Back in June last year we noted the incredibly elastic quality of the word “woke” in the pages of The Australian. Watching the term evolve — from its original context in Black American activism, coming into wider use to mean a broad alertness to the impact of structural forms of oppression, to what it is now, which is apparently anything to the left of Franco — has been quite the dispiriting journey.
But it occurred to us that it was unfair to only set out the Oz’s achievements, when its stablemates at News Corp have done such great work contributing to this degradation of language.
Here’s a new, updated, expanded and still probably non-exhaustive list of subjects that have been either afflicted by or are at risk of contracting the woke mind virus… according to our national media.
- The Young Liberals.
- Chat GPT.
- Female Popes and Black Nazis.
- The NSW government’s “Diversity and Inclusion” team sending 20,000 public servants a two-page “Days of Significance” calendar.
- 2024 VCE English texts.
- Qantas.
- Australia but also not?
- The Australian Cricket team.
- The Australian Open’s new seating rules.
- The Australian Cricket team AND the Australian Open.
- Relentlessly and ruinously arguing that up is down, female is male, diversity is unity, justice is evil, and peace is war.
- The “campaign” to “abolish” boys only schools.
- Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths.
- Gingerbread people (see also: Woolworths).
- Australia’s medical ethics guidelines.
- The Danish Royals.
- Education degrees.
- Anthony Albanese, the teal independents and the Greens.
- Anthony Albanese again.
- Mainstream schools.
- The Australian Defence Force.
- The Australian Defence Force but even more so.
- PwC.
- Capitalism.
- Fried chicken restaurant hiring policies.
- Victorian Labor.
- US corporate boardrooms.
- US military recruitment.
- That new Grease show.
- Hollywood writers.
- Rewriting old operas.
- The European Union.
- New Zealand tertiary institutions.
- Comedy.
- Climate protests.
- Billionaires.
- Corporations.
- An Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
- Corporations again.
- Easter Time buns.
- Stanford University.
- The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
- The Oscars.
- Optus.
- All media in Australia not owned by News Corp.
- The $3 million cap on concessionally taxed balances.
- Nicola Sturgeon and Jacinda Ardern.
- Penny Wong.
- The ABC on employees taking money from gambling companies.
- Gender-neutral God.
- The 21st century, and every state and federal government in Australia.
- Sydney Theatre Awards.
- M&M’s.
- Scooby-Doo.
- Jacinda Ardern again.
- Californian billionaires.
- NSW Labor.
- Millennials.
- The United Cup tennis tournament.
- US military training.
- Social media, and corporate environmental, social and governance activists.
- The Wiggles.
- Blackrock CEO Larry Fink.
- ABC hiring practices.
- The US military again.
- Jamie Oliver.
- Truth-telling.
- Ambulance Victoria.
- UK culture, art and science.
- The goal of cancelling the legacy of Western civilisation.
- A direct attack on what [Winston] Churchill called “variety”.
- All this climate and identity madness.
- Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party.
I should be on the list – I woke up this morning, and yesterday, and the day before, for 70 years now. How woke I must be after all that.
… And so did they …… probably.
Probably CSIRO too, since it has deemed nuclear power unviable.
CSIRO must be nuked from orbit, because the C stands for Commonwealth; that word is on the banned list
Since they can’t define it perhaps News Corps is woke. They are certainly social justice worriers.
That’s the first issue, having the anti-woke types agree on what ‘woke’ actually means? (didn’t a satirical outlet do a similar list yesterday?)
Woke is lazily used to beat up non core issues, kick down at dissonance, deflect from the need to nudge and have all Australians becoming RWNJs.
Exemplified by, inc, commenters here, by the need to complain about refugees, immigrants, students & pop’n growth; the centre esp inc ALP & Greens; climate, environmental & Covid science; education & empowered younger citizens, liberal democracy, voting & truth in advertising etc.
In Australia, like US, too easy….
The only thing worse than being on the list, is not being on the list.
Yoo hoo! I clicked on An Indigenous Voice to Parliament because my electorate returned the highest YES vote in the country. And, though of course I couldn’t read the article ($), I was so pleased to learn that Greg Sheridan considers me to be among the woke. Quite made my day! Thanks Charlie.
Sadly, I live in the Electorate that had the largest NO vote. Unfortunately it’s loaded with conspiracy theorists and many were on the NO campaign here.
Even someone I know who also recently complained to me about all the Chemtrails in the sky a few weeks back.
Our education system really needs to teach analytical and critical thinking skills from Year 1.
Chemtrails are making a comeback?
Totally. If you didn’t know this you’re obviously infected. Do you live under a flight path? Jet exhaust is now a Chem trail. Rainfall is the result of cloud seeding. We’re being mind controlled with genetically modified soy. Keep up.
When I went to secondary school it was taught to the point that a parent complained that the school taught students to evaluate everything critically, then came down on them like a tonne of bricks when they applied it to the school.
It’s been a while since I was at university, it used to be the case that analytical and critical thinking skills was at the core of almost all disciplines.
Well Woopwoop the crikey commenter says it is on the curriculum. It must be the same neoliberal version that news corpse uses.
Back in 1972 ‘The Little Red School-book’ was published, essentially getting kids to question and think for themselves rather than just blindly accepting authority. As a kid with a German name growing up in the shadow of the atrocities committed by that nation in WW2, I thought questioning authority sounded like an eminently sensible thing to do. But the book caused outrage in everyone over 18 years of age. Maybe it was the colour – they should have called it the little blue school-book.
And then at Uni in 1973 I wrote a pretty good economics assignment arguing that ‘consumer sovereignty’ was BS, but I got a lousy mark because it offended the micro-economic bias of the lecturer.
So if analytical and critical-thinking skills were taught, it certainly wasn’t universal back then.
It is taught.
But much like, say, advanced mathematics, it’s probable a lot of people just can’t do it.