Why is Britain's Anti-Woke Movement Stuck in 2016?
Has the past decade taught them nothing?
I went to the ‘Battle of Ideas’ festival last year’. It was a very entertaining event and I met some amazing people, one of whom helped me develop the idea of this magazine.
However, it was impossible not to notice how mild and ‘wet’ the British anti-Woke side is compared to its counterpart across the pond.
The British anti-Woke mainstream, represented by outlets like Spiked Online, Triggernometry, and pundits like Laurence Fox, very much subscribe to the free speech absolutist, Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), James Lindsey-style discourse that was popular in the United States before 2016, at the height of ‘anti-SJW YouTube’.
This was the era when we believed that our current pathologies were just the work of a few immature college students, who could be reasoned with and would grow out of it.
When we believed that making fun of the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) would associate it with ‘cringe’ and the pendulum would shift.
When we believed that all we needed was open discourse and free speech, and that a sensible, liberal approach to issues surrounding race, gender, and sexuality could ward off the hysterics and hypocrisy of the ‘regressive left.’
But when this movement posed a threat, the SJWs ruthlessly ensured that all big tech companies censored them, and it worked, with the movement sprouting from Gamergate never reaching the heights it once did.
It turned out that appeals to free speech did not phase this committed group of ideologues one bit. ‘Free speech’ had not stopped this; on the contrary, it had allowed them to voice their anti-free speech opinions and take over.
Any sense that the establishment would stop the most insane aspects of transgenderism ended when J.K Rowling was made a public hate figure on the Woke left, simply for saying biological sex is real and children shouldn’t be mutilated, no matter the compassionate and empathetic tone of her essay.
What explains this? Why, whilst the American Right, or at least a substantial part of it, seems to have learned the lessons of this era, Britain’s small anti-Woke scene is still dominated by these ‘classical liberal’ tendencies; the very tendencies which allowed Wokeism to dominate in the first place?
It is not as if Britain has been spared the consequences of the Woke revolution. Since 2016 Woke has gotten ever more powerful, not less, each time the anti-Woke liberals thought it might be weakened and the pendulum shift would come. Both nations saw Woke take over the deep state completely, and ruthlessly outmanoeuvre nominally conservative administrations, though at least Trump in his first term intended and tried to reduce their power.
I will not discuss the difference between the British Conservative Party and the American Republican Party in this article, as that’s a whole other topic for a separate article. It is true that the two parties have completely different traditions and are not really comparable.
What this article will explore instead is why the ‘dissident space’ of the Right in Britain is far less radical than that of America. Why is anti-Wokeism in Britain defined by Laurence Fox and J.K Rowling rather than Auron MacIntyre and Matt Walsh?
A Smaller and Younger Movement
Admittedly, the British right-wing ‘movement’ is much smaller than its American counterpart. Conservatism in Britain for a long time was oriented around the ‘Big C’ Conservative Party itself, which has always been ‘conservative’ in the sense of defending the establishment status quo and the interests of big business rather than pushing a distinctly right-wing worldview, with a few notable exceptions.
America’s conservative movement has had almost 70 years to grow and develop since National Review was founded in 1955. Britain’s only really started in earnest in the 2010s, whilst under a nominally Conservative government, with the founding of UnHerd, The Critic, and GB News.
But longevity isn’t everything. The American conservative movement wasted many decades and billions of dollars when it sold its soul to the Neoconservatives, and became simply a vehicle for corporate globalism.
Whilst time is obviously a factor, other things, like ideological unity, are also very important. The Conservative movement in the United States was taking a troubling, overly ‘beltway libertarian’ approach back in the early 2010s, with its utter capitulation to the LGBT movement despite it having overturned 32 state referendums on gay marriage. The rise of Trump, and the destruction of the anti-SJW movement by big tech censorship, did serve to push the movement in a more radical direction, though Trump’s capitulation on gay marriage remains deeply problematic.
But the British conservative movement is making the same original mistakes as the American National Review crowd made; emphasising a big tent over ideological unity, and placing ‘liberal defectors’ at the head of the movement. Whilst genuine new converts are to be welcomed, those that defect to the right because the ‘Left left them’ but where they haven’t changed their minds on anything, should not get to be leaders in the movement.
Disaffected Liberals
One of the biggest issues with the British anti-Woke space is that it is led almost completely by two groups: anti-Woke classical liberals and Gender Critical Feminists (TERFs).
These tendencies really do just want to return to the 1990s, or perhaps even later, when individualism, free speech, and a consistent application of civil rights was the dominant ideology in political and academic circles.
The anti-Woke liberals in particular, represented by tendencies like Spiked Online, and that I consider worse than the TERFs, combine their milquetoast liberalism with an anti-intellectualism and knee jerk opposition to movements associated with the left-wing establishment, no matter their individual merits.
For instance, Spiked Online, just like their North American counterparts like James Lindsay and the current Jordan Peterson, dedicate a large portion of their attention to climate change denial, something which is disproportionately an anti-Woke liberal and libertarian preoccupation, and the preserve of the low IQ.
Beyond the fact that, whilst the extreme environmentalists represented by Extinction Rebellion are insane narcissists, actual climate change deniers are kooks and morons that make themselves toxic to the high IQ, Spiked is a magazine just full of resentful complainers, essentially Peter Hitchens except for wanting the 90s rather than the 50s back.
Whilst people like James Lindsay and the general Intellectual Dark Web (IDW) scene can be seen as a middle of the road tendency in the American political scene, with the Christian Right still having a large voice, their British counterparts with Spiked Online are representative of basically the entire anti-Woke space, and of what passes as ‘social conservatism’.
There is no significant force to the right of them, and as such, the entire anti-Woke movement is defined by their talking points: i.e, maxims of ‘free speech’ and ‘anti-cancel culture’ when it comes to the Woke left, but immediately being thrown aside when it comes to Israel.
I will never stop sharing Auron MacIntyre's article about the ‘Neocon Cycle’. In Britain, it is worse than in America, for at least over there, there are still some hardline social conservatives left.
In Britain however, it is absolutely the case that the right-wing space is made up of ex-liberals, the new Neocons. Britain’s right-wing ecosystem is perpetually the days of early 2010s anti-SJW content, Turning Point USA, and the Tea Party, with the only difference being the addition of the TERFs.
Lack of a Religious Right
A major difference between the British and American right-wing movement is the complete lack of any ‘Religious Right’ tradition in Britain.
At Battle of Ideas, a Christian Right organization had a stall, and the mild-mannered, friendly man at the stall was interrogated by an entitled ‘LGB’ activist who could not even contemplate the fact that somebody might not support gay marriage. In his mind, it was a disgrace that somebody might not be completely on board with something that was so obviously ‘settled’, and might (gasp) even believe that having overturned the ancient institution of marriage to appease a small minority, and detach it completely from biological reality, might have had a role in the current trans madness.
The tiny number of Christian conservatives in Britain are routinely humiliated and degraded, with smug LGBT activists relishing in tearing away every shred of their dignity and independent spaces
Why has Christian belief been reduced to such a marginal status in Britain? It has its roots in history.
Britain tamed Christianity by subordinating it to the state with the Church of England, and its Puritan radicals, that had caused so much chaos with the English Civil War, mostly fled to North America.
Whilst I have criticised that Puritan tradition, it is true that American Christians take their faith more seriously and are more ready to defend it.
The Church of England, by being so closely aligned with the establishment, always echoes, rather than shapes, the values of that establishment, even if the values it is echoing are totally antithetical to Nicene Christianity. When modern ‘C of E’ churches fly pride flags, it only has one purpose: to humiliate, to as Auron MacIntyre describes: hollow out religion and wear its skin like a trophy.
The Church of England may have an impressive role at protecting our Christian heritage and medieval church buildings, but an instrumental, utilitarian view of Christian belief, whilst I personally prefer it due to my lack of religion, has always been able to be subverted. A theological liberalism often leads to a capitulation to modern pathologies.
The non-conformist protestant movements, popular in Wales and the West of England, were vibrant in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but declined by the middle of the 20th century. A large part of this was due to the more centralised nature of the British welfare state post-1945, leading to the decline of friendly societies and mutual aid initiatives, compared to the United States where the welfare state has always been weaker.
However, these non-conformist protestant denominations, similar to American ‘Mainline Protestants’, also ended up being infiltrated by elite liberals in a process similar to what Darel E. Paul describes (1), reducing their Christian belief to washy humanism and not being different from the establishment ideology in any real sense.
Pimlico Journal has recently done a good article on Britain’s evangelical movement, why they are relatively ‘quietist’ and afraid of the confrontational nature of the American Right.
Pimlico’s article very much chimed with my experience of the ‘Christian Institute’ stall at Battle of Ideas. The man I spoke to was calm, friendly, and measured, but he did not seem at all interested in shaping Britain into a Christian nation, like his American counterparts did and still do; he seemed content with his marginal status, and genuinely believed in pluralism and religious freedom. The fact that even this mild Calvinist Christian was subjected to aggressive abuse by entitled LGB activists claiming the title of ‘Anti-Woke’ just for opposing the mutilation of children, something that should be expected in any civilized society, says it all.
There is one sense in which the marginal status of the Religious Right is an advantage however, because in the US, opposition to LGBT became exclusively associated with the Christian Conservatives. This was the case particularly when it came to gay marriage.
To some degree, the TERFs have been good at making opposition to transgenderism a more secular movement, and has influenced the direction of discourse in the United States.
But whilst they have been beneficial at not letting the discourse be appropriated by the overtly Religious Right, TERFism is still fundamentally a Woke ideology, despite the excellent books of Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce that I would recommend to everyone.
Unlike Ubersoy, I do think that the TERF movement has utility, and we should side with them against transgenderism. However, it of itself is not sufficient. The ever greater march of transgenderism, despite the TERF’s heroic sacrifice of their jobs and social circles to try to get the establishment to have a shred of sanity, shows it is a failed project.
Seen as tools of the Religious Right regardless of whether they are not, TERFs who genuinely are what they claim to be simply serve to drive the culture leftwards; you may as well be what the trans activists already say you are, and offer a more comprehensive critique of the whole LGBT movement.
In places like Eastern Europe, opposition can come from a more secular nationalist angle, which I find far preferable and less superstitious. It is easy to be against LGBT if you can draw it into a narrative of nationalism and declining birth rates, which nations like Hungary have done.
However, the British national identity is weak, which we will talk about next.
Multiculturalism and Weakness of British National Identity
Britain has one distinct advantage over America. It is not a ‘nation of immigrants’, nor is there any argument that can be made about it being a ‘propositional nation’.
Whilst Paleoconservatives dispute that America was intended to be that, and rightly emphasise the Anglo-Saxon heritage of the nation, the wording of the ‘Declaration of Independence’ makes the propositional nation view at least have some historical basis.
Even if you were to try and re-emphasise it today, Anglo-Saxons have long been a minority in America, with other groups like the Germans and Italians constituting the majority of modern ‘White’ Americans.
But Britain doesn’t, or at least didn’t, have this problem. Like continental Europe, it is a distinct people with a distinct culture going back to the early middle-ages.
So why is the ethno-nationalist tradition in Britain so weak compared to its continental counterparts?
One may say it is because of the legacy of the Empire. But France was also an Empire, why is French nationalism far more prominent as a political force in its country when, like Britain, it both had an overseas Empire and has also suffered from large amounts of third-world immigration in recent decades? In fact, the French national identity has a ‘propositional’ character dating from 1789 which would seem to dissuade such an ethnocentric conception of nationhood.
The first issue is that Britain, since the modern state’s founding in 1707, has been seen as being a union of nations.
France as an entity dates from the early Middle Ages, and whilst ‘England’ as a nation was formed at a similar time, ‘Britain’ in its current form only exists since the 18th century.
The nature of the union meant that, because England was by far the most prominent and populous Home Nation, English nationalism always had to be de-emphasized, and the British national identity had to emphasise the ‘unity in diversity’ mantra pretty much right from the start. Unlike in Germany and Italy, uniting a century and a half afterwards, there was little attempt to promote British identity at the expense of English identity AND Welsh/Scottish identity.
Instead, British identity was defined in a weak sense, as simply the Union Jack and loyalty to the House of Windsor. It was seen as a ‘union’ between diverse people’s, with all Home Nations continuing to emphasise their distinctness. Even hardcore British nationalists in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland define themselves as ‘Unionists’ and not ‘British Nationalists’.
Even when ‘Britishness’ was emphasised, the overemphasis on the Monarchy at the expense of a substantive concept of nationhood, meant it had very little substance beyond just the Monarchy, and this is why the vague sense of ‘British Values’ was able to be hijacked by the Blairites. J’Accuse discusses the way the Blairite appropriation of British traditionalism became so accepted in his article series on what he terms the ‘Posh Turn’
This leads to the second main reason for the weakness of British nationalism. The fact that the British monarchy was also, and remains so, the monarch of the Commonwealth and numerous ex-colonies, allowed multiculturalism to be presented as being connected to the legacy of the Empire.
‘English’ identity has a more rooted and ethno-cultural basis, but it has always been looked down upon by the elite class, particularly after WWII when it was portrayed as ‘racist’, ‘little Englander’, and uncomfortable with the project of ‘global Britain’.
Of course, the Empire should be seen as a source of British pride, and we should defend against Woke attacks on our memory of it. But it becomes problematic when the British Empire, and its large ethnically and culturally distinct peoples that were not Anglo-Saxon, becomes synonymous with Britain itself, and therefore used as a justification for state multiculturalism.
The French Revolution, for all its faults, did help establish France as a national polity separate from simply its Monarchy. A republican nation, lacking a single figurehead, has to work harder to define its national identity, which most often takes an ethno-cultural basis.
The Gatekeeping of the British Right
Finally, we must understand the history of the British National Party (BNP), how and why it was marginalised, and what the legacy of that is on British politics today.
The BNP came to prominence when, like France, Britain was becoming a destination of mass migration far above and beyond what had happened previously, resulting in major demographic change to the historic ethnic composition of the nation.
But unlike the French National Front (Rally), the BNP was never able to get mainstream respectability.
Part of that was due to the First Past the Post system, a blatantly unfair system which, when combined with bureaucratic and closed parties, is the ‘worst of all worlds’ and cannot be justified on a democratic basis. However, whilst this is an important factor, and has been frequently discussed by political scientists, it did not stop other upstart parties of the right, namely UKIP, from having a strong effect on the political culture and shifting the Conservatives towards their positions.
The BNP had weaknesses compared to its more high-brow French counterpart. It could never shake the perception of being a party made up of Neo-Nazi’s and violent skinheads, and the cultish nature of Nick Griffin’s leadership only further solidified that public stigma.
But we cannot blame the BNP itself entirely. The party was also repressed by authoritarian ‘anti-fascist’ thugs, egged on by the Blairite establishment. This establishment never treated it as a legitimate political force, due to their view of democracy being ‘democracy for cultural leftists only’, a belief that has only intensified since then.
One must also remember the role of Nigel Farage in destroying the British National Party, and by extension, any serious nationalist force in British politics. Through his promotion of what I like to call ‘Commonwealth Nationalism’, it was Farage, perhaps more than any other person, who served to make the populist-right a controlled opposition of classical liberalism.
All former BNP members were banned from UKIP when he was leader, no matter if they changed their views or not, an insidious form of policing one’s right-flank that is now standard in anti-Woke circles. Of course, the standards are never equal when it comes to the far-left, with former leftists (rightfully) let into parties if they have genuinely changed their minds. The ban on former BNP members is therefore akin to a McCarthyite blacklist.
Farage claims to have been motivated by electability when he did this, but as Auron MacIntyre and Charles Haywood say, you should not try to appease your enemies by throwing members of your own side to the wolves. This distance from the BNP has not stopped the establishment media like the BBC and the Guardian from constantly slandering Nigel Farage as racist. It has however allowed the Overton Window of discourse to be pushed further towards the cultural left.
UKIP also served to redirect energy from demographic change to simply Euroscepticism. So much energy was spent on the Brexit issue from the right, and when it finally happened, it just replaced EU (White) immigration with a larger amount of non-White immigration, that is a much greater challenge to social cohesion.
Whilst I despise the EU as an organisation, the fact that it was Eastern Europe that we directed our venom towards, when they too were trying to resist the liberal hegemony of Brussels, was entirely misplaced. We have left Viktor Orban to fight Brussels-imposed Wokeness on his own.
It was this Eurosceptic ‘Commonwealth Nationalism’, and multiculturalist understanding of British identity, that made any discussion of race taboo on the nationalist right, though of course, the culturally left-wing establishment still demonises all movements wanting to reduce immigration as ‘racist.’
When UKIP was developing in a more sophisticated direction, with Carl Benjamin standing as a candidate, Farage left the party, leading it to crumble without the support of its figurehead and the funding he brought.
Reform UK is an even more contained, micromanaged enterprise than UKIP. It is not a real political party but instead a ‘political-corporation’ from Farage and his close, exclusive group of associates, with no internal party democracy whatsoever, or a common ideological underpinning. Reform is very much peddling the ‘anti-Woke liberalism’ combined with free-market fundamentalism and climate change denial; its programme could even have been developed by Spiked Online. Whilst I would recommend voting for it as a protest vote against the Tories, we must understand it is a dead end as a vehicle for a genuine anti-Woke movement.
To avoid any misunderstanding, I am not endorsing the crude, thuggish racism of the BNP. I am simply comparing the British right to the right in other countries, and trying to analyse the reason ‘why’ the populist right in Britain is so weak and compromised.
What’s the Solution?
At events like Battle of Ideas, any whiff of association with movements like the British National Party, or even figures like Tommy Robinson, is deeply taboo. But this means that the discourse can never go beyond an anti-Woke liberalism, that cannot bear the consequences of the forces they have summoned and cheered all the way until recently. It is therefore reduced to pleading with the fanatical Woke establishment to show an ounce of common sense and stop mutilating minors and imposing the totalitarian erasure of biological sex from society, to no avail, as the Woke dystopia continues to radicalise.
This firewall is unlikely to break in ‘Battle of Ideas-like’ circles. Presentation is of course crucial, and I condemn crude racism towards the individual person. But these ‘anti-Woke’ movements are critically limited because they put up a wall of defence whenever uncomfortable but crucial questions come up, such as: the possibility that unregulated free speech created the current problem, the possibility that LGB led to T, and most importantly, the question of race.
The current strong position of the French nationalist right is the result of decades of work from the ‘Nouvelle Droite’ and the National Front, who since the late 1960s worked tirelessly in a metapolitical struggle to change the culture. They were quick to learn the lessons from the left’s Gramscian ‘Long March’, and so ironically, despite being the nation of 1968, France is less affected by its spirit than the Anglosphere.
Such a sophisticated intellectual movement did not occur in Britain, and it will take many decades for one to be created, that will suffer from a more repressive environment. But strong oppositional movements are ready to sacrifice time and social status for the cause they believe in. The best time to have started trying to change the culture was back then, the second best time is now.
Battle of Ideas-like events are still great meetings to network and find like-minded people. However, it is important that the Dissident Right in Britain establishes its own identity.
We are starting to, with publications like J’Accuse and Pimlico Journal. But there are no events or meetings, it all remains online or intermerged with general anti-Woke spaces. This is good to a degree, as we should not isolate ourselves, but we should also distinguish what we believe from the beliefs of the anti-woke liberals personified by Spiked Online.
Discourse surrounding the ‘Blob’, which is very much standard in right-wing circles, is the perfect place to introduce people to Neoreactionary ideas. The ‘Blob’ should be something that we consistently invoke, it being a British-specific word that essentially is the same core concept as Moldbug’s ‘Cathedral’, but that is better able to connect with Daily Telegraph readers. Immigration is also something where we can simply ask the question if British people really want to be an ethnic minority in their own country. However, it is essential it is presented in a compassionate sounding way, as William Clouston of the SDP has done.
Britain needs its own equivalent of an Auron MacIntyre figure, who was a Republican Party activist before he became the chief propagator of NRx ideas in the mainstream. He was the person who made these ideas palatable and understandable to somebody like myself who, as little as a year ago, would have broadly aligned with the anti-Woke liberals. Britain likewise needs somebody who is involved in Conservative Party circles and understands their language as well as ours, and can help bridge the divide. I will discuss the need to transform the Conservative Party in a later article, but it is essential that the general right-wing space moves away from 2016 IDW-style talking points.
J’Accuse wrote an article against ‘Dimes Square in London’, where, as somebody who claims to be well connected to the conservative elite, says it wouldn’t be a good idea, as the British Dissident Right is closer to the mainstream than in the United States, and having an event like that risks blowing our cover, and reducing our influence.
However, even if anonymously, without showgirls and partying, I do feel there needs to be the forming of a distinct ‘space’, that can take on its own identity outside of the generalised anti-Woke space, and help push those circles in our direction. If any of my readers knows about such circles that do exist, then please message me on X.com.
It is very important that the British right develops a more sophisticated analysis of our current predicament, not relying on tired tropes like ‘free speech’ and the ‘neutral public square’, as well as thinking that these elite liberal power structures will just change their mind on Wokeness if only they knew the true horrors of Tavistock. We must break completely and utterly from the culturally liberal project, turbocharged by Tony Blair.
What we replace it with can be discussed, I of course think that it should be Anglofuturism, but like in the United States, there must be a tightly organised group that distinguishes itself from both the Woke and the classical liberal, IDW-adjacent pseudo-opponents. Only then can we start changing the discourse, so that in time, the anti-Woke liberals will come to our side, just like how Charlie Kirk has gone from being a bland LGBT-friendly ‘cuckservative’ to criticising the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King.
Bibliography
Paul, E. Darel. (2023). ‘From Tolerance to Equality: How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage.’ Waco, Texas. Baylor University Press.
Totally
An interesting blog you have here (I think to be a "magazine" will require a larger pool of authors, but baby steps). But when I read this, it became clear that you're probably going to fail in whatever your anti-woke goals are. Sorry.
> climate change denial, something which is disproportionately an anti-Woke liberal and libertarian preoccupation, and the preserve of the low IQ. Beyond the fact that, whilst the extreme environmentalists represented by Extinction Rebellion are insane narcissists, actual climate change deniers are kooks and morons that make themselves toxic to the high IQ
The people who blow up academic papers are by far the highest IQ people in the room. They have to be, because understanding how academics corrupt their data whilst making the results look scientific often requires a strong grip on statistics, the philosophy of science, experiment design, even computer programming. It also requires a very high reading speed because there's a lot more of them than there are of the skeptics, so they routinely just try to drown people in sheer volume of garbage papers. All these skills are aspects of high intelligence.
The key problem here (for you) is actually deeper - nowhere in your writing do you tackle or even mention the problem of pseudoscientific academia, despite its centrality to the problems that vex you. This is a critical weakness and means that the moment you venture beyond your "dissident right" safe spaces and try to argue with the woke, you will be faced down with floods of academic citations that appear to scientifically prove that their views are correct (but actually don't). At that point you will have three options:
1. Start dodging and rambling about common sense, what's "obviously" moral etc. This is a common conservative tendency and there is already a similar trend in your articles. It is a sign of defeat, and will be taken as such by any fence-sitters who may be listening.
2. To preserve your self-identity as a reasonable person, agree that the expert evidence must be true and by implication that you were badly wrong and should convert to wokeness. Down this road lies self destruction.
3. Study Defence Against The Dark Arts. Learn how to detect and call out pseudoscience.
Climatology takes a lot of heat from "the right", defined by the left as anyone who points out flaws in any academic output. That's because it has a lot of serious methodological errors and deceptions in it. There is a vast body of work explaining how these deceptions are put together, some of it written by dissident climatologists themselves, so the fact that you haven't been able/willing to engage with that literature and resort to Hanania-style petty insults instead strongly implies that you've accepted the premise that agreeing with academic "scientists" is what the smart set do. If you accept that then they've got you already and your (re)conversion is only a matter of time.
Note that I'm talking about academia in general and not climatology specifically. There are whole fields devoted to the defence of every aspect of wokeness. For example, misinformation studies is a much less sophisticated scam than climatology but no less impactful for it. If you want to learn how to tackle this stuff then people can teach you on softer targets like that, but you do need an open mind.