I share the average liberal’s unease at woke-ism, or ‘hyper-liberalism’ – let’s call it Woke Zeal. But I disagree with those pundits who see it as a new thing, at odds with the vague liberal consensus of the past. Because it is willing to curtail freedom of speech in the pursuit of its aims, they say, and because it can advocate an aggressive tribalism, based on identity politics, it must be a fundamentally new creature.
In reality Woke Zeal is a fairly natural development of our core shared creed. It is in some ways an intensification of liberalism, in other ways a cry of frustration at the limitations of liberalism. But it can’t be separated from the long tradition of liberal idealism.
To understand Woke Zeal, we have to see that liberalism is not a stable orderly tradition. Some conservative commentators want to see it as such, they say it takes the form of our noble national institutions, the rule of law and so on. But that’s not the whole story. It is also a very intense form of idealism, a desire for a world of ‘liberty and justice for all’, in which the human rights of all human beings are respected, in which all forms of oppression are ended. This is utopian, and it’s at the heart of liberalism. For some reason, we tend not to notice this, to speak of it. (I delve into this in my recent book God Created Humanism, if anyone is interested.) But it’s important to acknowledge it sometimes, and we must do so if we’re to understand this new-ish phenomenon of Woke Zeal.
Woke Zeal wants to rekindle this utopian extremity at the heart of liberalism. So why does it sound so angry at its own tradition? Instead of admitting that the glass of liberal tradition is half full, why does it claim it is poisoned? The reason is that liberalism is a maddeningly slippery tradition – it is very good at ignoring its own utopianism, and drifting to complacency. In a way this was also the protest of Marxism: liberalism drifts away from absoluteness, it lets itself be taken over by the interest of a ruling class. Its utopian idealism is therefore unreal, a lie. The difference is that Marxism does have an alternative form of absoluteness – revolution. And Woke Zeal only has the old slippery liberal version. In a sense liberalism is more absolutely idealistic than Marxism – it says that no curtailment of human rights is ever justified – but such idealism is so impossible that it easily becomes a mere platitude, an excuse for complacency.
Frustration is therefore at the heart of Woke Zeal. It wants to radicalise liberalism. But it can’t be done. So in its frustration it imports some rather unattractive habits: self-righteousness, demonising of enemies, shutting down of debate.
A slightly theological way of putting it is that it resorts to legalism. Angry that it cannot revive the spirit of liberalism, it becomes zealous about certain rules; it magnifies their importance, fetishises them. Good people must not say this word, study this book, tolerate this statue. Such rules aim to sharpen the division between the pure progressives and the impure complacent folk. But the spirit of liberalism cannot be revived by the sharpening of rules. Liberalism, echoing Christianity (its parent), is an anti-legalistic tradition; it says that no legal formula is ever sufficient, no marks of tribal purity should be taken too seriously – the true cause, of liberty and justice for all, can never be pinned down by such means. One almost sympathises with the woke zealots – what a maddening tradition!
