Whereas Nesrine Malik is correct in stating that woke speaking factors weren’t a key a part of Kamala Harris’s marketing campaign, she is inaccurate in concluding that progressive stances on social points have been by no means chargeable for Donald Trump’s election victory (‘Woke’ didn’t lose the US election: the patrician class who hijacked identification politics did, 25 November). Like Malik, I see structural points as the first figuring out issue, my focus as a Democratic activist being on an financial system touted as thriving however in truth failing to learn a populace battling obscenely excessive grocery costs. However having heard Harris equivocate moderately than reject controversial statements that have been catnip to Trump, I can guarantee you that there was palpable cultural antagonism too.
These adverts of Trump packed a punch, not least “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you”, which capitalised on Harris’s failure to make clear her 2019 assist (primarily based on a studying of constitutional regulation) for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgical procedures for prisoners. However simply as Harris failed on this regard in 2024, the Democratic management has mangled election messaging over a few years – opening itself to prices of cultural (definitely not financial) extremism.
I discover it fascinating that Malik has to outline “defund the police” after claiming that “even a cursory look exhibits” it “is to not abolish policing”. No, a cursory look at this ludicrous slogan implies, nonetheless unintentionally, simply that. And to refuse to consider that anti-woke propaganda, typically false however typically made doable by Democrats’ personal missteps, performed an element within the disastrous 2024 election outcomes is to refuse the apparent.
Karen Thatcher-Smith
Sonoma, California, US
Nesrine Malik argues {that a} “cursory look” would present that “defunding the police” was by no means about abolishing the police however moderately a name to put money into preventive measures. This moderately begs the query: why on earth did progressives marketing campaign with such a slogan? It’s arduous to think about populist agent provocateurs arising with a more practical technique of separating properly‑which means progressives from the general public at giant.
Alex Campbell
Brighton, East Sussex
Nesrine Malik is correct that the “widespread enemy is the way in which by which society itself is designed”. The financial moguls ruling the patrician class efficiently offered to many a self-fulfilling funding in a fearful characterisation of wokeness as an absurd and impertinent intrusion in our lives. It’s a compelling, too-easy reply when an underlying worry of lack of privilege or self‑difficult the ache of false beliefs round our rightful place in the social order is at stake. Inertia guidelines – for the second.
Real, common change is tough. It’s arduous for the privileged to surrender their luxuries and for the oppressed to think about deserving and having fun with a greater life in a really egalitarian society.
Wokeness itself isn’t the issue. There isn’t a such factor as woke, there may be solely waking. It’s a unending course of. It’s a journey that we should all undertake – in the direction of a society that totally values and expresses the spirituality, democracy, caring, sharing, studying and pleasure inherent in a naturally evolving life, and nobody should be left behind.
Daniel O’Sullivan
McLeans Ridges, New South Wales, Australia
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