"Cambridge, A Regime Of Mental Policewomen"
The New Culture Forum Channel: In his first interview since being "cancelled" for a comment he made in a 2020 YouTube interview (dealing with slavery & genocide), Dr. David Starkey returns to our #SWYSI sofa to explain his remarks and discuss the storm that engulfed him in the immediate aftermath. Dr. Starkey reveals that whilst his social life was broadly unaffected, the impact on his professional life was severe. In this era of woke, when once venerable institutions can no longer be relied upon, Dr. Starkey found himself removed, dropped, ejected or forced to resign from one notable body after another -- from Fitzwilliam College & the University of Cambridge to the British Library & the Royal Historical Society -- with little recourse for appeal.
He believes that the institutional elites who choose to react in such harsh ways are creating a stifling, authoritarian culture that is immensely destructive, both to academia and wider society. He draws a comparison between the experience of those who've been "cancelled" by woke extremists with the treatment traditionally meted out to heretics by religious fundamentalists. Dr. Starkey explains how the "mental adventurousism" of creativity, originality and ingenuity that underscored Britain's success and which stands as its best chance for future success against the great powers of China, India etc. cannot surive in such an environment. Dr. Starkey returns to the subect of slavery & genocide to explain what he had originally intended to say. He rejects the left's attempt to draw a comparison between the British Empire / slavery and Nazi Germany / genocide. He also attacks Black Lives Matter and rails against the victimhood culture which he believes is now endemic in the UK and the Anglosphere. He laments the current trend for assuming that America's cultural problems automatically apply also to Britain -- they don't. Britain doesn't have the race relations problems of America, yet BLM and others would have us believe there is no difference.
David Starkey and some of the people who have left comments here need to check out what “woke” actually means. It’s a word that has been hijacked and bastardised by the ultra right. I would suggest that every reasonable person is “woke”. I certainly class myself as such.
ReplyDeleteBastardized? Re-purposed. I am not "ultra right" and I do hope for humanity's awakening, yet I am happy to conclude that feminism is a woke ideology and that woke in that context is a bad thing. I was a feminist until I realized that in fact I am an egalitarian, after all the vanguard of feminism do not match their dictionary definition. Don't let us be stuck in the mud and earn the name splitters. ...Having said that I do disapprove of some repurposing of certain verbiage myself. Semitic for example was originally coined to label a language group, primarily Arabic, but I would say that particular repurposing is more reprehensible than the youthful vernacular that 'bad' is 'good' and 'awakened' isn't' 'woke'...
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