Do you consider yourself to be ‘woke’? When the term first emerged it meant to be socially conscious, an attitude you would assume anyone of a liberal disposition would naturally aspire towards. It meant you were in favour of equal rights and against discrimination in general: what could possibly be objectionable about that? Yet the political right saw things very differently indeed. ‘Woke’ has come to be used by people on the right more and more as an insult, a way to dismiss the validity of viewpoints other than their own. To be woke was to be ‘not one of us’ and it meant that your opinions and beliefs were just plain wrong, or even dangerous to society. As far as the right was concerned, such views were to be suppressed for the greater good. There was enough support for this position to merit the founding in the UK in 2021 of a TV channel dedicated to attacking the woke outlook: GB News. Although the channel denies it, there are distinct similarities to be noted between GB News and Fox News in America. The latter has become infamous for its biased reporting on the US political scene and the Trump presidency in particular. Whether GB News proves to be as successful as Fox News has been is hard to say at this stage. What is clear, however, is that there is a substantial audience for anti-woke sentiment. As long as that exists there will be openings for such ventures.

The campaign against woke is just the latest instalment of a general turn against dissent in Western culture. This is a consequence of what Wendy Brown has described as an unmistakable ‘rise in antidemocratic politics’ there that still blights our lives. In its wake dogmatism, prejudice and bigotry are becoming ever more evident features in our social interactions. This development has had a distinctly negative impact on public life. Globally, authoritarian governments are striving to close down critical voices in both their political opponents and the mainstream media. If we are to counteract the dramatic rise of a reactionary right-wing populism, then dissent ought to be defended as a crucial element in the democratic process.