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The second in a regular column by an anonymous whistleblower operating deep within the heart of the Social Justice Movement. To protect their identity, they will go under the code-name ‘They/Them’. Wokeyleaks is a confidential news-leak organization for anyone who wishes to divulge classified information (and hilarious anecdotes) about woke culture without fear of getting canceled.
Thank you! We have been completely overwhelmed by the huge number of brave Edward Snowflakes out there that have messaged us on our encrypted email (wokeyleaks@protonmail.com). Of all the Wokeyleaks we’ve received, perhaps the most jaw-dropping is from an employee at one of the largest arms companies in the world — Northrop Grumman. Northrop has made billions supplying much of the hardware for America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan; it also supplies training to Saudi Arabian forces that, according to the UN, have been perpetrating war crimes in Yemen. But don’t worry about any of that because apparently Northrop Grumman has created an internal social justice portal for its employees, training them in how to avoid ‘microaggressions in the workplace’ and ‘unconscious bias and microinequities’.
Talk about gender-neutral bathrooms on the Death Star! As a bleeding-heart lefty who has campaigned against all of America’s illegal invasions, I can’t help feeling that my movement has been somewhat diluted if it is now about ensuring that arms dealers don’t get triggered while flogging intercontinental ballistic missiles to brutal regimes. In contrast, our more hawkish anonymous source is concerned that it is a threat to national security to have an American defense company creating ‘a “social justice” portal so that employees could learn how racist America is…as cities burned across the country last summer’. They go on to ask: ‘How can a defense contractor continue to provide services to our men and women in uniform while simultaneously spreading critical race theory premised on the fact that America must be deconstructed?’ We are coming at this issue from two completely opposing perspectives and yet we are both in total agreement that the whole scenario is utter fucking nonsense.
Although perhaps we shouldn’t be that surprised. The wokest place on earth, after all, is not the Berkeley campus or Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, but the exclusive Swiss ski resort of Davos, which in any normal year would have just hosted the World Economic Forum (WEF). This weeklong event sees the most powerful and wealthy people on the planet fly in on private jets to discuss climate change and equality. I have visited the WEF many times. The whole thing is completely surreal. CEOs, oligarchs and dictators (and for some reason will.i.am) wander down the plush high street under the watchful eye of rooftop snipers. Huge billboards advertise the humanitarian work of Saudi Arabia’s murderous crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. You pop in to watch a panel on diversity featuring an executive from a tax-avoiding multinational, a retired war criminal and Lord Voldemort (the last one’s a joke, but only just). Last year, the theme of the event was environmental sustainability and yet sponsors included the Adani Group (currently building one of the world’s biggest coal mines that threatens to destroy the Great Barrier Reef), Saudi Aramco (possibly the worst polluter in the world over the last 50 years with plans to produce oil and gas equivalent to 27 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2030) and Dow Chemicals (whose pesticides have been destroying the world’s bees).
The other group that always makes a strong appearance at Davos are the fameoisie — society’s large and growing famous class who trade in woke ideology. They are models, actors, reality-TV stars and pop-stars. They come to Davos to network, party, ski and to receive WEF’s Crystal Award for cultural leaders. This cozy relationship between corporations and the verified leaders of the social justice movement has been terrible for actual social justice. The fameoisie have been almost completely silent on the gargantuan bonanza of bullshit that is Davos, preferring instead to focus their vast array of opinions on one single thing — Donald Trump. And Davos agrees with them here too. When Trump attended WEF last year there was a palpable sense of shock in the air, much more so than at the presence of dictators like Xi Jinping. At this year’s virtual WEF, Xi gave the keynote speech, the brutal authoritarian taking time out from enslaving Uighur Muslims and imprisoning Hong Kong protesters to talk about ‘one Earth and one shared future for humanity’. This was followed by a gushing thank-you from WEF founder Klaus Schwab, who praised Xi for finding ‘harmony in the diversity of human civilization through respectful interaction’.
You see, the worst crime you can commit at Davos is to be gauche. The superrich go to Paris for their fashion, they go to London’s Frieze for their art and they go to Davos for their social justice. The (oxy)moronic genius of Trump was to see that half the world is sick to death of the phony righteousness of the Davos elites. All he had to do to seem like an honest alternative was to offend as many of them as possible. Why do you think half of America still voted for the incompetent dummy despite his endless failures? It’s because when they look at ‘wokeness’ these days, they see the faux piety of corporations and the fameoisie and they despise it so profoundly that they elected the political equivalent of an un-PC stand-up comic!
Someone who fits in extremely well at Davos is Joe Biden, who is a regular face at the event. Of the two, Biden was, of course, my preferred septuagenarian with dementia, but you have to worry about anyone who is also the darling of every evil corporation on the planet. Donald Trump’s apparent ‘realness’ was of course a heist on his base (as we saw from his weaselly volte-face after his Capitol Hill riots), but it was at least a different heist from that of Davos Man. I really hope Biden can unify the nation, fix the environment and tackle inequality as my fellow citizens of Wokeania seem to believe (with even more unanimity than usual). There was much justified celebration at the largely symbolic decision to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, but there has been very little criticism of his refusal to ban fracking.
I made this point the other day on a woke WhatsApp group named ‘Inquisitive Minds’ which has an image of John Stuart Mill as its icon. Not long after, I was sent a direct message by the group admin to say that some other members were offended by my ‘use of language’ and would I mind voluntarily leaving the group so it didn’t seem as if I’d been kicked out. Maybe we’re all Davos Man now — appearances are everything — but maybe the real danger to the planet isn’t the easy-to-spot caricature villains but the ones that like to dress up as superheroes.
Next time we plan to cover more of the stories you have leaked to wokeyleaks@protonmail.com. Please keep them coming! If we haven’t gotten back to you yet, we will. We didn’t expect quite such a huge response. Follow us on Twitter at @wearewokeyleaks. This article was originally published in The Spectator’s March 2021 edition.
