I’m on my way to Australia for a tour hosted by Small Giants Academy! We’re kicking off with a preview screening of the upcoming Kainos documentary ‘Crossroads’ and a talk at the Byron Bay Theatre on Saturday 22nd of March - get your tickets here.
Having been ‘woke critical’ since 2016, in recent years I’ve felt increasingly vindicated as mainstream culture has pushed back against the institutionalisation of social justice theory.
The publication of the Cass Report in 2024 felt like the straw that broke the camel’s back here in the UK, and I wrote a piece about its implications which I think has stood the test of time.
However, I’ve felt increasingly uncomfortable with the recent pushback against DEI and other initiatives in the US. Not because I disagree with the need for reform, but because it feels like a new form of authoritarianism that throws the baby out with the bathwater. So I was relieved to read Helen Pluckrose’s recent articles about the rise of the Woke Right, in which she points out that
‘…a stark division is revealed between those who opposed wokeness primarily because it was authoritarian and being institutionalised and those who opposed it because it was the wrong kind of authoritarian and wanted to institutionalise something else…"
As a Classical Liberal and one of the masterminds behind the Grievance Studies Affair, Helen is uniquely placed to make these critiques, and we had a great conversation on Substack Live delving into this topic.
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