Manchester – Warrioring against Woke
Head Warrior Barry Wall led an animated discussion about pushing back against woke culture in the education system.
On Wednesday 28th February 2024, the Manchester group met at the Welcome Inn, Bury Old Road, Whitefield, M45 6TA, Manchester. See here for location.
Introduction
Woke culture seems to be all around us – descending top down from Environmental, Social and Governance policies in corporations, and bottom up from the young via indoctrination in the education system. It seems to be a middle class phenomenon centred around academia vs non-academia, and narcissistic compassion.
We were joined by our guest speaker, Barry Wall, to discuss whether children and young people in UK schools and universities are being educated in the traditional sense or indoctrinated by ‘woke’ culture manifesting itself as Equity, Diversity and Inclusion policies and values.
Equity, Diversion and Inclusion (EDI)
Barry described how policies aimed at enhancing a culture of ‘equality of opportunity’ created useful outcomes like preventing recruitment panels from asking female job applicants about their pregnancy intentions. However, they have since morphed into an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion template based on ‘woke’ Critical Social Justice Theory and ideologies.
The EDI template can be applied to businesses, public institutions and educational establishments. Its effect is to skew normal activities away from accomplishment and status through merit and authenticity, towards a reverence for victimhood and transfer of power to ‘oppressed minorities’. Box-ticking, virtue signalling, identity politics are commonplace symptoms of this.
Barry believes that EDI cuts across politics and boils down to “freedom versus authoritarianism.” He sees his mission as one to eradicate wokeness wherever he sees it and enable others to do the same. Just what exactly are miscreant and ne’er-do-well professors and the educational establishment teaching our young people?
Drag Queen Story Time
Drag Queens belong in an adult environment, where they provide adult entertainment. Drag Queens are not appropriate for under-18s – yet they are being invited to perform in schools and libraries to read stories to children, including infants. Barry explained how the stories in question are ‘queered’ – teaching children that Grandma is bad and the wolf is good. Its effect is to undermine traditional storytelling and parental narrative. The latter serve to protect young children by teaching them to fear the ‘wolf’ – i.e. those who may do them harm – until the parental leash can be let out as children become older and more able to judge people and situations for themselves. Queering the story risks confusing this message and leaving children more vulnerable.
Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE)
PSHE lessons are taught in primary and secondary schools. Activist teachers encourage schools to employ external companies to teach PSHE for them. Children are encouraged by these guest speakers to look at themselves and life through the lens of the four pillars of Critical Social Justice Theory: Critical Race Theory, Queer theory, Gender Theory and Environmentalism. The four pillars aspire to disable traditional family values and Christian values, replacing them with a prism of power and oppression.
Such an approach is clearly at odds with the teachings of psychologist Jean Piaget – whose theories of child development still inform the professional training of educational staff. He theorised that children do not develop scientific reasoning until thirteen years of age. If Piaget was right, children are not cognitively ready for Critical Social Justice ideologies which are designed to upend traditional teachings.
For example, children learn that biological sex is a binary matter (i.e. boy/girl, man/woman). Gender identity is something completely different and has no place in education with children who are not developmentally ready to apply scientific reasoning to concepts which appear to contradict scientific fact. Yet this and other ‘adult’ material is creeping into lessons and the everyday world.
To make matters worse, some schools have refused to share PSHE lesson content with parents: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/20/sex-education-crisis-schools/
Affinity Groups
In Barry’s view, this kind of teaching, the setting up in schools of ‘affinity groups’ to elevate and reward with power pupils who identify with ‘oppressed minorities’ like LGBTQ+ and BAME characteristics contradicts the Public Sector Equality Duty. This duty requires due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it. In woke culture, victimhood is celebrated, used to divide, and is revered as ‘holiness’. The woke culture’s focus towards making mental illness ‘normal’, is, in reality, a mental health sales drive.
Professor Eric Kaufman
Barry lauded the launch of the new Centre of Heterodox Social Science set up by Professor Eric Kaufman at the University of Buckingham, with its new Master’s course on the Politics of Cultural Conflict, exploring the interplay between the woke left and populist right. A statement on the university’s website says: “The Centre of Heterodox Social Science will be guided by the values of autonomy, independence, and freedom in academia and freedom of speech. The US has some 150 research centres with a classical liberal ethos, until today nothing of this kind existed in Britain“:
Equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome
EDI should mean that everyone has the right to be left alone. The Equality Act 2010 protects equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. Opportunities should not be enhanced or diminished purely because of diversity criteria. In the real world, it is much better to recruit pilots on merit because they are the best at flying aeroplanes rather than pilots who satisfy diversity criteria but are less competent. EDI has the detrimental effect of skewing recruitment and knocking out expertise in favour of diversity targets, just to tick EDI boxes.
For example, the UK Research and Innovation Fund (administering £7.9 billion academic funding) requires that bids must have 20% EDI content (like recruitment targets such as 30% women, 20% gay etc), which reduces the size of the talent pool and makes it harder to recruit the best candidates.
House-buying and car ownership for the young are the real crises – and they are being neglected.
Too much Mummy and not enough Daddy
Barry believes that the rapid onslaught of woke culture is having some terrible consequences on children. He argues that this is especially true of liberal middle class mothers feeling the need to virtue signal their ability to ‘be kind’ by persuading their children they are ‘Trans’. Backing down from this position would mean admitting the damage they have inflicted on their own off-spring – beware the compassionate narcissist! Barry’s view is that there is no such thing as a Trans child, only a child in distress. He suggests the solution may have to be the commencement of lawsuits against health professionals and hospitals who have busied themselves with ‘trans-ing the Gay away’ and enabled children to be harmed in the process.
Advice for Warriors
Warrior thinking doesn’t mean making people think you are right, but that they ‘might’ be wrong (at the end of the day, the urge to acknowledge reality is strong).
Fight the woke culture wherever you see it as long as it doesn’t affect your stability.
Avoid engaging with woke activists on social media.
Ask questions in a Socratic manner.
As a consumer, question evidence of woke ideology and vote with your feet (see woke culture in companies like Pets at Home, Wickes, John Lewis).
Who is Barry Wall?
You can find out more about Barry from his social media presence:
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@edijester
Twitter/X: @headwarriorTWM.
You can also find out about a course Barry has designed here.
Forthcoming dates
Wednesday 13th March 2024 7pm
Event with Mahyar Tousi – come celebrate Tousi TV reaching 400k subscribers with Mayhar and likeminded freedom fighters in central Manchester. Tickets available from Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tousi-tv-400k-subscribers-event-tickets-853727049587
Sunday 17th March 2024 2pm
Cancelling Cancel Culture presents ‘One Man’s Fight Against Cancel Culture’. You probably haven’t heard of Sean Corby, but everyone should know his name as he scored a huge victory for Free Speech. Please join us at the Briton’s Protection, Manchester.
Wednesday 27th March 2024 7.30pm
Politics in Pubs Manchester presents ‘We Need To Talk About Immigration’. Our guest speaker, Hilary Salt will argue that we need to find ways to talk with others about immigration in a measured, rational and open way. Please join us at The Welcome Inn, Whitefield, Manchester.
https://politicsinpubs.org.uk/manchester-immigration-and-social-mobility/
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