IN THE long build-up to Christmas the thoughts of many, whatever their religious beliefs, turn to the nativity, whether due to impending school plays, carol services or just as an image on cards. The abiding image of Jesus in the minds of non-Christians is probably the ‘tender and mild’ Christ child in the favourite carol Silent Night. However those who read the Bible know well that Jesus was neither mild or meek. Nothing shows this more than the fiery rebukes he gave the Pharisees, the Jewish teachers of the law. Matthew Chapter 23 contains seven ‘woes’, three ‘you blind fools/men/guides’ and the glorious ‘you snakes, you brood of vipers!’ He calls them ‘hypocrites’ six times in this one address. The woke are modern-day Pharisees. The climate change cultists, the lawyers and activists defending endless streams of illegal immigrants, the critical race theorists and the #bekind social media accounts are all guilty of the hypocrisy and virtue signalling Jesus is condemning.
There is a glaring demonstration of this hypocrisy in the ludicrous spectacle of the just-ended COP27, a mind-bogglingly expensive gathering in sunny Egypt of the rich, famous and those who aspire to be both, reached by jets expending the carbon footprint of a small nation.
Rishi Sunak has confirmed that the UK will stick to the goal of providing £11.6billion in climate funding and will triple its funding on green adaptation to £1.5billion by 2025. He says this is the ‘right thing to do,’ but for whom? The UK has a near-unprecedented tax burden. This presents a real threat to the average person and especially the poor while the super privileged who govern us emote about the apocalyptic threat of warmer summer and weather events which may or may not be getting more frequent.
One can safely assume that the same individuals will be enjoying a toasty warm home and taking a flight to a posh skiing resort this winter.
The other huge spectacle about to unfold is the Qatar World Cup. There have been few more satisfying television moments than that in which self-righteous ‘take the knee’ Gary Neville was filleted by Ian Hislop on the BBC’s Have I Got News For You over the issue of his taking a handsome salary to commentate on Qatari TV. Neville flapped around as though he couldn’t understand what was happening. The woke are not used to having their hypocrisy exposed.
Woke warped thinking must also be exposed regarding the crisis that is the unchecked immigration via the Channel. When Suella Braverman dared to call a spade a spade by calling an invasion an invasion, the woke lost their minds. References to ‘hate speech’, the rise of the ‘far right’, ‘fascism’ and Nazi Germany flooded Twitter and the hand-wringing left-wing media. Campaigner for asylum seeker rights Robina Quereshi declared: ‘We’re watching fascism unfolding before our eyes. It is a matter of time before they shoot people in the English Channel. This is the logical conclusion of Braverman’s ideology.’
Offensive idiocy aside, there is also stark multi-faceted hypocrisy on this issue. Firstly, when the unvaccinated were being demonised and discriminated against, there were no cries of ‘hate speech’ from the woke. Secondly, it is clear that those happy to welcome endless streams of migrants into our already overburdened communities are not the ones reliant on the crumbling public services they will cause to collapse. They also don’t have to sleep with sledge hammers under their beds, as some in coastal towns do, because they can afford to move to areas without facilities hosting undocumented migrants, some of whom could well have nefarious intent.The woke love to label anyone doubting the genuine nature of asylum claims (from that war-torn hell-hole France) as hateful or racist. However by conflating those like myself with a family background of legal immigration with those entering the UK illegally, often as part of a criminal network, they themselves show hints of racism. My parents, a dark-brown Peruvian dad and a white German mother who came here legally in the 1970s, have absolutely nothing in common with those crossing the Channel. Legal integrated immigrants and their families are just as much part of British society as those with Anglo-Saxon roots. Yet perversely the woke repeatedly reveal that they do not see it that way. The homogenisation of all immigrants is both ridiculous and vile because it others and strips away individuality. When the child of an immigrant, such as Suella Braverman, talks tough on immigration she suffers the worst type of abuse because she isn’t sticking to the script the woke allow her. We are regarded as a distinct, unified group, different from the rest of society who must adhere to woke doctrines. Therefore the ostentatious woke comparison for immigrants actually hides a nasty othering of those they claim to care about.
Of course this view of immigrants chimes with that fundamental part of woke doctrine, critical race theory. This world view asks us to take the opposite attitude from Martin Luther King and assess a person near-exclusively in terms of skin colour and race. Therefore the anti-racists become the racists, making it the ultimate dangerous hypocrisy. In the same way you can be guaranteed many of the nastiest people on social media will have #bekind, a rainbow, a Ukraine flag, pronouns and an NHS blue heart on their profiles.
The Pharisees show us that hypocrisy and shallow virtue-signalling which conceals a lack of virtue is as old as time. Jesus called it out, even though it meant attacking those who claimed moral authority, and so must we. Perhaps this festive season we can reflect on that fiery Christ when we look the images of the baby Jesus and the doll in the school nativity manger – if the woke hypocrites haven’t showed their ‘love and tolerance’ by cancelling nativities this year.
