Eric Kaufmann’s new book pillories ‘progressive’ (woke) extremism – including Albanese Labor

Albanese Labor's very first promise was The Voice. In that debacle, ABC and Human Rights Commission dissed voters, as ill-informed and racist.

His first 24 months has delivered an unbelievable one-million net migration, denying responsibility. The gas-cartel price-gouge remains essentially untouched.

The result is a historic consumer (GDP per capita) recession with all-time rental/housing crisis. Crowning a dismal decade for real wages and household incomes. Yet the 2024 Budget rhapsodised cost-of-living "relief".

In response, Peter Dutton advocated 160,000 in net migration. Still double the post-1901 average, but a 20-year "low", excluding COVID 2020-21.

ABC Board insider Laura Tingle remonstrated, Dutton (and voters) ought to check theirracism instead. He's "dark" and "divisive", the Treasurer told ABC.

For Kaufmann however, Albanese's just one more woke leader, pushing unpopular "cultural socialist" policies. "Remains to be seen" if he pays the price.

Kaufmann and wokeness

The Canadian-Brit politics prof got noticed with his book Whiteshift.

The cultural left, he claimed, is ideologically anti-white. "Politicians should set [immigration] levels that respect the cultural comfort zone of the median voter."

Not the view, at Australia's student-migration addicteduniversities.

In Taboo, woke is no trivial or right-wing epithet, but a now-dominant "ideology of Western elite culture".

Kaufmann locates a first "culture war" in the 1960s - the rise of liberal mores around sex and sexuality. The second, from the 1980s, generated large increases in immigration, "racist" assimilation yielding to "virtuous" multiculturalism.

In his third phase, from the mid-2010s, "identity groups, not class" are the battleground. The "cultural socialist" blueprint seeks utopian equality along lines of "race, gender, and sexuality", rather than "class or wealth".

Woke then, for Kaufmann, is the "sacralisation of historically disadvantaged race, gender, and sexual identity groups".

A culture of victimhood not resilience, seeking equal outcomes (not opportunities) for disadvantaged groups, protecting them from "emotional harm". In the USA, the corporate mantra is Diversity-Equity-Inclusion, or DEI.

Kaufmann isn't denying societal gains, from successive left-liberal cultural offensives. Yet, woke now threatens "excellence, freedom, and community".

He seeks a "missing optimum" in between the unhappy pre-1965 condition and an overwrought present situation.

Dialling back on "equity, diversity and harm protection". Retreating from "national shame" and "white sin".

Woke across wealthy nations

Across the Anglosphere, wokeness tends to excise mass migration "from democratic debate". Donald Trumpis an exception, though even he has wobbled.

In Taboo, woke isn't necessarily propelled by government direct, but "mediating institutions" such as "universities, tech firms, or government agencies".

The woke "left" swamps the right, in academia and media, though that "doesn't reflect" wider society.

In Australia too, voters don't wantmass migration, but Treasury and federal agenciesdo. As does the groupthink, of powerful stakeholders.

Patrolling wokeness in academia, are Punishment, Prejudice, and Fear. Kaufmann sprinkles these chapters, with surveys and charts.

Hence his chart, of rising "cancel culture" incidents, on US/UK campuses. A table, of the UK educated favouring political correctness, more than the public at large.

Or even, a table of US Democrat students, winnowing Trump supporters from their dating pools.

Kaufmann sees woke overshoot as a form of Deculturation. Losing its historical status as British America, Canada reinvents as a "morally superior left-wing version of America…with an expansionist ethos of mass immigration".

Similarly, politicians hypeAustralia as the "most successful multicultural society".

We've the highest proportion of overseas-born anywhere, apart from a few Middle Eastautocracies. Yet remain, ABC/SBS or not, a comparatively tolerant nation for minorities.

Albanese's pushing our luck, anointing Modi India, as our "special" immigration and (over)population partner, with blanket recognition of Indian qualifications.

Kaufmann acknowledges, 2020s conservatives in America have pushed back, against DEI and similar tropes. Outdoing satire, muscular Bud Light beer utilised a trans activist, only to trash their own brand.

Don't yet think, he warns, the "tide is turning". The conservative side of politics has been too timid. As "progressive educators…steadily bend" the educational program, easily making up for "yardage" lost under conservative ascendancies.

Florida governor Ron de Santis appears as an isolated "standard bearer", legislating against woke overreach in schools and universities.

Urged by Kaufmann, Britain's "liberal Tories" also legislated for university free-speech. Yet their Brexit has broken all promises, obliterating British immigration records.

He fears the 2024 re-election of UK Labour unleashing the "full force of progressive illiberalism".

In metropolitan France, also Quebec, he discerns more resistance to woke virus. Quebec just reminded Justin Trudeau, it's your government not migrants themselves, causing Canada's housing crisis.

Australia, writes Kaufmann, cleaves "closer to the Canadian than American model".

Correct. Trudeau's Canada and Albanese's Australia are twins, in their historic immigration surges and debilitating rental/housing crises.

Yet each leader's a self-declared climate-policy champ. Trudeau praised bro Albanese's "immense" climate courage. Whatever that means.

On Kaufmann's UK and US evidence, young people are trending "more illiberal" or less tolerant of free speech.

He cites a 2024 American study: "Each cohort born after the Baby Boom generation has become less tolerant".

Youth and education, formerly predictive of tolerance, seem less so now. In Australia, Exhibit A is Greens housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather. For this celebrity, even net-migration as high as 300,000 would be a "race to the bottom".

Woke consequences and remedies

In Taboo, woke goes beyond impairing "freedom and reason". Kaufmann discerns "malign impacts" and "material consequences" for disadvantaged groups.

Cultural socialism can create "self-fulfilling prophecies" that may perpetuate, rather than remediate, disadvantage.

For example, "taboos around race and gender" discount the impact of single-parent families, on black Americans. Racial over-sensitivities obstruct "justice for vulnerable women" in indigenous Australian communities. White progressives "blame African corruption and economic development" on colonialism, not African leaders.

Though wokeness metastasises within "institutions", remedies can only come from elected government. Hence Kaufmann's "12-Point Plan for Change".

Notably, his top-six spotlights public agencies and public service:

# Re-legislate Free Speech, to protect employees, prioritise speech rights over woke strictures

# Political Neutrality is advertised and enforced in public (including educational and media) agencies

# Equivalent Action, to make political beliefs a protected characteristic in public agencies, at least as much as race or gender

# People are the Policy, to open public bodies up to political appointments

# US-styled"Federalist Society" for the Bureaucracy, that is, create a lobby to encourage conservatives as public-service applicants

# US-styled "NRA" for the Culture War, that is, a lobby that would scrutinise and report on the "woke-ness" of political candidates.

Free speech? Albanese proposed instead a Misinformation Bill. Targeting bogeymen like social media, but fencing off governmental "jobs and growth" misinformation. Australian versions of those lobby groups? They'd be busy.

For Kaufmann, public school education is the "most important lever" influencing future voters' thoughts, therefore the "top priority" for conservatives.

But, with rare exceptions like de Santis, American conservatives are loath to get involved. Obsessing instead, over "guns, abortion". With Australia's Scott Morrison, it was "religious discrimination".

John Howard (1996) and Tony Abbott (2013) made a show of sacking departmental chiefs. Morrison hectored the public service, yet corrupted it further, via robodebt.

"Progressive" Liberal Matt Kean scoffed at Morrison, who wouldn't "commit" to net-zero emissions. Just the man, to chair Labor's Climate Authority. Already clashing with Dutton, over (unlikely) nuclear power.

The wrap – climate woke

Taboo is a stimulating compendium of scholarship and ideas. In which woke isn't to be taken lightly. But represents, a gulf between elite thought and governance, and the reasonable needs and concerns of voters.

"Outnumbered" as he is, Kaufmann finds allies in UK and US academia, less so here.

There's UK Matt Goodwin's Values, voice and virtue, despairing at the voter-governance disconnect. Culturally left institutions demean ordinary Brits as "morally inferior".

In the US, there's black scholar Musa Al-Gharbi's upcoming We have never been woke: "How a new 'woke' elite uses the language of social justice to gain more power and status-without helping the marginalised and disadvantaged."

The Trudeau-Albanese climate bromance highlights another aspect of wokeness.

For thirty years now, UN has sidelined "active" population policy (aka birth control) for climate policy and hypothetical net-zero emissions. In woke terms, the former policies are "racist", the latter "anti-racist".

Indeed, the "guilty" global North should compensate the South, for climate loss and damage. As if this feelgood would overcome intractable health and environmental costs of UN's eight billion people and rising.

Every year adds another 75-80 million mouths to feed. Human emissions (and atmospheric CO2 levels) keep breaking records.

But in UN (hence Labor) doctrine, "net" emissions can bend it like Beckham to "save" the environment. As a bonus, Labor's semi-mystical "net-zero transformation stream" can assure Australia's industrial future.

Hence, I'd expand wokeness to the "sacralisation of race and other historically disadvantaged groups, privileging UN climate-population creed".

For Australia, "progressive" Labor offers wellbeingrubrics and climate rainbows. Old wine - entrenched wealthand inequality- decanted from new bottles. Here and in Canada institutionalised immigration overload signals a tough decadefor younger voters.