GB News: the row over the England team taking the knee shows we dont need more anti-woke voices – iNews

Just before Englands match with Croatia, when the players knelt on one knee to express their opposition to racism and discrimination, something strange and uplifting happened. A sizeable proportion of the Wembley crowd of 22,500 stood up and applauded.

It was a vocal, highly visible, and certainly unfashionable demonstration in favour of the England players taking the knee, a symbolic act that has been ridiculed as virtue signalling, criticised as politically suspect, and derided as an example of pervasive wokeism.

Many may just have been registering their support for the team, but nevertheless, they were loud, proud, and unafraid to go against the tide of popular opinion.

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No matter what youve heard on phone-in programmes, read in newspapers, or seen on the television, its not those who oppose wokeism who are underrepresented in popular discourse. Piers Morgan has written a book about it. The most widely-read newspapers have endless columns about it. A new TV channel, GB News, has launched, vowing to be anti-woke.

What you dont find very often in the mainstream media are people prepared to take a stand in favour of woke culture. The dictionary definition of woke is to be alert to injustice in society, especially racism, but it has come to encompass all points on the inclusiveness and inequality spectrum, including gender rights and historicalrevisionism.

In many peoples minds, woke has become little more than modern shorthand for political correctness gone mad. But political correctness, for all its well-publicised extremes, has brought enormous benefits for civil society in terms of equality, protection for minority interests, tolerance and respect.

Wokeism, likewise, seeks to redress injustice who would have a problem with that?

Well, Dan Wootton, for one. I dont want to expend too much energy on denouncing GB Newss motormouth, but it seems to me that Chris Bryant, the former deputy leader of the House of Commons, got his number when, in an interview in which Wootton was criticising the use of lockdowns, the MP told him: Youre a complete and utter nutcase. And youredangerous.

Wootton, in his debut show, speciously conflated taking the knee with the more outlandish political ambitions of Black Lives Matter when the two were decoupled some time ago. He said that booing those who take the knee doesnt make you a racist.

Of course not, Dan.Not everyone who boos is a racist. But every racist boos. Hes entitled to his opinion, as I am. Its just that his is one that is heard much more frequently these days.

GB News is, according to its chairman, Andrew Neil, giving voice to those who felt sidelined or even silenced in our great national debates. Its as if Brexit never happened. And a populist Prime Minister hadnt been elected.

The real silent majority now comprises those who believe in equality and social justice, but are afraid to proclaim it for fear of being attacked as a member of the woke brigade. Id be proud to be considered woke. Like those England fans, we should stand up and be counted.

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GB News: the row over the England team taking the knee shows we dont need more anti-woke voices - iNews