Celebrities can easily discredit ordinary people by living in gated compounds.
It’s so hard for them on the front line of fame – having monetised their very being and living a life of which most people can only dream.
The dafter ones use war metaphors. Gwyneth Paltrow said that reading negative things about herself and her friends was almost like the way in which war is conducted.
The rest of us ‘civilians,’ as Liz Hurley memorably described noncelebrities, don’t get it.
Showbiz people are always keen on saving the planet – but private jets don’t count because everybody knows that only dirty commercial flights cause pollution. It’s like eating food standing up.
In 2016, Leonardo DiCaprio flew 8,000 miles from France to New York and back – in a private jet – so he could accept an award for raising awareness of climate change.
Celebrities are able to hide in their luxurious homes and treat ordinary people with the utmost respect. Gwyneth paltrow (pictured) said that reading negative comments about her and her friends was ‘almost as painful as going through war. It’s a bloody, dehumanizing process.
The transgender crusade is now a hot topic in Hollywood.
Emma Watson, a Harry Potter actress, mocks J. K. Rowling after he was accused of transphobia for questioning the phrase people who menstruate’.
Quoth Watson: Trans people are who are told they are. They deserve to live their lives and not be constantly questioned or told that they aren’t. I want my trans friends to know that I, and so many others around the globe, see you, love you and respect you for who and what you are.
J. K. Rowling, the wildly successful Harry Potter franchise, and Watson, a muppet who, when she was single, described herself as’self partnered’, would have made it impossible for Watson to have two pennies.
The BBC in the UK is the BBC. Hollywood is America’s Hollywood. Both share the Woke wangle frantic virtue signalling to cover up the slithering Vipers’ nests below.
In recent years, the BBC has tried to become a Woke judge/jury. How hypocritical such high-mindedness is, when you consider that Jimmy Savile’s paedophilia was both a running joke and an open secret.
It’s so hard for them on the front line of fame – having monetised their very being and living a life of which most people can only dream. The rest of us, ‘civilians’ (pictured Liz Hurley) have a hard time understanding this concept.
It wasn’t until a few brave survivors came forward to testify against him that the Corporation – which, remember, is funded by us – seemed inclined to do anything about it.
The BBC bosses then were exposed as actively trying to make sure their highest-paid talents’ paid as little tax as possible. Losing one moral/ethical compass might be an accident. To lose both looks like total bankruptcy.
Hollywood and the BBC both celebrate diversity of colour, while simultaneously quashing diversity, as Woke did.
It was announced last year that the BBC was to spend £100 million on ‘diversity’ while, at the same time, sending hired heavies to menace low-income women into paying the licence fee.
BBC considered the transgender debate a glorious dawn. They were so excited to ask its staff to use their preferred pronouns for email signatures.
Showbiz people are always keen on saving the planet – but private jets don’t count because everybody knows that only dirty commercial flights cause pollution. This is akin to food having no calories if you eat it standing. In 2016, Leonardo DiCaprio (pictured) flew 8,000 miles from France to New York and back – in a private jet – so he could accept an award for raising awareness of climate change
After the shocking pay gap between men and women at the Corporation was exposed, the BBC appointed a Global Gender and Identity Coordinator in 2018. He tweeted: “Thrilled to begin as the BBC’s first worldwide Gender and Identity correspondent, reporting on issues regarding women, sexuality and race. I love that “etc”!
The BBC was the worst victim of Woke fever during 2020’s plague season. In a racist-routing zealotry, it removed episodes of excellent comedy shows like Fawlty Towers or Little Britain.
The same desperation to be down wiv da cancel-culture kids can also be seen on the retail front, especially in the ‘journey’ (a classic Woke word) of poor old Marks & Spencer.
Like the BBC, M&S saw itself as occupying a National Treasure position which blurred somehow with sainthood and whose integrity could never be questioned.
It is a sign of the malaise that they share, to turn one’s back at loyal customers and chase the Woke Woonga.
Woke is a mid-life crisis in commercial enterprises. They know that even though they are trying to get into the youth market, they don’t have the money. It makes retailers feel old again, but it is a good thing!
M&S had been on the rocks for a while, alienating its core of regular shoppers with store floors resembling TK Maxx after an earthquake. It was not surprising, but it was shocking, that M&S began selling hijabs in 2018.
The transgender crusade is now a hot topic in Hollywood. Emma Watson (pictured from Harry Potter) mocks J. K. Rowling who was accused after he used the phrase “people who have menstruated” to describe transphobia.
Hijabs for babies are not just for the elderly. They are also recommended for pre-school girls as they encourage them to cover their ears to avoid being tempted by lust.
The next gaffe by M&S was counter-intuitive – but no matter. It was the next station on the Woke cross that must be knelt prior: opening the private spaces of women to trans women.
It stated that ‘As an organization, we strive to include’ and that customers have the right to choose which fitting room they feel most comfortable in, depending on how they identify themselves.
The suffragettes did not see this coming as they were putting themselves under horses to fight women’s rights.
Wokeism’s one positive aspect is that just when you think you have a chance to change the world into their monotonous and evil image, they start squabbling.
M&S must have thought the cool kids would be queuing up to try its LGBT sandwich – lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato in rainbow-coloured packaging – especially as the profits would go towards a charity helping LGBT youth.
Many people found it difficult to swallow the sandwich, with one complaining that they were so upset that they left the shop. This is basically like comparing us to a sandwich. I can’t imagine them doing that with other marginalised people.
J. K. Rowling (pictured), and the highly successful Harry Potter franchise would have meant Watson, a muppet, who once described herself as’self-partnered,’ might not have had two pennies to rub together.
There are many more. In the summer of 2020, an M&S shopper spotted a brassiere which seemed insufficiently sensitive to the death of George Floyd, the black man killed by a US police officer.
The shopper observed that while lighter bras had attractive titles such as ‘Fudge and ‘Cinnamon, the darker one was called simply ‘Tobacco.
‘I saw it about two weeks after George Floyd’s death – it was particularly raw to see at that time. Why not call it ‘cocoa’, ‘caramel’ or ‘chocolate’ – sweet dessert items?’ She said.
Young girls will feel unwelcome by society if they are made to see that ‘tobacco is for their skin color. Tobacco is often referred to as “bad, unhealthy, and likely to kill” in society.
Predictably, M&S snivelled: ‘We have more to do and more to learn. We communicate with our store colleagues regularly to determine the colours we need to offer our customers. We also work with our BAME partners. [Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic]To receive their input, you can also network with your colleagues.
“As part of this, our BAME network is reviewing our ranges to ensure that we have lingerie items that flatter all customers.
“We are changing the name and colour of the bra and we are sorry that we have not moved faster.
In a nutshell, this is the difference in insurrectionary preWoke women from insipid Woke woman: we burned our bras in order to prove that we didn’t need establishment approval.
These bras are ‘wrong’ names and they’re in a bad state. McDonald’s was also accused of cultural appropriation last year for its Jerk Chicken Sandwich. No doubt feeding one to a child will soon constitute abuse, but of course where there is real child abuse – such as fattening up 12-year-old children – there is Woke silence.
We are all Alice now, Alice In Wokeland, down a rabbit hole without any direction home.
The same desperation to be down wiv da cancel-culture kids can also be seen on the retail front, especially in the ‘journey’ (a classic Woke word) of poor old Marks & Spencer. M&S had been on the rocks for a while, alienating its core of regular shoppers with store floors resembling TK Maxx after an earthquake. It was not surprising, but not surprising, that M&S began selling hijabs in 2018. (stock photo).
The fashion industry was also ravaged by the Covid pandemic. What did they do? Fashion was afraid of going broke so they started Woke.
The clothing industry has a devastating environmental impact.
Knowing this, and not wanting to lose a generation in thrall to Greta Thunberg, fashion had already attempted to cover its back – for creating much personal debt and ceaseless landfill fodder – with a lot of flim-flam about sustainability. Even before Covid, people were realizing that there was a reason clothing retailers were already suffering.
Fashion journalists were virtue-signalling while fashion was in vogue. Journalists signed up for ‘diversity, inclusion objectives and training’. Some newspapers were forced to appoint “diversity specialists” while others agreed to a process for internal content review to track sentiments and coverage.
Vogue, the most prestigious fashion magazine, has a similar story. Diversity is the answer to all problems. (I am fully expecting diversity as a treatment for cancer soon, because of its apparent omnipotence.
Models within the magazine stopped being skeletal white girls and the cover stars followed suit: Beyoncé, Oprah, Rihanna and Judi Dench. Now a far larger demographic of women can be objectified – rejoice!
Woke-speak, especially in relation to race, deprives people of their individuality, and reduces them into ticks and ciphers. Do the Woke ever read books? Do they have an intellectual hinterland or do they read books? They are unlikely to have an intellectual hinterland, given their raw terror at any view that is different from theirs.
But for some reason they believe they have the right to change a language – to abolish perfectly good words such as ‘woman’ and replace it with such monstrosities as ‘Terf’ (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) and ‘Cis’ (a person whose gender identity is the same as their sex assigned at birth).
The Woke can stick their fingers in their ears and sing “La la la” if they want. It is not possible for them to put muzzles around the rest of us, make some words unsayable, and change the meaning of others.
Over the past decade, many words have seen their meanings change. “Brave” used to mean rescuing orphans from burning houses, but it now means speaking out about one’s problems in public. How is it brave to have miscarriage? It’s sad and awful – but brave? What are firefighters if miscarrying is brave?
The term diversity used to mean a wide variety of views, but it is now a collection people with different opinions who all repeat the same liberal establishment platitudes. Community used to refer to a cheerful group of neighbors getting together for street parties. However, it now refers to a group peevish wallflowers aiming for gold in Victimhood Olympics.
It’s terrible enough that these half-witted Wokers have computer access, but when one considers the fact that many of them work as publishers, it’s almost like discovering that Johnny Depp runs an asylum for women.
Publishing in its glory days was full of drunken joy and three-hour lunches. It was absurd to think that anyone working in publishing would be offended by their authors.
Now, however, the Wokers seem to have gained control of this last bastion for rollicking, roistering. Penguin Random House’s junior staff recently ‘confronted’ senior staff about the planned publication of Jordan Peterson’s next book, the controversial Canadian professor of psychology.
When I refer to ‘confronting’ I mean crying’. This is the go-to move for Cry Bullies International, as Peterson had previously pointed out in a book: ‘Anger cryin is often an act dominance and should be treated as such.
One thought: It might not be easier to find employment in areas that deal with opposing ideas and views, such as publishing, for those who are easily offended.
Flower stalls are, I believe, lovely places to ply one’s trade; soft furnishings, too, with emphasis on scatter cushions – no sharp corners! But publishing?
Did the epic and wonderful story that began around 1436 with the invention of the printing presses really end here? With publishing employees – who would seemingly be happier burning books than editing them – crying because they didn’t like the words?
We are actually in the Woke Trials, being tossed into a dizzying danse makabre in which it is impossible to know where we’ll end. Those who don’t learn from history will be doomed to repeat it, despite the foolishness of these witch-hunts.
I did not know that I would be living in an age of barbarism or hysteria.
Woke may have peaked, which is the only consolation amid all this horrible nonsense. When I began this book in 2020, I was staring at an alien landscape, in which even the most comforting cultural artifacts, such as knitting, were contaminated by Wokeness.
After a year of global lunacy signs began to emerge that an epidemic was coming.
In December, Cambridge University – a breeding ground-zero of Wokeness like other universities – updated its Statement on Freedom of Speech so that speakers may be barred only if they are likely to use ‘unlawful speech’ or cause other legal problems.
The Scottish Parliament supported an amendment by Johann Lamont, Labour MSP, which allowed rape victims to choose the sex of others who examine them after an attack.
Women feel safer when female medics touch them in times of trauma. The actual injuries of women were taken precedence over the hurt feelings and opinions of men.
These are the most interesting of times – either a blessing or a curse, depending on whether one is of the tough or the tendertribe.
Where do we go from there?
In the end, the Woke are like Daleks – what comes after all the EXTERMINATE business? They are vicious towards each other.
Woke’s final days could see a glorious bout of guerrilla warfare to the death, as the ever-growing number of allegedly underprivileged minorities split in all directions and engage one last big hissy-fitting Woke Wars of All Against All.
The human spirit (yes that old thing) can rally at any hour and we might wake up from our sleepwalking. Then, we will think “It was all a terrible dream!” As we stare dazedly at one another, strangers and good friends, we wonder what the hell had happened.
© Julie Burchill, 2021 l Abridged extract from Welcome To The Woke Trials, by Julie Burchill, published by Academica Press at £24.95.
To order a copy for £22.46, with free UK delivery, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937 before November 14.