Wokeism is collapsing.
The most putrid ideology to ever inflict liberal democracies is finally crashing. The perpetrators, those silvertails who ponce about with their virtues offered to all and sundry as leading lights, have been exposed as the frauds they always were.
This includes the Teals, the Greens, the communist left of the Labor Party, and the most sickening of all, the left of the Liberal Party who are effectively traitors to Menzies’ forgotten people.
In America, Trump and Vance are emerging as Menzian in their outlook. What I mean by this is they are offering a more pragmatic policy platform that is not driven purely by ideology. The Coalition must follow Trump’s lead as it is only a matter of time before the reversal of the Woke trends in America hits our shores.
The rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia have upset the globalisation apple cart. While global free trade promised to end wars and global poverty, the return to nationalism is a reaction to those who hate the very idea of freedom. But freedom is something that must be learnt through the patient study of philosophy and the great books or what the late Harold Bloom referred to as the Western Canon.
Bloom was no leftie and he referred to those on the left who insist on hating all that is good about Western thought and the liberal tradition as the School of Resentment. Synonymous with this school are the Wokerati.
Freedom, or more appropriately, liberty, is a concept that relies on an educated populace. The Wokerati have been hell-bent on destroying education to become not a system for critical thinking and debate, but an orthodoxy of Wokeness. In the words of Milton in his Areopagitica:
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
The Wokerati have used our education system to stifle debate, silence critics, cancel writers they don’t like, and package their opinions as facts. This is exactly what dictators, who are antithetical to liberty, attempt to do. It may well explain why global free trade was unable to achieve the universal benefits it promised. Which brings me back to pragmatism.
Trump and Vance have captured the nationalist spirit and with it, America’s forgotten people. These are the people JD Vance speaks of in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. The similarities between Vance’s people and my own are remarkable. You may have to leave the big cities to find them, but they are the salt of the earth and the heart and soul of Australia.
Unlike big-city Millennials, the forgotten people would defend Australia with their last breath. The 98-year-old American second world war veteran who said that with Trump as commander in chief, he would ‘re-enlist and storm any beach America needs me to’ represents that spirit.
Trump is often referred to as a ‘populist’. This is not an endearing term but one that the Wokerati use to refer to ‘far right’ politicians (read: everyone right of socialism). Populism refers to a leader who represents the ‘forgotten people’ against the elites who are taking the piss out of the common people. The Wokerati in the US and Australia are these elites. Trump and Vance are taking up the challenge, and it is time the Coalition did, too.
While Australia and America are different political beasts, our politics are necessarily intertwined. Trump is already talking about 10 per cent tariffs on all imported goods and making America’s allies share the burden of the cost of defence. Trump is an expert negotiator so this might just be the starting point, but it does signal what will probably be in store for Australia after November.
The Albanese government has been all over the place and the hits just keep on coming. Albo has been weak on defence and weak in his support of the alliance with America. He has made Australia a leaner not a lifter in the security partnership with our most important ally.
The Coalition need to engage with the Trump-Vance team now. Pragmatism must be the aim and not ideology. I have argued elsewhere that Dutton’s nuclear policy will require a big government approach. Rather than seeing this as ‘unnatural’ for the Liberals, they have to go back to their Menzian roots and reinvent Menzies’ approach to the post-globalisation world we now live in.
This means capturing the hearts and minds of Australia’s forgotten people once more. Who would have thought two years ago that the Teals would prove such a failure, that the Albanese government would likely become a one-term government, or that Trump would be looking at becoming America’s 47th President?
The Wokerati are on the ropes, and Australians are fed up with our self-inflicted cost of living crisis and an education system producing uncritical, Woke automatons.
To win, the Coalition needs to develop a credible defence policy as a bargaining chip for Trump. We need this too, so it is no skin off our nose. But the Coalition also needs to develop a trade policy that will work with an isolationist America, as an insider rather than an outsider. This will be essential to our survival in the decades to come.
Trump’s choice of JD Vance as his running mate, as opposed to Trump’s security detail, is no diversity pick. Trump is not chasing Teals but America’s working class (read: the forgotten people).
The Teamster’s leader speaking at the Republican National Convention suggests there is tension in the labour ranks. Australia’s labour movement is in a similar position and these voters are screaming for political representation.
But most importantly, the Coalition needs to excise the Wokerati from their ranks. Chasing Teals is a waste of time. Winning the hearts and minds of the contemporary forgotten people, in Australia as in America, is the way to victory and an end to Woke nonsense.
Dr Michael de Percy@FlaneurPolitiqis a political scientist and political commentator. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILTA), and a Member of the Royal Society of NSW. He is National Vice President of the Telecommunications Association, Chairman of the ACT and Southern NSW Chapter of CILTA, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. Michael is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon and was appointed to the College of Experts at the Australian Research Council in 2022.
