OPPRESSIVE regimes fall from within. Rome and the Ottomans fell from internal decay while the Soviet empire collapsed because its foundational idea generated unprecedented absurdities that were incompatible with reality. Such internal fatigue could not withstand external pressures.
And so it will be with the woke systems of the West.
Something very telling happened at two recent football matches between English and East European sides. The first, between England and Hungary on October 12, saw Metropolitan Police officers ejected from Wembley stadium in humiliating fashion by an alliance of Hungarian and Polish ‘ultras’ (fanatical football supporters) while the second, between Leicester City and Legia Warsaw a few weeks later, saw officers being pummelled by Legia Warsaw ultras and tumbling down staircases at Leicester’s King Power stadium. How is it possible that England’s law enforcers on assignments that not so long ago would have been bread-and-butter tasks are no longer a match for small groups of muscular men?
The answer is simple and encouraging for those willing the end of woke, but perhaps less so for those concerned about law and order in their communities.
Though shocking to the casual observer, such scenes should not surprise those more savvy about developments in the kingdom of woke. For a long time police chiefs (that is those brave enough to do so) have been warning about the declining quality of recruits. In May Northamptonshire’s chief constable Nick Adderley warned that the policy of the College of Policing, scheduled to start from July 2022, that entry to the force should be restricted to graduates in ‘policing’ would create a young and inexperienced cohort devoid of resilience and hardiness. Reprising his concerns recently, Adderley highlighted the mass exodus of recruits who leave within weeks or even days, unable to cope with the tougher aspects of training or the prospect of long hours and night shifts or the routine violence of front-line duties. Further concerns have been raised in a series of leaks from Hendon College, the main training centre for the Metropolitan Police, which highlighted widespread dishonesty and drunken violence among recruits as well as leniency among trainers towards errant behaviour. Denials by the hapless Met chief, Dame Cressida Dick, herself apparently a product of a diversity drive rather than of quality control, of rumours that entire intakes of recruits at Hendon had failed initial assessments but were nevertheless kept on, are not convincing.
Yet a policy that seems to be attracting a disproportionate number of snowflake quitters, louts and occasional psychopaths does not appear to concern the College of Policing, which seems to prioritise checking the thinking of perpetrators of Orwellian non-crime hate incidents above devising a recruitment strategy that can address crime and restore public confidence in policing. A ready-made cohort of university recruits indoctrinated in the latest woke fashions to implement diversity campaigns and intimidate soft targets is a result for an institution more interested in fighting the cultural war than dealing with real crime whose perpetrators they anyway regard as victims of social injustice. The public got a glimpse of the effects of this agenda at Wembley and Leicester City. Confronted by men from countries where Leftist woke is treated with utter disdain, and where masculinity is the norm rather than mocked as toxic, our law enforcers were found wanting. Is there a better example of an institutionally woke body, long captured by social and cultural warriors, so mute and blind to the impact of its actions, which is inadvertently destroying the very system that it seeks to preserve?
In other Western states where woke runs supreme similar situations prevail. Across America, police units are not only being emptied of experienced officers but are experiencing huge recruitment crises leaving vacuums for the crime gangs to operate with impunity. From Los Angeles to New York come reports of worn-out and demoralised officers following the capitulation by Democrat Left extremist governors to the Defund the Police mobs. In Sweden, amidst a police recruitment crisis, the country’s police boss, Anders Thornberg, warned in 2020 of the prospect of parallel societies which threaten the fabric of Sweden’s democracy, code for Islamist ‘no-go zones’. Similar stories of a recruitment crisis are told in France, Germany, Holland and Australia.
Although policing Covid compliance and protests has added to police strains, it has certainly not caused the crisis in policing across the Western world which has been going on for years and has reflected a general social malaise of education, of parenting, of respecting hierarchies, of patriotism, of all the attributes of healthy societies. These societies have already breached tipping points at which people are either unwilling or able to serve in serious positions or if they do, do it in a way that defeats the purpose of their roles.
When a country has been made vulnerable to the enemy from within, by the same measure it has been made vulnerable to the enemy from outside. Recent Army recruitment ads are illustrative. From Britain we get a serving of emotional, blubbering Gen Z-ers, whose snowflake propensities are turned into desirable attributes in a world where ‘belonging’ is prioritised over action. The woke lunacy, however, is bettered by the US army, whose cartoon ad tells the story of a female social activist who, with her two mothers, conquered prejudice and numerous hardships in the cause of freedom and equality to become a corporal well versed in critical race theory. Comparing these offerings with Russian and Chinese equivalents, the heroes of which are thrill-seeking killers with the West in their sights, makes one wonder what type of conflict these recruits are being prepared for. Former Army colonel Patrick Mercer fumed at the RAF decision to ditch the historic titles of airmen and airwomen in favour of ‘aviator’ to render the air force gender neutral. These are issues, he noted, to which ‘our potential enemies are not giving a second thought’, being focused on ‘defending their country and if necessary fighting and dying’.
Much has been written about the Left’s intellectual bankruptcy, its hate-filled ideas and amorality. But the Achilles heel of its long march through the institutions is a paradox that has received less attention but which, as evidence is increasingly illustrating, will see its triumphs turn to defeat much sooner that many had thought possible. Parallel processes of self-destruction are at work here. First, by educating a generation in the captured academic institutions that the security bodies that reinforce capitalist hegemony are oppressive and need to be defunded, the wokesters have reduced the quantity of recruits willing to police and defend the society they wish to create. Secondly, by basing recruitment on woke feelings, they have dramatically reduced the quality of those who do retain an interest in serving these institutions. This may attract a few infantilised blubberers or ill-disciplined psychopaths but not recruits of required calibre.
Blinded by Marxist certainties, Antonio Gramsci, the founder of the so-called ‘hegemony and domination’ theory, and his acolytes failed to recognise these fundamental flaws in their thinking. Marx designed his theory for a rapid takeover of power whereby one class displaces another. The adrenaline-flowing anger of revolutionaries can be readily channelled into security duties, especially as many of them are either well-trained troops or battle hardy insurrectionists. But a decades-long revolution by stealth to bring awareness among the alleged oppressed of their oppression creates not revolutionaries but anger-filled activists, equipped with little more than asinine slogans. The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) which emerged around the abandoned police precinct in Seattle in the wake of the George Floyd riots, gave the world a glimpse into the nature of a woke society. For ten days and nights, behind the multiple discussion groups and pop-up peace gardens, armed BLM-Antifa thugs terrorised residents, ransacked their businesses and oversaw several shootings in what the woke police defunder, Democrat Mayor of Seattle Jenny Durkan, had hoped would be ‘a summer of love’.
Woke society is there for the taking. The insanity of Leftist designs is being recognised even by dyed-in-the-wool liberals such as the US talk-show host Bill Maher. Civilisations ultimately survive by their ability to maintain internal security and defend their borders. In both of these aspects, Western states are showing signs of serious fatigue. Let us hope that it is not too late for sober rational forces to take societies back from the wokesters before the barbarians come crashing through the door to help themselves.
