“Peak Woke”

In response to Donald Trump’s various insults, threats, and tariffs, we have apparently never been prouder to be Canadian. Why, I flew a “God Save The King” flag on the Victoria Day long weekend and nobody threw a rock. Unless you count the Governor General, presenting the “Award of Merit” to various police persons on behalf of the King, recently throwing “We are gathered today on the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Nation” through the stained glass. Congratulations to you brave, noble social workers with sidearms enforcing settler colonialism. Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?

History is an area of remarkable success in our schools thanks to recent education reforms. However, these impressive strides forward risk being undermined by a new wave of activism in classrooms.

Following the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, 83 per cent of schools have made changes to ‘diversify’ or ‘decolonise’ their curriculums in recent years. In many cases, this shake-up has brought politicised and one-sided narratives into schools. Inaccurate and poor-quality teaching resources are being used to give students a mistaken impression of the past.

Last month, with the assistance of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a group of University of British Columbia professors and a former student filed a lawsuit asking the B.C. Supreme Court to protect academic freedom by ordering the university administration to stop breaching its statutory duty to remain non-political: No more requiring fealty to DEI ideology from job applicants. No more statements about the Israel-Gaza war. No more land acknowledgements by the administration in academic settings where academic freedom is impinged.

Former actress and filmmaker Justine Bateman, of Family Ties and Violet fame, said the election of President Trump may be the tipping point for the “woke mob mentality” that terrorize American culture.

Speaking with The Irish Times about the state of Hollywood and the downfall of cinema, Bateman discussed a book she had written about beauty standards and how it struck a chord with people who had been chasing plastic surgery.

A Cambridge University museum has claimed Britain’s exploration of Antarctica was “colonial” – despite only penguins living there.

The university’s Polar Museum holds personal artefacts linked to the explorers of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton.

The museum informs visitors that the daring and often fatal expeditions to the South Pole were “in the colonial mould”, despite the southernmost continent having no human population to conquer or exploit.

With all the current debate about tariffs and trade, it would seem timely to talk about one of the worst American exports ever: the concept of ‘white privilege’. This notion – that you can have an automatic and decisive advantage in life because of your skin pigmentation, regardless of your class, sex or where you live – is one of the most divisive myths of our times.

Over the centuries, the disputes between France and England have steadily escalated and experienced a thousand and one twists and turns. From Agincourt to Mers-el-Kébir, via Trafalgar, the relationship between the Gauls and their best enemies across the Channel has been characterised by rumbling storms—interrupted, however, by lovely clear spells, such as the marriage of Charles I and Henrietta of France or the signing of the Entente Cordiale. This is the charm of our European history, which overzealous Brussels officials would like to erase and replace with a peaceful era of perpetual bureaucracy.

The left’s fascist efforts to shame, blacklist, and censor comedians deemed “offensive” has failed. Anti-woke comedians “seem emboldened by the current climate,” laments far-left the Wrap.

“If there was an effort to make stand-up comedy a bit more genteel a few years ago — with offensive words and phrases placed out of bounds,” writes the Wrap, “a second Trump administration has emboldened more transgressive voices who are willing to wind it back to the days when it was fine to have a laugh at the expense of women, trans people, people of color and the mentally disabled.”

A flagship Labour council is telling staff to undergo a “privilege” test as part of its efforts to combat unconscious bias against ethnic minorities.

Westminster city council is also seeking to boost recruitment of “global majority” candidates for senior posts by giving them preferential treatment over equally qualified white applicants – and ensuring there is at least one ethnic minority candidate on shortlists for jobs.