Mick Clifford: Fine Gael’s anti-woke rhetoric is a distraction from the issues voters really care about

As Fine Gael debates its political identity in Cork, Mick Clifford says that anti-woke rhetoric distracts from voters’ everyday concerns

Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris. His party is in Cork this weekend for their Ard Fheis taking place in UCC. Picture: Brian Lawless/Press Association

 

If you’re in the vicinity of Western Road in Cork today, don’t take fright. 

You may well encounter some good ole boys wearing Stetson hats and brandishing shotguns. The odd one may be cradling an AK47. Some of them will be hanging out of the back of flatbed trucks, swilling beer from cans, trying to look like they do this kind of thing every day of the week.

They may appear to have arrived from Maga heartlands of the USA where Trump remains king. But in reality, they are delegates to the Fine Gael ard fheis taking place in UCC. These men are in Cork to kill The Woke.

A motion that was proposed for the ard fheis put it that the party should affirm itself as a “centre-right party in the European Democratic tradition”. But what exactly does that mean?

Prominent grassroots member, economist and newspaper columnist David Higgins, told the Irish Times that his party should be willing to debate whether the “progressive centre” label it uses to describe itself is appropriate for today’s politics.

“The word ‘progressive’ is now tainted by association with the woke left and most voters already perceive Fine Gael to be on the right,” he said. Later, he wrote on his Facebook page, “it’s time to mark the end of the woke era.” 

Did you know we were living in a woke era? Me neither. Wake up! Get woke and educate yourself on these matters. Fine Gael aren’t the only ones to introduce woke, or The Woke, or wokeness, or hokey, pokey wokey to Irish politics right now.

Aoutu leader Peader Toibin recently declared, on foot of a positive opinion poll, “we are bursting the woke bubble”.

So what is this woke? It’s whatever you’re having yourself that can be considered left of centre in politics. More than anything, woke is simply a word to be issued as an insult and a signifier of what the issuer is not. If you use the word woke, you are agin’ it, whatever it might be.

Woke is the great bogeyman of Trumpism, as if it were a virus being spread by the “radical communist” Democratic Party in an attempt to brainwash the people, and particularly children, into a narcotic oblivion.

This was best expressed by former Republican Party governor of Florida — and probable future presidential candidate — Ron DeSantis.

“We will wage war on The Woke,” he declared, adding: 

We will fight The Woke in education. We will fight The Woke in the corporations. We will fight The Woke in the Halls of Congress.

In this, Ron’s rhetoric was echoing that of Winston Churchill who outlined how fascism would be tackled, which was a teeny weeny bit more serious than addressing wokism.

Taking it all back home, as the Fine Gael ard fheis is in Cork perhaps it is best to explain the phenomenon in plain English through the local vernacular. Woke is not too far removed from langer. If you call somebody woke you are inferring that in respect of some aspects of their personality or character, they are a langer.

To issue such an insult is also to affirm that you yourself are the furthest thing from woke imaginable. It implies that you are a no nonsense person who ideally eats red meat, preferably raw, and wouldn’t be seen dead in sandals even when the sun is splitting the stones, because you might be mistaken for a wokester.

And what has all this rubbish got to do with politics today at time of living precariously? It’s the great distraction. So it was for Trump until he was found to be an emperor with no clothes, where he could dance and prance naked in his new ballroom and renewed reflecting pool.

The woke stuff, dressed up in culture wars armour to attack the Democrats, was redundant in the face of rising costs that made life harder for a large chunk of ordinary Americans. You can spit vile about woke all day long, but if people can’t put meat – red or white – on the table, the penny finally drops with them.

Wokism in Ireland

So it goes this side of the Atlantic. Wokism, as purveyed by the likes of Aontu, Independent Ireland and now elements of Fine Gael, is a distraction. In terms of people’s lives and livelihoods it is a pathetic substitute for a paucity of new or imaginative political ideas.

Perhaps the reason that some in mainstream politics are now clinging to the word is because it is used with abandon online among groups that constitute the nascent populist right. 

Woke, in this milieu, is the enemy of “common sense”, which is another completely redundant term in the political vernacular right now. Yet these populists are exercising a pull on the right-leaning elements of the body politic, as if we were all living in Trumpland.

The Fine Gael executive shot down the woke motion during the week. This was most likely done because it might have distracted delegates at the ard fheis from the party’s spanking new report on “renewal”. Or, if you will, the “where did it all go wrong?” report.

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In summary, the report can be boiled down to a phrase that is repeated throughout. “We must connect with people’s lived experience”. This is at odds with a rising sentiment around the party that it needs to reassert itself as a centre right entity, espousing fiscal rectitude and low taxes. 

Such a move would be a departure for a party that has been responding to the electorate in general by increasing spending and providing a Pavlovian response to every vested interest that puts its hand out for more. All of this is being done while tax cuts are also being implemented, or at least talked about endlessly.

The party could shapeshift and move to the right economically. There may well be a sufficient constituency out there that would buy into that. It would require a reassessment and most likely a self-imposed spell in opposition. 

But would any leading lights be willing to take that long-term view? Highly unlikely. Far better to distract with the debris of the culture wars and prattle on about wokeness as if that is something which actually impinges on the lived experience of people today.

In this, Fine Gael is once again displaying an unrivalled capacity to be tone deaf.

Peadar Toibin's Aontu is apparently 'bursting the woke bubble'. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA

For Auntu and Independent Ireland the Woke is even more precious. Without it, there is very little to separate these entities’ economic policies from those who fill out the centre and populist left on the political spectrum. So they cling dearly to it, projecting this parallel universe where the world is woke gone mad.

Woke is dead, baby. Today it exists only in the minds of those who are trying to find a way to distinguish themselves from everybody else in a crowded political field. So please, give the rest of us a break from all the raimeis around it.