Juno News - Can wokeness be defeated？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:00:05.520 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.720 Hello and welcome to you all.

00:00:15.320 Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here, the Andrew Lawton Show on True North.

00:00:18.920 On this Thursday, May 30th, as I mentioned earlier this week,

00:00:23.580 I'm actually on my book tour right now.

00:00:26.500 Today I will be, or I should say this evening,

00:00:28.340 I will be speaking in Toronto at the Albany Club.

00:00:31.180 Very good opportunity to discuss my latest book,

00:00:34.740 Pierre-Paulie, A Political Life.

00:00:36.160 So we decided to make some shows for you that focus on the bigger picture questions,

00:00:41.780 not necessarily the news of the day,

00:00:43.380 but the big picture questions about where we are as a society,

00:00:46.860 as a civilization, and crucially, where we are going.

00:00:51.060 Now, my guest for today's episode, I spoke to on the show a while back

00:00:54.900 when he was launching a university course in wokeness.

00:00:58.340 Now, at a certain point, we all have to understand our enemy to defeat it,

00:01:03.060 and this guy literally wrote the book on wokeness.

00:01:06.280 It was just released.

00:01:07.140 It's called The Third Awokening, and Professor Eric Kaufman joins me now.

00:01:12.120 Eric, good to talk to you again.

00:01:13.400 Thanks so much for coming on today.

00:01:15.360 Thanks for having me, Andrew.

00:01:16.260 So why did you decide to just jump headfirst with, you know,

00:01:21.360 everything you've got into the world of wokeness with this book?

00:01:24.440 Well, the first thing to say is there is a lot of attention on this idea.

00:01:28.900 I mean, since 2015, if you look at what's been in the news,

00:01:32.920 it's just exploded in terms of interest.

00:01:35.540 And, of course, we've had a surge in cancellations, professors being fired,

00:01:40.220 speakers being no-platformed.

00:01:42.280 And, of course, terms like white privilege have soared in major newspapers

00:01:46.820 like the New York Times and Washington Post.

00:01:48.780 So there was this big phenomenon which Matthew Iglesias dubbed the Great Awokening.

00:01:53.180 Now, there's been almost no academic research into this.

00:01:55.860 It's quite uncomfortable terrain for a lot of academics.

00:01:58.340 And so I just think this is an ideology that really needed to be examined

00:02:04.240 as an ideology like any other analytically and then to ask really where this is going.

00:02:11.120 Yeah, and I should say your book is very – it's academic in terms of its research,

00:02:15.940 but it's very readable and very attainable as well for, I think, a lay audience,

00:02:20.100 which is important because we're seeing that there has been this widespread infiltration

00:02:24.160 of wokeness not just into the academy, but literally every area of civil society, I think.

00:02:30.260 And I wanted to ask you that as a starting point.

00:02:32.180 Is there anywhere that right now you've seen that is immune to this?

00:02:36.620 God, I think you can see very few institutions.

00:02:40.040 You know, certain police departments – not in Britain where, in fact, they've gone in for this.

00:02:44.520 But if you take, like, the New York Police Department, I'm guessing certain institutions.

00:02:48.820 You know, the Navy SEALs, I don't know.

00:02:51.940 Perhaps there are a few institutions.

00:02:53.680 There are certain companies – ExxonMobil, perhaps.

00:02:57.400 Very few places that were not affected by this surge.

00:03:01.220 Now, it is true that there are a few institutions like – a few companies like Coinbase, for example,

00:03:06.460 others that have walked it back, like Netflix.

00:03:09.980 And so we can see certainly a retreat in some corporate settings from the DEI high-water mark

00:03:16.040 of sort of 2020, 2021, but very few sectors were not affected by this.

00:03:21.540 It's worth saying, by the way, Andrew, that, you know, we can track the mention of terms,

00:03:25.900 even a term like racism, sexism, or homophobia, or transphobia.

00:03:30.180 We can track that through academic abstracts and through newspaper stories.

00:03:35.660 And the story that that kind of big data analysis tells is that these terms were already being used

00:03:42.260 and studied very intensively on campus prior to the 2010s, so in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

00:03:49.640 What happens in the mid-2010s, however, is they spill out of the campus and get into the mass media

00:03:54.960 and from there into the youth culture, into the mass culture, into the institutions in a big way.

00:03:59.900 So that really is something I think I would attribute to the spread of social media,

00:04:04.400 which connects academics and journalists,

00:04:06.780 and then also a new media model emphasizing virality on Twitter.

00:04:10.960 You call this phenomenon cultural socialism. Explain what that is.

00:04:18.680 Well, so basically, woke, I mean, I have a one-sentence definition of woke,

00:04:22.960 which is making sacred, historically marginalized race, gender, and sexual identities.

00:04:28.420 Once you make those sacred, you then have no toleration for any inequality

00:04:33.560 between those identity groups.

00:04:36.440 So any race gaps, gender gaps, for example, are no longer acceptable.

00:04:41.860 So that's sort of the...

00:04:43.040 Now, with economic socialism, it was any gaps between individuals or classes that were no longer acceptable.

00:04:48.620 With cultural socialism, it's any sort of gaps in terms of desired social goods

00:04:54.240 between identity groups that are no longer acceptable.

00:04:57.620 So the aim is really to have a sort of leveling up through quotas,

00:05:02.960 typically affirmative action quotas.

00:05:06.180 Now, we could imagine a kind of cultural socialism working on the lines of intelligence or looks or athleticism.

00:05:13.880 That is really the subject of, to some degree, Lionel Shriver's new book, Mania,

00:05:18.380 which is really about, you know, having an equal outcome between people with low intelligence and high intelligence.

00:05:25.480 It's kind of dystopia.

00:05:27.080 But in this case, in the case that I'm talking about,

00:05:29.640 it's mainly about equal outcomes between racial groups and then also sexual and gender identity groups.

00:05:37.820 There is, at its core, an ability to take aim at wokeism or cultural socialism on, I think, moral grounds.

00:05:46.260 It is just inherently wrong to divide the world this way, irrespective of the consequences.

00:05:50.860 But what I found fascinating, and you have a whole chapter devoted to this, material consequences,

00:05:55.580 is that it doesn't even achieve the aims that the purveyors of it set out to do.

00:06:02.520 It doesn't even fix the problems that they claim they're fixing.

00:06:06.200 I mean, at best, it has no impact in their direction.

00:06:08.720 At worst, and I'd say more commonly, it works against them.

00:06:11.580 And you talk about this in two ways, which I found interesting.

00:06:14.500 But the second of which is that it basically hollows out the moderates of society.

00:06:19.400 And I was wondering if you could extrapolate on that a bit.

00:06:22.360 Well, yeah.

00:06:22.780 I mean, the first part, I mean, I use a few examples.

00:06:25.380 So, for example, if you think, what impact did the Black Lives Matter protests have on black neighborhoods,

00:06:30.860 both in terms of businesses destroyed, property damage to black businesses?

00:06:34.560 What's the effect going to be on those neighborhoods?

00:06:38.120 How many black people were killed additionally as a result of this?

00:06:41.520 And what is on the plus side?

00:06:43.020 It's very difficult to enumerate.

00:06:44.760 That's just one example of how now – and actually, Shelby Steele, who influenced me,

00:06:49.860 who's an African-American conservative writer, he argues that a lot of these policies are just virtue signaling,

00:06:56.320 often from liberal whites who want to show that they're not the bad whites.

00:06:59.940 Actually, there's very little concern with what this is going to do to achievement for the particular group concerned.

00:07:07.760 And so, yeah, I think that one of the downstream effects, if you like,

00:07:11.080 is this damages the life chances of the very groups that progressives claim to want to help.

00:07:18.700 We can see something similar on the indigenous issue.

00:07:20.940 I mean, if you're encouraging a culture of dependency, if you're not really tackling the root problems of what's driving some of the social issues on reservations,

00:07:31.880 for example, then you're not solving the problem.

00:07:34.700 And we can say this about education.

00:07:36.580 If you won't exclude pupils because there happen to be certain racial groups that are excluded more from class for bad behavior,

00:07:43.520 actually, you're going to damage the potential, particularly – and if we take the U.S. example,

00:07:49.000 you know, black students who may want to learn are going to be prevented from learning if you have unruly students that are not excluded. 1.00

00:07:55.200 So these are just a few examples.

00:07:56.940 And, of course, what this does also is it drives polarization.

00:08:00.440 So it damages the very groups that are supposedly to be helped, but it also alienates other groups.

00:08:08.120 So another example would be affirmative action, which misallocates students to universities.

00:08:14.460 So it will put students who have lower SAT scores than required for, say, a physics course at MIT into MIT when they should be at a good but not very top university.

00:08:25.280 And so they wind up dropping out of those courses at higher rates and not fulfilling their potential or switching to, you know,

00:08:33.360 sociology or Africana studies or other courses that are not going to get them the kind of earnings.

00:08:38.120 That they would like to have.

00:08:39.400 At the same time, it kind of irritates those who missed out on a spot because they were the wrong color.

00:08:45.000 And that drives a kind of polarization.

00:08:47.520 It becomes a political issue.

00:08:48.840 So what this does is it sort of stokes resentment amongst majority communities or dominant communities,

00:08:55.460 and it fails to actually help minority communities.

00:08:59.280 So I guess in terms of human flourishing and the societal good, I see a lot of negativity there.

00:09:05.900 Yeah, and it feeds into what you've called here quite aptly a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:09:10.960 And then it just, you know, continues the problems, furthers the problems.

00:09:14.120 And at the end of it, no one is really interested in breaking this cycle and say,

00:09:18.080 oh, well, maybe there's an inherent flaw with what we're trying to do here.

00:09:21.900 And I wanted to delve beyond that a little bit because this is where you have, I think,

00:09:28.220 a tendency for a lot of people to say everything is the responsibility of this one power dynamic that they see.

00:09:35.380 And I would say in the context of October 7th, this is where we see just horrific things done

00:09:40.580 in the name of viewing the world through that oppressor-oppressed dichotomy only.

00:09:45.020 You quote the black writer, Kendi, who says, you know, when he looks at any inequality,

00:09:50.600 he sees it as being a consequence of racism.

00:09:53.180 And that's a very, very dangerous belief system because he's already diagnosed the cause

00:09:58.860 of any phenomenon he identifies that he doesn't like.

00:10:02.160 Right.

00:10:02.960 Well, yeah, it's circular reasoning because the cause is built into the effect and vice versa.

00:10:08.140 So if you say, well, any disparity is because of discrimination, you know,

00:10:13.040 you wouldn't say, for example, that, you know, if Jews are doing better than Gypsy and Irish travelers,

00:10:19.340 for example, that that's a result of Jews discriminating.

00:10:22.880 I mean, you know, we wouldn't apply this to, or Seventh-day Adventists don't earn as much as Episcopalians.

00:10:28.940 We wouldn't apply this to other categories.

00:10:30.880 But somehow we feel that on the sacred categories, race, gender and sexuality,

00:10:38.220 that any kind of disparity is evidence of, quote unquote, systemic discrimination.

00:10:43.640 That could be white supremacy.

00:10:45.740 It could be patriarchy or some other structure that we somehow can't measure independently of the disparity.

00:10:52.620 And so we can't actually make a causal statement.

00:10:55.300 And so, yeah, you get this spurious reasoning.

00:10:57.640 The other thing I would say is in addition to positing that any kind of disparity is evidence of some kind of systemic bias and discrimination,

00:11:05.840 which can only be cured through some kind of affirmative action policy, there's also this hypersensitivity aspect.

00:11:12.540 So the two elements of this kind of fuzzy ideology are, one, equal outcomes for the sacred groups.

00:11:19.580 And secondly, hypersensitivity to the group such that any speech which offends even the most sensitive member of such a group is a form of blasphemy.

00:11:30.880 And so anyone who utters that speech, it could just be something as simple as mispronouncing someone's surname.

00:11:36.540 Anything like that becomes grounds for the charge of racism and for cancellation, kind of excommunication,

00:11:42.820 because you've profaned a sacred group by insulting that group.

00:11:46.660 What that means is this is a profound threat to free speech, for example, and the pursuit of truth.

00:11:52.860 I mean, I'll use an example from Canada.

00:11:55.100 Can we actually pursue truth on something such as the so-called mass graves in Kamloops?

00:12:01.400 Well, if that's seen as offensive to members of a particular minority group,

00:12:06.080 the argument from WOKE is that those sensitivities come before truth.

00:12:09.940 Or similarly, if you believe that, you know, a woman is biologically female, biological males cannot be called a woman, that too.

00:12:20.000 Again, truth is subsumed beneath sensitivity.

00:12:23.580 So this is really the dilemma that we find ourselves in.

00:12:26.240 There's a fascinating dilemma you touch on here, which is the unwillingness in many cases for conventional conservative parties to tackle these issues.

00:12:36.440 And part of that is for good reason.

00:12:38.120 When conservatives do talk about these things, they're accused of stoking the flames of the culture war, of being divisive, of doing all of this.

00:12:44.440 But you make a bold claim here, which I wanted to, and I really tried before speaking to you to come up with a counterpoint to disprove this.

00:12:52.740 And I have not yet been able to, although I do have some questions about it.

00:12:57.040 You say political change on culture war issues can only come from right-wing parties.

00:13:02.360 If they succeed in making left-wing parties pay an electoral price for doing the bidding of progressive activists,

00:13:07.720 this will empower the materialist center left against the influential young cultural socialists.

00:13:13.140 So I think you're broadly right there.

00:13:16.180 But I guess where I was trying to find a weakness in the argument is that I thought that the path might come from the galvanization by the left of itself,

00:13:26.880 and that it would be the J.K. Rowling types, for example, the anti-woke leftists that have more political power in this, in a sense,

00:13:35.400 because they're part of the left-wing coalition.

00:13:38.840 Well, I think, yeah, how would I say?

00:13:41.400 I mean, what I think is that the mass of the left, the sort of liberal left, who comprise the largest share of the left,

00:13:49.480 are just very sensitive to taboos around racism, sexism, transphobia, and they really don't want to be on the wrong side of that.

00:13:58.260 That's the first thing.

00:13:59.340 But it's not just fear.

00:14:00.500 There is also the components of the worldview are largely about guilt over forms of past or present inequality and discrimination.

00:14:11.340 And secondly, a kind of compassion for specific minority groups.

00:14:15.640 And any claim that's made in the name of diversity, equity, inclusion of these groups is something that they are going to be very attracted to.

00:14:23.760 And so a Rowling, for example, is not necessarily going to be accepted.

00:14:29.640 Her claims are not going to be easily accepted by the left, most of whom want to remain on side and who want to sort of see themselves as good people,

00:14:38.220 by which they mean people who are allies to minorities.

00:14:41.700 And so I don't believe the left can reform itself, actually.

00:14:45.800 I think we have an example of that to some degree in universities, which have had a problem with speech codes and free speech violation for certainly since the first speech codes came in in the late 1980s

00:14:57.020 and have almost all been struck down as unconstitutional in the U.S. context.

00:15:00.840 But still, universities have just not been able to reform themselves on free speech.

00:15:05.380 Unfortunately, I believe it's the case that unless there's an incentive coming from outside, that, you know, there is probably a group that's biddable,

00:15:16.460 but they need to be able to point to some external force and to say, look, if we don't want the government clamping down on us,

00:15:22.640 we're going to have to get rid of our speech codes and start defending free speech, for example, on campus.

00:15:28.220 Without being able to point to that, they're liable to be seen as either traitors or insensitive to minority groups.

00:15:36.160 And I just don't think the bulk are willing.

00:15:39.080 And I have survey data on that, which would show, you know, for example, if you look at academics today in Canada, the U.S., Australia, Britain,

00:15:48.140 you know, by a two to one margin, roughly, they support mandatory diversity statements.

00:15:52.760 That's something they support.

00:15:53.980 It is only when there's pressure coming from the media and from politicians that they may decide, as it has occurred in a few universities, to abandon these things.

00:16:03.960 If it were just up to them, do I think they would abandon them?

00:16:06.480 No, no.

00:16:07.440 There just simply is too much support for them within.

00:16:10.300 So, yeah, I'm afraid I'm going to have to stick with the incentives model.

00:16:14.620 I'm curious about your perspective on, well, on a couple of aspects of this, but one of them is how, or if you fear there's an overreaction problem that can come from the right.

00:16:29.620 And one example of this, and you touch on this in your book that, you know, the old, you know, does the gay baker or does the Christian baker have to make the gay wedding cake question?

00:16:39.140 And I think the standard resistance we saw to that cultural imperative from the right was private business, they can do what they want.

00:16:48.080 They can do what they want.

00:16:49.260 It was an appeal to that libertarian idea of personal choice.

00:16:52.680 I also saw, you know, during COVID, people on the right say businesses should not be allowed as private businesses to have a vaccine passport, for example.

00:17:03.120 Because the point that I made was that if an individual business wants to do that, that's its right.

00:17:07.320 And I use the Christian baker worldview that I had on that.

00:17:11.460 And you had some people on the right that say, no, they shouldn't have the right to do that.

00:17:14.680 And part of the trend that I've identified, and I'm curious if you see this, is that there are some people, not all, that want to use the same institutional power and levers that the left uses against them, rather than sticking to that initial libertarian premise.

00:17:33.120 Well, yeah, and this opens up a big debate, right, between libertarians and other kinds of conservatives.

00:17:39.340 I'm kind of with you on the examples you just cited.

00:17:43.200 But I think, so for example, I think probably many of us would support the Civil Rights Act, this idea that you can't discriminate on the basis of race if you are offering a public service, for example, refusing to serve a black customer or hire a, you know, hire a woman or something of this nature.

00:18:01.460 Now, true free associationists would say, no, if you really want to hire all men and you don't want to hire anything but whites, you should be allowed to do that. 0.94

00:18:10.580 I'm not, I'm sort of more on the side of saying, well, in certain, for certain characteristics, I think it's reasonable to have a quality law.

00:18:19.660 But while that may be morally right, it's also intellectually inconsistent.

00:18:23.120 Well, I think you can, I think you can sort of draw a line and you can have kind of a happy medium.

00:18:30.240 I'm kind of a utilitarian in some ways, so I sort of believe in these optimal points.

00:18:34.060 I think you can have on certain characteristics, it should be free association.

00:18:37.740 On other characteristics, I think that you can insist on non-discrimination.

00:18:44.500 But you're right, and it depends.

00:18:46.200 I mean, I think if you're having, obviously, if you have a Catholic club or a Catholic church, you can restrict it to Catholics only.

00:18:53.920 And I think there's nothing wrong with all male clubs either, by the way.

00:18:56.620 If this is part of the function of the club, if that is germane to the, and there have been a number of court cases that have established when you can discriminate.

00:19:06.020 You can have Chinese cooks and waiters in a Chinese restaurant, but you can't have, you know, an all Chinese only policy of hiring at a bank, for example.

00:19:15.060 So I think that this is something that the judges have come up with a certain happy medium on where that line is.

00:19:21.800 What I would say, though, is I think that, you know, increasingly in Britain and in Europe, we have this view that philosophical belief is now a protected characteristic.

00:19:31.880 So firing somebody because they say that a biological male is not a woman, cannot be a woman, is no longer permitted.

00:19:40.000 I mean, that's the kind of thing that I would support.

00:19:41.680 I mean, I think that I do support to some degree the, you know, the use of these protected characteristics if you're offering a public service and if the mission of your organization is not specific to that particular characteristic, like a Chinese restaurant, for example, which would be justified in hiring Chinese only, I think is different if you are a bank.

00:20:02.000 You can't just hire Democrats, for example.

00:20:04.420 So where do we go from here then?

00:20:08.000 Because we have agreed, if we accept your premise, that any political change has to come from the right.

00:20:14.000 But there has been, I mean, the U.S. Republican Party is one example where they've been relatively unafraid in many areas of going after critical race theory and gender ideology.

00:20:24.300 The U.K. Tories periodically find a spine.

00:20:27.160 It's not long lasting, but they do it.

00:20:29.320 But the Canadian Conservatives have perennially been challenged by not wanting to go near these issues at all, by saying, no, no, no, we're just going to talk about lower taxes and this and that.

00:20:39.760 And, you know, at a certain point, I do think it's changing now.

00:20:43.520 Pierre Polyev has obviously had more of a willingness than his predecessors to engage on these issues.

00:20:48.460 Rishi Sunak, I think, tends to cosplay as a culture warrior at times.

00:20:51.860 And as long as he just keeps doing that, I guess, you know, maybe the right things will happen.

00:20:55.820 But do you think this will be long lasting?

00:20:58.100 Do you think there is a legitimate political opposition to this right now?

00:21:02.660 Yeah, I absolutely think it is.

00:21:03.940 And I this is where I'm sort of I contest the arguments of some who are more pessimistic on this front or perhaps, I mean, people like Yoram Hazonian to some degree.

00:21:13.140 Well, if we just stick with Hazonian people who say liberalism has failed, liberal democracy has failed, we have to move to a post liberal dispensation. 0.98

00:21:21.020 I don't believe I don't believe that.

00:21:22.560 I think within liberal democracy, there's a lot we can do.

00:21:25.120 And I think, for example, I think that the education system has to be a focus.

00:21:30.620 I just think it's intolerable to allow an institution which brings up the next generation to indoctrinate those children into cultural socialism, for example.

00:21:43.220 So whether that be critical race, radical gender ideology, just this sort of ethos in the classroom, I think, is shaping the worldview of another generation.

00:21:52.660 So that really needs to be much more of a focus.

00:21:55.480 And I think it will become more of a focus in Canada.

00:21:58.140 I think this is only really just begun in the U.S., really, in the last few years.

00:22:03.560 And I think it's already bringing results.

00:22:05.620 And I think it's entirely legitimate at the K to 12 level.

00:22:09.920 Universities are more complicated.

00:22:11.300 But, yeah, I think that the Canadian conservatives have really only just dipped their toe in the water and there is far more that needs to be done on this.

00:22:20.900 And also, I think part of it, as we discussed earlier, it's not just, you know, battles over cancel culture on campus or a bit of DEI in the civil service.

00:22:29.740 I mean, this has actually got this is actually has huge implications for, let's say, Canada as a country or the West as a civilization.

00:22:38.840 You know, if you can't have an even handed discussion of national identity because you have a myth about genocide against the indigenous taking place in residential schools, for example.

00:22:49.820 And it's all about sort of shredding your national past.

00:22:54.040 You'll have nothing for a population to unite around.

00:22:57.940 And so what you'll get is sort of one side like Trudeau pushing a, you know, we're going to have no identity.

00:23:04.200 We're going to be post-national and we're going to basically damn all of our past as nothing but white supremacy.

00:23:11.320 If that's sort of your attitude, then I think you're heading into a highly polarized climate, which just makes all policymaking more difficult.

00:23:19.820 Not to mention, by the way, all of the impacts, the downstream effects on educational performance, health care, crime, immigration, all of these issues, which we can't discuss them properly.

00:23:31.960 If they're surrounded by red lines and sacred cows, we're just not going to be able to attain the kind of progress we want.

00:23:38.540 And that's kind of why sort of one of the points in the book is really that we have a kind of choice between cultural socialism and cultural flourishing.

00:23:46.620 Just the way we had a choice in the Cold War between economic socialism, which was about some kind of perfect equality, leveling things down, and emiserization.

00:23:56.200 And so we're heading towards a kind of cultural emiserization, and we really have to find a way of sort of making sound moral arguments that would push back against that.

00:24:05.940 One of the chapters you explore considerably in the book, and it actually times when we're having this interview, is the residential schools debate in Canada.

00:24:17.000 Now, this is the third anniversary of the claim of hundreds of unmarked graves for which there has been no further advancing of that claim beyond what was made three years ago.

00:24:27.180 And when you talk about sacred cows, this is probably the most acute and illustrative example in Canada of an issue in which all of the things that we would do of any other claims of this nature have not happened and will not happen.

00:24:42.120 And while there's been a little bit more of an openness by the media to ask some of these questions, it's still relatively confined in scope to people I could list and count on one hand in Canadian media.

00:24:54.620 And I was curious if you could just take your thoughts on wokeness or cultural socialism in general and apply that to this debate in Canada.

00:25:05.040 Yeah, I mean, well, it's a sort of prime example.

00:25:07.720 It's almost exhibit A, even more than the George Floyd moment in the U.S., that what you have here is sensitivity to not offending a particular sacred group.

00:25:21.460 And it's sort of the mainstream society that's made them sacred, actually.

00:25:26.000 But an unwillingness to offend that group is more important than truth, is more important than freedom of expression, for example.

00:25:32.760 And this is a perfect illustration of that particular tradeoff.

00:25:36.340 And what it obscures is what Jonathan Rauch at the Brookings Institute calls the truth-based order.

00:25:43.940 And what we've seen is on the gender issue, some of the politicians are now willing to challenge claims around truth, around gender, for example,

00:25:55.280 and to actually start to push back a little bit on the trans activist position.

00:26:00.780 So we've seen Blaine Higgs in New Brunswick and Scott Moe in Saskatchewan and Daniel Smith in Alberta, although we haven't seen Premier Ford in Ontario.

00:26:09.740 But what we haven't seen anything any of is a willingness to actually challenge the national narrative that's been installed by the left and through the Indigenous residential schools question.

00:26:21.840 And in fact, there were people on the left who sort of were saying after George Floyd that we would love to have something like a George Floyd moment.

00:26:29.680 And this provided it.

00:26:30.900 It provides power to the left to deconstruct the established Canadian national identity.

00:26:37.120 So I guess the question for the political class, we have seen some in the media, yourself, True North has been immensely important in this.

00:26:45.380 The National Post has been important in this.

00:26:47.360 But what we haven't seen is any sort of willingness among the political class to actually now start to say we made a mistake.

00:26:55.340 Actually, truth is important.

00:26:57.280 Actually, national cohesion and identity is important.

00:27:00.260 And we are actually going to take a stand.

00:27:01.940 And I think the public will be behind them because, as I showed, I mean, in this survey that I conducted for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, you know, Canadians by a two to one margin do not want Sir John A. Macdonald's statues to be removed.

00:27:14.400 They support the existing narrative of national identity and they don't like what's happening.

00:27:20.340 So I think if some politicians had the courage, as on the gender issue, to make the first move, who is going to be the Blaine Higgs on the residential schools question in Canadian politics?

00:27:31.260 I think whoever does make that move is going to find a lot of support.

00:27:35.280 Now, if they continue to not have the courage to do that, I think I can't see where Canada avoids growing deep in polarization.

00:27:43.980 Because without a unifying narrative, which unifies the past and the present, there's just no way to build the cohesion, particularly in a country that has increasing numbers of splits, large-scale immigration, without anything to assimilate into, I think Canada's headed for trouble. 0.81

00:27:59.680 So as we conclude on this topic in general, let me ask you, Eric, about the motivation question.

00:28:08.780 Because I do believe, and perhaps I'm overly naive, that there are people that genuinely believe they are doing something important.

00:28:15.600 They're not motivated by hatred.

00:28:17.020 They genuinely believe that there is racism, sexism, whatever phobias, and that this is a way to respond to that.

00:28:24.780 I also believe there are people that very cynically want control.

00:28:27.940 They want to control society.

00:28:29.860 They want to control the debate.

00:28:31.040 They want to use this tool to achieve a particular political outcome.

00:28:34.940 There are probably other stages along the way there.

00:28:37.720 But what's the breakdown?

00:28:39.140 How many of the operatives of this cultural socialism, to use your term, are pure of heart, if you will?

00:28:48.360 Well, I actually think it is higher.

00:28:50.760 Well, when I say pure of heart, I think most of them genuinely believe it.

00:28:54.460 And I say that because I've conducted surveys, for example, of academic faculty, but also of the wider public.

00:29:02.100 And, you know, if we just take the academic faculty, for example, no one's looking over their shoulder to see whether they tick the right box.

00:29:09.500 And they're still expressing, as I mentioned, you know, two to one support for mandatory diversity statements.

00:29:14.880 They support political correctness by a margin of almost four to one.

00:29:19.140 I think there is this what's happened is you've had a number of layers, this idea of equality of outcome for identity groups.

00:29:26.780 This view that there just should be an even distribution across male, female, across white, non-white in desired occupations. 0.52

00:29:34.120 And if we haven't got that, there's something wrong.

00:29:36.420 I just don't think that's questioned by a lot of left liberals, not the cultural Marxist radicals, but the left liberal group, which I really think is the key group.

00:29:44.840 And similarly, when it comes to sensitivity, there's no real firewall on how sensitive we should be.

00:29:51.480 It's always more.

00:29:53.420 And I think just these kinds of basic impulses have really driven attitudes amongst this group.

00:29:59.840 And so I just don't I don't think it's cynical power manipulation.

00:30:02.700 Really, I really think it is genuine belief.

00:30:05.220 And this gets down to a kind of a point that Jonathan Haidt makes, which and Greg Lukianoff, this idea of always trust your feelings.

00:30:11.720 You know, people feel these moral emotions, which is what guides them, but they don't actually question where those moral emotions stem from.

00:30:19.320 And those emotions really stem from a cultural learning process and an ideological process, which I don't think a lot of left leaning Westerners have really examined.

00:30:31.160 And I think if they do examine them, they'll realize that there is sort of a when it comes to culture, left liberalism, the progressivism doesn't really have any limits, any guardrails.

00:30:43.560 It does on economics.

00:30:44.620 I think there's a check, you know, left liberals believe in the free market.

00:30:48.220 They also believe in state intervention and they believe in a mixed capitalist dispensation.

00:30:52.640 But when it comes to culture, there's just an unbounded desire for more equity, more inclusion, more diversity.

00:30:58.120 And I don't think they've really thought through that those things have overshot the optimum.

00:31:02.940 And I think that's what we're living through is a kind of overshooting of the optimum on a lot of these progressive values and how we come back from that.

00:31:10.200 I think will be the story really of the coming decades.

00:31:13.300 The book offers a very cogent diagnosis, but also a 12-point plan, as the subtitle says, for rolling back progressive extremism.

00:31:23.160 So for people that feel very consumed by this, people that feel very overwhelmed by this, what's the first step?

00:31:30.180 Well, the first step, I believe, is actually that conservative politicians need to raise the salience of this issue.

00:31:38.900 This issue has to become more important for conservative parties and politicians.

00:31:43.300 And if that means that you may not be able to spend as much time talking about economics and foreign policy, I actually think this is a absolutely central issue for voters as well.

00:31:54.300 That has to come first.

00:31:55.480 And then government's actually government, which is the only institution that the sort of two-thirds majority that isn't woke in Canada or the U.S. or Britain, that is the only institution they can hope to control.

00:32:08.340 And what that means is the elected government is going to reform all of the institutions, schools, for example, the civil service, even the selection of the judiciary has to become something where there's more attention paid to cultural ramifications.

00:32:24.280 What are the flags and emblems flown on government buildings on public property?

00:32:28.700 All of that has to become, I think, more important because it's as if I use the example of, you know, imagine every flag in Canada was changed to the Chinese flag.

00:32:37.920 And you could say it doesn't matter because things would go on as usual.

00:32:41.580 Nothing really would be affected materially.

00:32:44.220 But this is a massive shift, right?

00:32:47.880 None of us would question that.

00:32:49.300 And yet, somehow, when we change the ethos in our institutions, in the schools, that's not seen as a big deal.

00:32:55.640 Just focus on the economic, the health care, et cetera.

00:32:58.060 I think that's a mistake.

00:32:59.200 I think that there has to be more attention now paid to neglected cultural issues by conservatives.

00:33:05.300 And that's really where this starts.

00:33:07.260 And hopefully, we'll see with Polyev, hopefully this is the beginning of that change.

00:33:12.680 The book, The Third Awokening, a 12-point plan for rolling back progressive extremism.

00:33:18.680 The author, the Canadian-born professor, Eric Kaufman.

00:33:22.860 Eric, good to talk to you.

00:33:23.680 Thanks so much.

00:33:24.180 And congratulations on the book.

00:33:26.060 Thanks, as always, Andrew.

00:33:27.520 All right.

00:33:27.920 All the best to you.

00:33:28.980 That does it for us.

00:33:29.960 For today, we will be back next week with more of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:33:34.120 Back in the studio, this is The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:33:36.740 Thank you.

00:33:37.260 God bless.

00:33:37.820 And good day to you all.

00:33:39.140 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:33:41.140 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - May 30, 2024

Can wokeness be defeated？

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