Oh Dear, Toby

Toby Young, a rabid right political commentator and agitator, has been crowing over the resignation of the Chairman of the National Trust, Tim Parker, who resigned because he stayed on longer than his allotted term because of the Covid Pandemic.

Young maintains Parker resigned because his petition to remove Parker for the crime of Wokeness had been a victory, despite attracting no more than 50 signatures among the 6m NT members. If that's a victory, it's one of Dunkerquesque proportions.

Young Tweeted; “Let’s hope this sends a message to the heads of other national institutions who pander to anti-British, leftwing activists and ignore their patriotic, small c conservative members: Get Woke, Go Broke.” What an arrogant little man! So he and his ignorant ilk are the only true patriots? This can only lead to one place - a very dark one of Trumpian proportions. He may be howling at the moon from atop a gatepost, but there are those with bulldog avatars and swastika tattoos who lap it up.

The War on Woke is taking a few outliers and generalising them as typical - cherry picking is the technical term, or generalising from the specific. Woke is being aware to social injustice - poverty, inequality, racism, sexism, etc.

If I were to ask you whether these issues concerned you, I guarantee that under pressure you'd say they do - to do otherwise would remove your right to call yourself human or caring. However, that makes you just as Woke as me, no matter how you try to divert attention from your own ideology's failures by railing against imaginary enemies, protecting statues of people you've never heard of, worshipping flags, banging on about patriotism while behaving like a proto-fascist or whitewashing our history to eliminate the nastier, but historically accurate bits. 

The political right has been an abject failure at protecting us from real enemies and therefore invents enemies to protect us from - the usual tactic of the demagogue when he's floundering in a sea of incompetence of his own creation. Scapegoats must be found, whether they're Jews, Muslims, people of a difference colour, the poor, immigrants, countries better off than yours, the left, the National Trust - anyone will do. When you can't admit you're lying to yourself, you've lost the argument - with yourself. You can't explain stupid as anything other than stupid.

It's a pity that those who venerate the inanimate don't have as much concern for the animate.