No-one, not even you, is safe from News Corp’s woke list

Back in June last year we noted the incredibly elastic quality of the word “woke” in the pages of The Australian. Watching the term evolve — from its original context in Black American activism, coming into wider use to mean a broad alertness to the impact of structural forms of oppression, to what it is now, which is apparently anything to the left of Franco — has been quite the dispiriting journey.

But it occurred to us that it was unfair to only set out the Oz’s achievements, when its stablemates at News Corp have done such great work contributing to this degradation of language.

Here’s a new, updated, expanded and still probably non-exhaustive list of subjects that have been either afflicted by or are at risk of contracting the woke mind virus… according to our national media.

• The Young Liberals.
• Chat GPT.
• Female Popes and Black Nazis.
• The NSW government’s “Diversity and Inclusion” team sending 20,000 public servants a two-page “Days of Significance” calendar.
• 2024 VCE English texts.
• Qantas. 
• Australia but also not?
• The Australian Cricket team.
• The Australian Open’s new seating rules.
• The Australian Cricket team AND the Australian Open.
• Relentlessly and ruinously arguing that up is down, female is male, diversity is unity, justice is evil, and peace is war.
• The “campaign” to “abolish” boys only schools.
• Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths, Woolworths.
• Gingerbread people (see also: Woolworths).
• Australia’s medical ethics guidelines.
• The Danish Royals.
• Education degrees.
• Anthony Albanese, the teal independents and the Greens.
• Anthony Albanese again.
• Mainstream schools.
• The Australian Defence Force.
• The Australian Defence Force but even more so.
• PwC.
• Capitalism.
• Fried chicken restaurant hiring policies.
• Victorian Labor.
• US corporate boardrooms.
• US military recruitment.
• That new Grease show.
• Hollywood writers.
• Rewriting old operas.
• The European Union.
• New Zealand tertiary institutions.
• Comedy.
• Climate protests.
• Billionaires.
• Corporations.
• An Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
• Corporations again.
• Easter Time buns.
• Stanford University.
• The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
• The Oscars.
• Optus.
• All media in Australia not owned by News Corp.
• The $3 million cap on concessionally taxed balances.
• Nicola Sturgeon and Jacinda Ardern.
• Penny Wong.
• The ABC on employees taking money from gambling companies.
• Gender-neutral God.
• The 21st century, and every state and federal government in Australia.
• Sydney Theatre Awards.
• M&M’s.
• Scooby-Doo.
• Jacinda Ardern again.
• Californian billionaires.
• NSW Labor.
• Millennials.
• The United Cup tennis tournament.
• US military training.
• Social media, and corporate environmental, social and governance activists.
• The Wiggles.
• Blackrock CEO Larry Fink.
• ABC hiring practices.
• The US military again.
• Jamie Oliver.
• Truth-telling.
• Ambulance Victoria.
• UK culture, art and science.
• The goal of cancelling the legacy of Western civilisation.
• A direct attack on what [Winston] Churchill called “variety”.
• All this climate and identity madness.
• Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party.