The crusade against the "woke" movement reached Europe (Analysis)

They denounce racial discrimination in the English royal house 1:29

(CNN) -

If calls for racial equality were renewed in 2020 at the same time as the Black Lives Matter protests broke out across Europe, in 2021 there was a backlash when some sectors of the political class waged the so-called "war against the woke ".

Stripped of its original meaning as an awakened person to progressive issues and its origins in America's black communities, "woke" (similar to being awake) has become a political lightning rod in the culture wars of the West.

It is now used pejoratively by legislators and experts from both the left and the right, criticizing the perceived excesses of movements for social and racial justice.

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The politicization of the word, which has had some success in the United States, has reinforced political resistance to calls for greater equality in Europe.

The term has also been interpreted differently, depending on where it is used.

In the UK, woke is used to "describe everything that could previously be called 'politically correct'", according to Evan Smith, visiting professor at Australia's Flinders University and author of "No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism and Limits of freedom of expression, "he told CNN.

The term "is used to describe a wide range of ideas [and] movements related to social justice," such as anti-racism, intersectional feminism, transgender rights and critical stories of the British Empire, she said.

Nigel Farage hosts a prime-time show on GB News, a British television channel launched in June 2021 with the promise of challenging the "woke" worldview.

Cultural institutions and academics have been targeted by members of the Conservative Party, currently in power, for supporting these movements.

In September, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman accused a charity created in the name of Winston Churchill of trying to "make up" the "gigantic achievements" of the former war leader.

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The charity mistake?

Being accused in the right-wing tabloids of being "woke", for changing her name from Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to The Churchill Fellowship and acknowledging that Churchill's views on race would not be accepted today.

"The prime minister has always been clear that while it is legitimate to examine the history of Britain, we must try to educate people about all aspects of our complex past, both good and bad, and not erase them," the spokesman said at the time. , according to PA Media. "We have to focus on addressing the present, and not trying to rewrite the past and get swept up in the endless debate over which known historical figures are pure enough or politically correct enough to remain in public opinion."

These government interventions against the woke movement have power.

"They sharpen the public's moral sense and help galvanize voters in a country they perceive as under siege," Nesrine Malik wrote in the center-left newspaper The Guardian in October.

"They include the underfunding of academic institutions and museums, and even interference in the appointment of managers at the BBC."

Woke is seen by many in traditional French quarters as an egregious American importation of theories about race, postcolonialism and gender, which they say pose a risk to French values ​​and identity, said Samuel Hayat, a policy researcher. at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), to CNN.

A protester holds a banner on the Champ de Mars in Paris on June 6, 2020, as part of the Black Lives Matter protests in the city.

The term gained traction among French politicians and their press in 2021, French observers say.

In May, Elizabeth Moreno, Diversity Minister for French President Emmanuel Macron's party, told Bloomberg that "Woke culture is a very dangerous thing, and we should not bring it to France."

When asked in August by the political weekly Le Point if "Wokism [is] a just cause, in your opinion," the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who is the Socialist candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, said: "It is very It is important for journalists to shed light on these emerging movements, but I will not campaign on them. "

When a leading French dictionary included a gender-inclusive pronoun in its online edition in November, French lawmaker François Jolivet of Macron's party called the authors of the dictionary on Twitter "militants of a cause that has nothing to do with France. : #wokisme ".

"Woke is seen as a threat that comes from a society that is thought to be multicultural and violent and does not have the same values ​​on secularism as France," Hayat said.

The word plays against the egalitarian and anti-elitist mentality of the French, Hayat said, putting all the theories that someone would struggle to understand, such as intersectional feminism, "into a single phenomenon that comes from outside France."

As Franco-American relations plummeted this fall over a security agreement the United States secretly forged with the United Kingdom and Australia, French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer launched a think tank to defend the French values ​​against what he described as "Wokeism."

Speaking to the French newspaper Le Monde about his think tank, Blanquer said that "Wokeism" is an ideology that "fragments and divides, and has conquered certain political, media and academic circles."

He added that the reaction to "Wokeism" helped "bring Donald Trump to power; France and its youth must escape this."

A new fear grows in Europe around the woke movement

According to Rim-Sarah Alouane, a French legal scholar at the University of the Capitol in Toulouse, the arrival of the Woke movement in France's culture wars is part of a broader reaction among members of Macron's party, La République en Marche (LREM). , against leftist and progressive views, which reappears after the brutal murder of Professor Samuel Paty in October 2020.

French President Emmanuel Macron is seen at a press conference on December 13, 2021, months before the country's presidential elections.

Paty's death occurred after multiple Islamic terrorist attacks on French soil.

But the French government's response to his beheading opened a large-scale culture war on secularism, free speech and Islamophobia, as the country's interior minister shut down a Muslim group that tracked hate crimes against Muslims.

That period also saw "Islamo-Leftism" - a controversial but ill-defined far-right term that accuses academics and left-wing activists of allowing extremism or Islamic terrorism - entered the mainstream political discourse when Education Minister Blanquer He blamed him for "wreaking havoc" on the universities.

It was backed by 100 academics who, in an open letter to Le Monde, blamed imported "indigenist [sic], racialist and 'decolonial' ideologies" in French universities for "fueling hatred of 'whites' and France."

In early 2021, French Higher Education Minister Frédérique Vidal announced the launch of an investigation into French academic research on CNews, a French channel that has been compared to Fox News.

It would look at "everything through the prism of wanting to fracture and divide", pointing to colonialism and racial studies, according to Agence France-Presse.

The French research organization Vidal, charged with launching the investigation, agreed to carry it out.

However, he noted that Islamism was not a scientific term and condemned "attempts to delegitimize different fields of research, such as postcolonial studies, intersectional studies," wrote the Center national de la recherche scientifique [CRNS] in a press release. .

Confusing academics and researchers with Islamic extremism amounts to McCarthyism, Alouane said, referring to US Senator Joe McCarthy's anti-communist crusade in the early 1950s.

The Boris Johnson government has announced plans to combat the so-called "cancellation culture" in UK universities.

Weaponizing the woke movement is another attempt to subdue academics, researchers and human rights activists, critics say.

"This is a witch hunt against people who question the status quo," Alouane added.

"Rather than trying to make things better, addressing issues related to discrimination, racial profiling and the history of French colonization ... these academics [and] researchers are seen as a threat to so-called republican values."

It also raises questions about academic freedoms, Hayat told CNN.

France has nothing more to do with how Hungarian leaders have gradually curtailed its educational sector, banning gender studies in faculties and forcing the Central European University (CEU) to leave the country for not conforming to its nationalist vision of the world.

While crude racial stereotypes about genetics and skin color are frowned upon in mainstream contemporary discourse, terms like Wokeism and Islamo-leftism serve to reinforce slogans such as "They don't belong in our culture. They don't respect our Christian values," Alouane said. to CNN.

"It's just neo-racism."

The speech against the Woke movement comes a few months before the presidential elections in France, where the main ideological threat to Macron comes from the right and the far right, not the so-called Woke left, Alouane said.

According to some polls, Macron could end up facing the far-right leader of the National Grouping, Marine Le Pen, or the right-wing candidate of Les Républicains, Valérie Pécresse, in the second round of the elections.

The anti-Woke rhetoric may be part of an effort to neutralize Macron's right-wing opponents.

It's an effort that Alouane finds ironic.

"The funny thing is that, if a far-right candidate reaches the second round, we will be told to save the Republic against the far-right, although this government has been playing with far-right ideologies all the time," he said.

Chilling Effects of the Anti Woke Crusade in Europe

As in France, many experts claim that the British government's crusade against the far right is aimed at obtaining electoral benefits.

British Home Secretary Priti Patel accused England's national soccer team of "gesture politics" for kneeling before matches.

Aided by right-wing elements of the British media, the Johnson government has used the so-called "war on the woke" as an opportunity to score points with its largely English, Brexit-supported electorate, some of whom have changed allegiance since the opposition Labor Party in the 2019 general election.

"It is fertile territory for conservatives as they are pushing a button that has been pushed a few decades ago when it comes to [the allegations of] political correctness," said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University, to CNN.

It also puts Labor in a difficult position as its leader, Keir Starmer, tries to "shake off the 'far left' label" that the party won over its predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, said author Evan Smith.

Johnson's culture war highlights the division of the Labor Party, among its socially conservative members, who think the party is too preoccupied with identity politics, rather than class politics, and its younger and more diverse base, which she's glad Starmer is doing more, experts say.

History has been the main battlefield on which the Conservative government opposes patriotism to any attempt to acknowledge Britain's colonial past.

It is a narrative that has developed in the education sector, which has seen a government-elected commission publish a report on race rejecting calls to "decolonize" the British curriculum. Instead, he advocates "a new story about the Caribbean experience that tells of the slavery period not just the benefits and the suffering, but how the African people were culturally transformed into a reshaped Africa / British."

"British history is not solely that of imperial imposition: Commonwealth history and literature reveal a more complex picture, in which ideas traveled in multiple directions, cultures mixed and positive relationships were formed that today underpin the diaspora across the world, of which many ethnic minority children in the UK will feel a part, "the report says. Critics accused the report of being a facelift that puts a positive spin on slavery.

Speaking in the House of Commons last year, Equality Minister Kemi Badenoch said that "any school that teaches these elements of critical race theory as fact, or promotes partisan political views, such as the By defunding the police, without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, you are breaking the law. "

This woman denounces a case of discrimination in Lima 4:16

The government has spared no threats of intervention when cultural institutions follow progressive causes.

If "they get too woke, they can break down," Conservative Party Chairman Oliver Dowden said in October, reiterating his warning that those institutions could lose funding if they give in to "an aggressive brigade" of social justice activists.

In the past 18 months, the heritage charity National Trust has faced threats of funding cuts from conservative lawmakers for exploring its properties' links to slavery and colonialism, and the Royal Museums in Greenwich, London. , found themselves under scrutiny when the government refused to reappoint an administrator who advocated decolonization of the curricula.

The Museum Association, which represents thousands of people working in the sector, warned of "a climate of fear" among "museums and museum staff, especially those working on issues related to Britain's imperial past. "in response to a meeting in February between museums, heritage agencies and the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS], which Dowden was leading at the time.

"We support the right of all those who work on these issues to be free from interference, threats and intimidation," added the Association of Museums.

The BBC has also come under the scrutiny of conservative lawmakers who are calling for the removal of a license fee that finances the station.

"Many conservatives do not like the state funding the media, and they believe that the BBC displaces sympathetic stations," Bale said. "The whole anti woke agenda is to some extent a smokescreen for the BBC to move from one licensing model to one based on subscribers."

This environment can have a chilling effect on cultural institutions, which may feel compelled to think twice when approving programs or hiring. This is said to have happened at the BBC, when media executive Marcus Ryder's job application was allegedly blocked due to his support for anti-racism initiatives. BBC has strongly denied this information.

Supporting anti-racist causes should not be a fairness issue, Ryder told CNN. "What the BBC has to do is re-examine its [fairness] guidelines and decide how it should define 'controversial' and whether that can be independent of party politics," he said. "And it has to do with how this framing works with people whose own existence is outside of the 'normative standards', and this can be applied to gender, race, sexuality, etc."

A BBC spokesperson told CNN that "Fairness is a core value of the BBC and something that we apply to all of our news coverage." The spokesperson added: "The BBC plays an important role in informing and facilitating debate on issues of public concern, some of which are divisive. That said, the BBC is not impartial when it comes to racism or any other characteristic protected by law." .

The surveillance of institutions by warriors of culture acts as a way to undermine the real and lived experience of minorities.

It allows concerns about racism, transphobia or violence against women to be framed as being of no material interest to ordinary people, Neema Begum, a professor of British politics at the University of Nottingham, told CNN.

The long-term effect of this is just "more polarization," he added.

Demographic changes

Britain's crusade against the Woke sometimes borders on sham: From a "wakefulness" segment on GB News, a British television news channel that critics say was created to find an audience in the midst of culture wars, even a legislator who laments that officials continue to "be woke from home."

Nor have all the skirmishes against social justice movements been a victory for the government.

UK Home Affairs Minister Priti Patel accused the England football team of engaging in "gesture politics" by kneeling before their matches in protest against racism, and refused to condemn those who booed the players for doing so. .

But the tactic backfired when the country joined the team after some of its players suffered racist abuse online following England's defeat in the Euro 2020 final in July.

At the end of the Euro, polls showed that the majority of England football fans supported the team kneeling.

Black couple sue for discrimination after appraisal of their house 3:33

"You cannot stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labeling our anti-racist message as 'gesture policy' and then pretending to be disgusted when the same thing happens against what we campaign," wrote English footballer Tyrone Mings in a Twitter message on response to a tweet by Patel condemning post-final racism.

"It is clear that British public opinion cares a lot about the equality agenda, and it is very easy for that kind of mobilization [by the government] to backfire," Christopher Bertram, emeritus professor of social and political philosophy at the University of Bristol.

It also shows that while the anti-woke message works with its base, British society is becoming more multi-ethnic, tolerant and awake, Bale said.

"Conservatives are going to have to make a decision if they continue to rant against the way society is going," Bale said.

"The risk for them is long-term, as they alienate future [younger] voters, who they need to keep on their side," Bale added.

"There are a limited number of grumpy older white men who get turned on by this kind of thing."

Even Winston Churchill's grandson, Nicholas Soames, 73, has heard enough, calling the furor over the Churchill Trust "so sad and so pathetic" in an interview with the Times.

"Apparently, anyone who modernizes something or does something that remotely brings it up to date is 'woke,'" he said.

"This is absolute nonsense."

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