"For many, the officers’ decision to immediately accept Vickrum Digwa’s version of events was grim evidence of the “two-tier” justice system that has evolved, thanks to a state obsession with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) above all else...
What Farage and Badenoch appear to understand is that two distinct forces are combining to raise the political significance of white identity in Britain – anti-white discrimination, and an anxiety among conservative white voters about the country’s rapidly changing demographics.
Discrimination against white people in Britain has become a byproduct of woke ideology, which I define as the making sacred of historically marginalised race, gender and sexual identities. This reached a fever pitch between 2015 and the early 2020s, having been rocket-boosted in 2020 by Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd, which included the toppling of statues and the overhaul of museum displays.
Today, it is encapsulated by the prioritisation of the concept of “equity” over “equality”, both in policing and elsewhere.
This became institutionalised in public and private organisations in the form of DEI policies. Instead of treating everyone equally, DEI seeks to engineer equal outcomes by favouring protected groups. It takes inspiration from the critical race theory slogan that “disparities equal discrimination”, and prefers a colour-conscious approach to a colourblind one.
Instead of protecting all groups equally, DEI results in minorities, but not whites, being insulated by “hate speech” laws and corporate or university codes banning offensive speech. This also infringes on the freedom of expression of “privileged” groups, such as white people and men.
While the law and public morality still claim to treat everyone the same, the reality is that critical theories of systemic racism, sexism and gender identity have deeply penetrated Britain’s legal system, institutions, social norms and public sensitivities. Thus, sections 158 and 159 of the 2010 Equality Act permit institutions to engage in “positive action” to hire and promote members of protected groups.
The same legislation, introduced under Gordon Brown, enlarged the definition of discrimination to include radical “systemic” definitions, including so-called “indirect” forms, meaning that companies could be sued for policies which are applied in the same way for everyone, but are said to disadvantage a particular group. The Equality Act also introduced a legal duty on public bodies to not just protect against discrimination, but to promote non-discrimination and “foster good relations... between people who have a protected characteristic and those who do not”.
This served as the justification for HR professionals and lobby groups to force DEI into companies, charities, schools, the NHS and other public bodies. While the legislation mentions that steps to combat discrimination should be “proportionate”, in practice, its spirit gave a green light to activists within organisations to start calling the shots. Banding together in identity-based “affinity groups” and DEI committees, and with the assistance of politically extreme DEI consultants and lobby groups such as Stonewall, they implemented their own expansive interpretations of the Equality Act.
Woke ideology dominates the ethos of numerous institutions, including universities, schools, the BBC, the NHS, the Civil Service and a growing number of law firms. A recent study found that up to 90 per cent of staff in UK public bodies surveyed using the centre-Left More in Common’s “Hidden Tribes” questionnaire were from the “progressive activist” segment of the population, which makes up just 10 per cent of society at large. Other organisations that have fielded the same survey have been so embarrassed by the skewed results that they have destroyed the data. The prestige of progressive extremism among the highly educated, who dominate human resources and public-facing roles, means that this ideology has even penetrated the upper reaches of institutions not dominated by university graduates, such as the police and military.
Progressive staff hire each other and form echo chambers where their sense of reality departs from social norms. Only when scandals break the surface, as with the Nowak murder, the leaked report into BBC bias or universities advertising positions where white men are prohibited from applying, does woke capture become visible to the public.
While culture-war issues roil the newspapers, they have yet to decide British elections. However, the woke and anti-woke divide over race is emerging as a critical divide in British politics, predicting whether someone votes for a party of the Right or of the Left. That split is highlighted by fresh polling that I conducted this week on the Prolific survey platform, of around 500 British voters...
While young people and minorities are more politically correct regardless of ideology, voting intention is by far the strongest predictor of views on this question.
All voters are empathetic, but the object of their affections differs. I asked respondents about their sympathies for four different types of people: a person who feels like an outsider in Britain because they are in the racial minority; a person who feels a loss of community because Britain has been changed by immigration; a white British person who feels that there is a double standard in which all groups apart from white people are socially permitted to express their identity and defend their group interests; and an ethnic-minority person who feels that it is harder for non-white people to get accepted for a job or a property rental...
While race appears to be central to the above story, the differences between white and non-white voters are less stark than the divide between white progressives and white conservatives over which groups deserve sympathy. Racial groups thus function as symbols within a menu of ideological attachments. Progressives are warm toward minorities and Leftists, and cooler toward whites and men. Conservatives are more likely to feel affection for whites, Right-wingers and men, and, while friendly toward minorities, are less sympathetic toward claims of race and gender inequality...
It is not apparent that race is more salient than ideology, especially on the Right. Indeed, the “two-tier” charge blends concern over how racial groups are treated (whites versus blacks or Muslims) with ideological groups (police reacting harshly to Right-wing marches while coddling Left-wing climate or pro-Palestine demonstrations)...
The question of equal treatment without special privileges, as distinct from affirmative action quotas, taps a distinct set of attitudes on the Right that might be termed “classical liberal”. Group privileges are seen as violating an ethic of equal treatment, fairness and individual responsibility. This attitude dimension is heavily associated with identifying with Right-wing and centre-Right parties in all Western countries. On the other hand, those who believe that special protection for minorities is necessary to overcome discrimination and inequality orient toward Left-wing parties and beliefs.
Will the Nowak case upend politics or decide the Makerfield by-election? Not necessarily. “Two-tier” policing, as with culture wars more broadly, still sit relatively low on British voters’ priority lists. In my survey, 68 per cent of Reform voters rank immigration as a top-two issue from a list of 13, while 38 per cent say the same about the cost of living. Only 13 per cent rate “two-tier policing” among their top two issues. Immigration is the main motivating issue for the populist Right.
Concern about anti-white, anti-male or anti-conservative discrimination is common among such voters, and is bound up with their political ideology and party identification, but is not top of mind.
Incidents in which woke “anti-racism” results in disaster – as with the grooming gangs, Manchester Arena bombing, Nottingham stabbings, Southport murders and Nowak tragedy – tend to be narrated differently in Left and Right echo chambers. Already, the British progressive establishment is talking about Nowak as a regrettable incident of knife crime, which is being exploited by the “far-Right”.
When confronted with the George Floyd example, Left-wing politicians and activists protest that he was killed by the police, so the examples cannot be compared. As with terrorism, these incidents reinforce existing loyalties, but tend not to dramatically shift the electoral landscape...
Research shows that far-Right violence tends to be lower when populists do well in the polls because there is an electoral outlet for their frustrations. Political violence, whether in Northern Ireland prior to the rise of Sinn Fein as a party, or in contemporary England, is greater when there is no democratic safety valve for grievances. If Reform were in power, there is a reasonable chance that the Southport riots would not have taken place. And with Farage giving voice to the views of the demonstrators, they are more likely to feel that they are being heard, and thus less likely to riot.
Badenoch is also wrong about the prospect of civil war because white conservative grievances are primarily oriented against progressive whites rather than minorities, while the rise of populist parties gives voice to popular discontent.
This does not mean that there isn’t a problem. After all, what the Nowak case shows is that the culture war is not some trivial tempest in the campus teacup. The woke cultural revolution that has been rolling through our elite institutions is profoundly destabilising, divisive and dangerous. The progressive establishment runs interference for the cultural revolutionaries by pretending that innocuous-sounding labels such as “anti-racism”, “trans rights” and “inclusion” mean what they say on the tin, with those opposing the revolutionaries smeared as “stoking a culture war”.
The dual phenomena of demographic anxiety among white voters, and the perception that the system is slanted against them, has the potential to forge a powerful electoral bloc. Concerns about rapidly changing demographics, abetted by an elite which is unwilling to listen to restrictionist voters, exacerbate the sense of injustice created by the cascading effects of woke ideology. As the white British decline in number, demographic anxiety is likely to rise, while the willingness of a self-assured majority to grant extra privileges to minorities declines. This makes it all the more imperative not to fan the flames of populist resentment by implementing woke cultural socialism in our institutions.
Criticism of DEI is not divisive – suppressing criticism is. To stand any chance of tackling this problem head-on, the cultural questions about changing society in the name of anti-racism or inclusion must be dealt with openly, not behind closed institutional doors. The ideas that equity should trump equality, and that some groups deserve special rights, run counter to what most British people believe.
Woke is not some arcane intellectual pastime – it has powerful real-world effects. It is imperative that those who believe in freedom, truth and cohesion resist its pernicious effects on the elite institutions that govern much of our lives."
Muslim rage is proof that we need to crack down on "Islamophobia" and arrest the "far right". White rage is proof that we need to crack down on "white supremacy" and arrest the "far right".
Time to ban Reform, because it's a Danger to Democracy for a "far right" party to get into government. Riots are only the language of the unheard when they push the left wing agenda.
If you believe in equal treatment without special privileges (i.e. a Classical Liberal), you are now a dangerous far right extremist.
Organisations only need to represent society demographically when that pushes the left wing agenda. Organisations being full of progressive activists is good, because progressive activists are virtuous and push good policies.
"Empathy" is good - but only for groups the left approves of. Hating white people and men is good because they are evil.
If you oppose the left's attempts to radically remake society, you are the villain for stoking a culture war. If you push the left's attempts to radically remake society, you are a decent human being doing the right thing and are not being political at all.