Regarding Nesrine Malik’s article (Here is the news from the US: Woke 1.0 is over. But what did progressives do wrong?, 18 August), the mistake of Woke 1.0 was to believe that a self-evident truth was, well, a self-evident truth. I grew up in a divided society in which it was crystal clear, at least to my community, that we were second-class citizens. Nothing ever seemed to change and in the end we fought a war over it. Today attitudes are a lot different, but new truths are universally embedded.
What we learned was that the self-evident truth of “first-class” citizens was that their position was one established long ago by right and might. Against that sense of rightness, you cannot appeal to another truth that is diametrically opposed. I raised boys and girls in a progressive, liberal home. It was some surprise to me that my boys were not onboard with Woke 1.0. Their truth was Jordan Peterson’s “equality of access, not equality of outcome”, and a belief that their own privilege as middle-class, intelligent white males was good luck to be defended.
Phrases such as “toxic masculinity” and “check your privilege” were heard as an attack, and qualifiers like “not all men” and “I don’t mean you” as insincere.
It is not all doom and gloom. We chip away, parents and siblings, and even in the pushback in defence of Woke 1.0 at home, we feel the softening. I think that is where the hope lies in the next phase of progressiveness – the changing of minds in the home and among friends, one self-evident truth at a time. That is not to deny the need for the public political 2.0 movement that will inevitably arise, but to acknowledge that its roots will be in smaller truths and smaller conversations. So you can start now, and with hope.
Name and address supplied
• “Defund the police” is one of the most tone-deaf expressions I’ve ever heard. Safety is high on the human hierarchy of needs. Most Americans associate policing with safety. Something like “community policing” would resonate with most Americans and pique curiosity in how police and citizens can work together.
This is only one example of how liberals snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We need to forget ideological purity and instead formulate simple, easily understood positions that point towards positive solutions to real problems. We have to be more than “not them”.
Bert Love
Shrub Oak, New York state, US
• Nesrine Malik asks what harm progressives did. I think CS Lewis summed it up nicely: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
David Forster
Penzance, Cornwall
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