to protect that ability of of people to challenge that dominant moral orthodoxy. And at the moment you could certainly say that Woke is is one of them.
00:40:22
Speaker
But woke with they believe themselves to be challenging challenging this patriarchal white supremacist moral orthodoxy. But um I disagree that that is the most dominant discourse. But if if we cannot, if we do not strongly protect that that right to criticize, speak truth to power, as they'd say, we we can never self-correct. It denies an individual short answer, denies individual liberty, and it stops us from self-correcting and advancing knowledge.
00:40:54
Speaker
Very eloquently put, and i just it also makes me despair a bit because there aren't enough people with that classical John Stuart Mills style view of free speech in society today who can put forward that argument in the way that you just have. And I wonder why it is that there are less people who have either the intellect or the courage to be able to advocate.
00:41:17
Speaker
for free speech, particularly in situations where the free speech includes in inverted commas hate speech, or it includes speech that is factually wrong, objectively factually wrong. You know, we're all very happy to talk about speech when it's nice, warm and fluffy stuff, but there aren't many people who can put forward the principal argument for why even the nasty stuff should be allowed. Why have we lost that as a society?
Decline of Liberalism vs. Critical Social Justice
00:41:42
Speaker
and I'm very glad you asked that. I'm i'm about to to release a and a piece, ah and a new sort of about thing for my, for my sub-stack, the Overflowings of a Liberal Brain, which looks at that specifically. I, and am my my my next book, which is, um ah has has liberalism failed or are we failing to be liberal? That that looks at that specifically because what I believe has has happened is that is that liberalism, it it gained dominance. It was the way for a long time for a lot of people to to to reform things, that there was a great appetite for giving women the the same right to borrow money, to to have mortgages, to get paid the same amount. there was ah People wanted for and for for people of racial minority to have the same access. They wanted homosexuality to be decriminalised. So this, ah for a long time, we were fighting for liberalism. As the laws were all passed so that we we actually have, it is illegal,
00:42:44
Speaker
to discriminate against women or all all black and brown people now. we We moved into a space where people have wanted to continue doing things, but they've not known know how. And that's where the the the critical social justice thing has come. We've got to dig deep into the psyche. you know the Racism and sexism isn't going to just go away, now we've changed laws. So we've got the the critical social justice people.
00:43:06
Speaker
taking things in ah in a very harmful direction. And I think we have the liberally minded people, which I think is most of us. I think most of us would say, leave people alone unless they're hurting you. Live and let live. The slogan, some people are gay, get over it, is is something that i I think most people now would be quite happy. They're quite happy to get over it. they They don't want messaging in their face and and requite being required to affirm.
00:43:30
Speaker
ah ah queer theory ideas that if people existing and and and living their lives, yes. so But I think what ah what has happened is that we've forgotten how to argue for liberalism.
00:43:44
Speaker
Those who are liberally minded have have taken it ah for granted that a liberal society is something that they live in and that owes them a duty of protection for their individual liberty. And they have forgotten that a liberal society is something they are and that they have the responsibility of protection to other people.
00:44:03
Speaker
arguing that that we we need to reinvigorate that. when When somebody says to me, where is this liberal society, then liberalism has failed, I would say to them, oh, have you been doing it? Because this is the same as saying your diet has failed. Has has has your diet out actually failed? have Have you stuck to it and found you've lost no weight? Or have you not been sticking to your diet? Because those are two very different things.
00:44:24
Speaker
If you say liberalism has failed but you can't think of an example in the last year in which you defended the right to speak at somebody who you did not agree with, then you're part of the reason that liberalism is fading.
00:44:39
Speaker
will keep the powder dry for the book when we can we can get you back on the pod to chat about it, but that's brilliantly put. We are running short of time, Helen, and I want people to go out and buy the counterweight handbook, so don't give away all your secrets, but the final part does actually provide a very practical framework for how you can go about handling a workplace that may hold or may be infected with this
Practical Strategies Against Woke Ideologies
00:45:02
Speaker
dogma.
00:45:02
Speaker
What are some key things that you would suggest to people who may be in a workplace that are encouraging them to put pronouns in their email signature or compelling them to do DEI training and they don't know what to do? What do you tell that person or those people?
00:45:17
Speaker
OK, so first of all, you you need to come from a place of of knowledge. So be able to assess the information that that is is coming to you. In the handbook, we have a code green, a code code's yellow and a code red. So if if your your workplace is is starting to talk about diversity, equity and inclusion, this is a time to to look at more information. Are they recommending D'Angelo? Are they recommending Kendi? what what What is the information? What are they going to get gain?
00:45:45
Speaker
details before before you act. When you feel reasonably sure that this is an authoritarian imposition then there are a number of ways in which you can come at this depending on your situation, how secure your job is and your your own personality and skill set. So we we have sort of five different approaches people can take if they need to be very cautious. It does us no good at all if all the social workers, teachers, counsellors get get fired at university and never move into the fields, for example, they may need to take a stealthy approach. Other people can take ah a firmer approach. And so we have template letters of of how you can address this issue. you You begin by saying, I support the aim to oppose racial discrimination in the workplace. I come from a ah different um
00:46:35
Speaker
ah sort of an ethical background. i I am a liberal, I am a conservative, I am a Christian, and and so I i have have this approach to doing this. how How can we work together? And it's this way of moving it out of the out of the realm of the critical social justice approach where they're saying, we're fighting racism, this is how we do it. So saying, well, yeah, no, well i'm I'm with you on the fighting racism, but I have different values and I i I would like, how how can we work together? Force the employer to say, well, you can't. I'm afraid you you can't believe that you have God given free will, say, if you're a Christian. You have to believe that you're unavoidably socialized into all of these things. You can't hold liberal in individualist or universalist views. You can't hold conservative views on individual responsibility or and or sort of and resilience. And and you you you have to hold these views. So get them, get
00:47:26
Speaker
bring people, bring your HR employer away from, don't don't try to argue with the ideas themselves. Don't say, well actually I'm not racist, I've always opposed racism, my my wife is black, I don't believe those things. That is is the error that that people often make because the it's already written into it that that this shows that you are in desperate need of unconscious bias training. Instead try to to remain out of it and say, yes, I understand that you you hold these particular beliefs and I understand this framework well, I have a different one, how do we work together? So there are the there are templates so for writing letters to show yourself to be co cooperative and enthusiastic about the idea but concerned about the the very ideologically biased messages. And we've we've found that quite a high successful
00:48:15
Speaker
success rate with that being knowledgeable being principled being able to think through your own principles and say what is it about the critical social justice ideas that go against your values is it that you don't think we should evaluate people by the race to do you think that.
00:48:32
Speaker
treating people as individuals first and foremost is more important. Is it that you think that people have the ability to evaluate ideas for themselves, that then we're not all empty vessels kind of programmed with culture, that we that we do actually live in a society with many discourses that we can evaluate. So have the knowledge of how the theories work, have the principles so that you can respond from, and then have a ah plan of how you're going to do that. First of all, do everything by writing if you possibly can. It means that that you are less likely to, well well, frustrated, say something that can be twisted and used against you. You can show that you have been politely and cooperatively, so we said but polite, persistent, and been addressing this.
00:49:14
Speaker
And and keep keep that record. Sound out other people in your organization. Do this carefully because there's the problem with preference falsification where people think that way more people in their organization are on board because nobody is daring to speak out. But if you start very gently offering some questions, then you'd be surprised how many people will come to you and say, you a little bit worried about this as well. And this can then lead to a ah much larger and the force at work saying, no, we we're we're on board with opposing discriminating against people because they're asex or sexuality, but but we're not on board with this. Yes, it's funny how often those sorts of comments pop up over a few beers on work at work drinks where you find people who are aligned. I think the beauty of this book is that it enables you not just to have that conversation
00:50:05
Speaker
at a pub, it allows you to have it out in the open in a very rational, principled, and effective way. It's an incredibly valuable and important book, Helen. Thank you for writing it, and thank you for coming on the show today. ah Thank you for having me.