Why are the woke afraid of books?

There is nothing progressive about censorship.

The title of this piece is, of course, a rhetorical question. It is no great revelation that authoritarians instinctively mistrust the power of books. These bothersome little items represent all that the ideologue most despises: independent thinking, artistic freedom, the unlimited dissemination of fresh ideas and heresies. When William Tyndale persisted with his English translation of the Bible, he was depriving the religious clerisy of their exclusive authority to interpret the word of God. He paid for it with his life.

Most of us are aware by now that woke activists are attracted to careers that empower them as custodians of language, knowledge and history. This is why so many galleries now feature little placards next to various works lamenting the moral shortcomings of the artists. It’s why staff at online dictionaries are modifying definitions to promote their own political aims rather than to reflect the common usage of words. It’s why curators at museums are apologising for exhibits, or cancelling them altogether. It’s why activists librarians now dominate so much of their profession, hiding books from the public rather that facilitating access for minds more intellectually curious than their own.

And of course there have been multiple cases of staff in bookshops hiding the work of authors that they find “problematic” (to borrow their most cringemaking of phrases). One seller at Waterstones in Brighton boasted that she had been hiding books by Douglas Murray and refusing to stock Graham Linehan’s recent autobiography. Waterstones seems to have a particular problem in this regard. In July of last year, the Daily Mail reported that “a swathe of customers” had complained that they were unable to find works by gender-critical feminists on the shelves, even when the customer service department had confirmed that they were in stock.

“Waterstones run their branches as mini dictatorships”, writes one Twitter user. “Couldn’t buy Andrew Doyle’s book where I was staying at the time because he’d ‘offended’ the local Uni wokies in a speech and they didn’t stock it”. It is as though members of staff at bookshops have never heard of the internet. All of these sacrilegious texts are merely a click away, and the online stores will happily accept the money if Waterstones will not.

While the free speech of authors is unaffected by these capers, it does point to a troubling aspect of contemporary society; that is, just how far the tentacles of this ideology have unfurled. One would have hoped that an activity as simple as buying a book would not involve a struggle with the high priests and acolytes of this strange new cult. But that’s the reality of living in the new wokeocracy.