The Right is at a disadvantage in the war of words with woke Lefties

Lionel Shriver, the best-selling novelist, needs help. She is longing for a new word to take the place of “woke”. She herself has been critical of woke ideology but she says the word is now “horribly overused” and she’s sick of it. She wants a new one. Can you think of anything?

I warn you that it is not easy. As a leader-writer on this newspaper years ago, I used to think I had come up with a great word or phrase and I hoped it would catch on. It never did.

Then one day I wrote an article for The Spectator about how people say things to make themselves appear virtuous. I came up with the phrase “virtue-signalling” and thought no more about it. To my astonishment, the phrase quickly spread over the whole English-speaking world. One has no control over what works and what doesn’t.

This is not just a game. This is a battle of words – an undeclared war of concepts, ideals and put-downs. On the whole, the Left does rather better than the Right in this battle. One of their coups was the phrase “social justice”. When the Left use this phrase, they seek to suggest that socialism and justice naturally go together. I would argue that they are diametrically opposed. But in terms of the battle of words, the Left scored a hit.

The Right needs to do better. “Woke” is a good, big blunderbuss of a word, blasting a whole range of ideas. But we need more targeted words in our armoury.

We need a pithy phrase to describe the self-righteous fury of the politically correct when you say something contrary to their dogma. We need a phrase for those who insist that women can have a penis. How about “biology deniers”?

We could do with a word to satirise those who say that being white-skinned means that you are automatically a privileged oppressor. I would also love someone to find the language to poke fun at those who think that the government is the answer to every problem. And please, please, can someone come up with a telling way to dismiss the slur that being against mass immigration means you’re a racist?

Words and short phrases enable people to express complex ideas quickly and powerfully. In his novel, 1984, George Orwell imagined a dystopian future in which words would be limited by a totalitarian government. In that way, the ability to think non-conforming thoughts would itself be limited. Orwell suggested that it is hard even to think something if you have no means of expressing the thought.

This could be an exaggeration. But if you are in a debate, it helps to have a shorthand way of suggesting an ideal or criticising an opponent’s argument. Catchy words or phrases also give confidence to people to believe that it is OK to express the view that the word or phrase encapsulates.

If the word is mainstream, as “woke” is, it reassures the speaker that the concept is mainstream, too. He or she can use it without feeling they are out on a limb.

There is a whiff of totalitarianism about the culture that is currently being pushed onto us by an influential minority. This minority often means well but it is dogmatic and willing to cancel those who resist it.

We need ways to resist. Words are part of the fight.