James Dingley: Wokeism and political correctness is the perfect bandwagon for republicans to jump on and undermine unionism

Matthew Goodwin’s excellent article (The liberal revolution has failed and left Britain broken and bewildered, News Letter, May 29 – see link below) on what’s wrong with British politics also clearly identifies what’s wrong with policy and politics in Ulster today.

Specifically these include the failed neo-Liberal economics of Thatcher that destroyed UK, including Ulster’s, industry, central to unionist identity, uniting them in shared pride, experience and interests with fellow workers in Scotland, England and Wales. Now what unites them is being thrown on the jobs scrapheap with few prospects for themselves or their children in deprived neighbourhoods

They were unable to enter the consumer economy without jobs and incomes. Meanwhile, middle class families now stagger under growing debt to maintain their consumer lifestyles and student loan repayments, whilst facing interest rate rises and diminished real incomes and job opportunities.

Concurrently the NHS staggers into crisis, not least because it can’t afford to pay its (middle class) staff enough. Much ill-health is caused by low incomes, unemployment, poor living conditions, poor diet and the stress these induce. Yet none of this seems to register with the new, well-heeled, metropolitan liberal elite who dominate the media and universities who are so consumed by buzz-words like, parity of esteem, inclusivity, toleration, diversity and multi-culturalism.

Such buzz-words purvey a fake-liberalism, bequeathed by Blair and Cameron, which ignored the (economically deprived) greater (white and black) numbers to appease small, vocal minorities, which demand no tax increases for the well-heeled liberal elites.

These reasonable sounding buzz-words are actually empty of any intellectual or moral content, with no attempt to define or quantify them. Thus inclusivity has increasingly implied the majority having to tolerate people or behaviour they find anti-social, thus excluding out the majority. Hence women are expected to share facilities with men who simply self-identify as women, making scientifically definable women feel vulnerable. Meanwhile, white people are expected to forsake their heritage to appease black or other immigrant groups over western imperialism, thus alienating the white majority. Meanwhile, Blair (who knows nothing about history, let alone Irish) apologised for Britain’s history in Ireland, which excluded the unionists. And then we all have to bow down to ‘black lives’ because five (black) policemen in America allegedly beat a black suspect (Tyre Nichols) to death, which then becomes inflated into an attack on “our” society because of slavery, which every known society has practiced.

This fits in perfectly with republican’s desire to align their politics with anti-imperialism. Hence we have endless inquiries into historical claims against the security forces, but no mention of or cooperation into unsolved terrorist murders, maimings and destruction of lives, which, being oppressed by British imperialists, they were entitled to do. No moral qualms there.

Consequently republicans easily adopt the “wolk-folks” buzz-words to seduce naive academics, liberals and image conscious media elites, who fail to grasp that they actually mean the opposite of what they purport to mean.

Much inclusivity, parity, equality, diversity narrative is not rationally or scientifically founded but emotionally driven, part of a “post-modernism” that dominates many university departments, who see the idea of science as western cultural imperialism. They utilise literary and cultural theory instead to manufacture an alternative world, hence social, medical or other sciences are replaced by fictional constructs that deny an objective reality.

In the real world all bodies, from individual humans to civilisations, have found that to survive and prosper they have to be exclusive and not tolerate harmful agents and activities, it is known as boundary maintenance. This is vital for any healthy organism or society and invariably requires non-toleration and non-inclusivity of harmful factors. Yes, it requires careful discrimination, but on clearly defined intellectual and moral grounds and is the basis for our liberal-democratic civilisation and scientific culture, which has doubled our life expectancy and standard of living over the last 100 years.

Unfortunately political correctness, wokeism and post-modernism have been part of an agenda to undermine western culture, regarded as the ill-gotten gains of an exploitative, imperialist, oppressive regime that should be “de-constructed”. That unionists identify with this regime, given their industrial and science-based culture, makes wokeism and political correctness an ideal bandwagon for republicans and their medieval and extremely non-inclusive idealisation of Ireland to scoop up on the disillusionment of the majority.

Dr James Dingley is a former university lecturer and Nato instructor on terrorism.