Andrew Doyle, the creator of both Jonathan Pie and Titania McGrath (both of whom some people still take seriously), has taken out after wokeness in the article below from his own site (free to access). It contains 20 short but inadvertently funny videos documenting the “woke era”—an era that Doyle sees as circling the drain. (I wish!). Here’s his intro:
There is little doubt that historians of the future are going to look back on the ‘woke’ era with utter bafflement. How is it that intelligent people were suddenly caught up in this identity-obsessed hysteria? Why did they forget that free speech mattered? Or that human beings cannot change sex? Or that judging people by the colour of their skin rather than the content of their character was a bad thing?
The lunacy was so intense that these same historians will probably have to be persuaded that any of it happened at all. So I thought it would be helpful to compile some of the more ludicrous and shocking video clips from this recent culture war. A kind of digital time capsule, if you will, for the sceptics of the future.
Woke may not have ended, but with any luck we are over the worst of it. With that in mind, here are my top twenty snapshots of this bonkers period of our history. Enjoy!
Here are the 20 topics; I’ve put asterisks next to my favorites. Some of the topics include more than one video. Do watch them all; it’s a good summary of how crazy things have gotten.
- The homophobic horses
- The no-no square*
- Gay conversion therapy goes mainstream
- The abolition of history
- The alphabet soup (starring Justin Trudeau)
- Queers for Palestine*
- Problematic allies
- “Progressive” racism
- Pronoun lunacy, starring Kamala Harris and Jeremy Corbyn*
- Student meltdown (the Christakis incident at Yale about the Halloween-costume fracas. It’s worth finding the whole thing on YouTube.)*
- You ain’t black
- Humza Yousef’s own goal
- Childhood indoctrination
- Male breastfeeding*
- Politicans forget about biology
- Thought police*
- Misogyny becomes “progressive”
- Everyone is a Nazi*
- Osama bin Laden gets some new fans (his “Letter to the American people” that the young wokesters so admired was removed from the Guardian, but can be seen here (and read about it here).
- The sancification of drag
I suppose my overall favorite is #2: the “no-no square”, described this way:
In Finland, Oulu city council established a €2.5 million project to address the rising cases of sexual assaults by migrants. It was called ‘Safe Oulu’, and this was the official dance.
This performative “dance” is supposed to reduce sexual assault, as if people don’t already know where are the parts that shouldn’t be touched.
Sublime and brilliant
And the look in the “dancers'” faces, especially sour puss front-and-center – and yeah, that video is etched in my mind.
CRINGE!
point 5.
Everyone’s take will be different, but it sounded to me like, in declaring her pronouns, and that she was a woman, and that she was wearing a blue suit… Kamala Harris was poking some serious fun/satire at the pronoun ceremony, putting emphasis on how ridiculous it is. Good for her, actually!
Doyle might believe the Woke era is circling the drain, but I am curious what meaningful evidence we have of that. In the United States, have we seen a rollback in Woke-era policies and laws in jurisdictions controlled by the political left? Certainly, we have seen Republican-dominated legislatures intervene and stop the madness, but what about California? New York? Illinois? Massachusetts? Does anyone truly believe that a Democrat replacing Trump will keep his executive orders in place that targeted several pillars of the Woke cult? To the contrary: the blue states have sued to prevent implementation of nearly every one, and they continued expanding their state-level “protections” in 2025.
Fine, a handful of corporate figures, politicians, and academics have put their fingers in the wind and decided to quietly remove the pronouns from their emails and social media. But is that meaningful change? Yes, the threat of lawsuits has caused some professional associations to reconsider their evidence-free “care” recommendations and proselytizing. Have those changes been acknowledged by and embraced by those who make our laws and regulations? Or only by those of one party? Has the supposedly newfound sanity been embraced by those who train our teachers and those who indoctrinate our kids?
I’ll accept the madness is over when those on the left with the political power to advance Woke ideas both refuse to do so and then repeal the laws and policies they advanced in the name of fighting bigots and Nazis. In the meantime, the smart move is to consider that this is nothing more than a tactical retreat.
That dance?! Does Finland have a problem with five-year-olds invading the no-no zone??!
Love the “Best Cat” video! (Yes, I got to the end of this set of videos.) You can’t fix stupid, but one can hope that, over time, stupid will fade.
Among the craziest of the ways the far left has twisted themselves into ideological knots is the strange way that real or imagined “Islamophobia” has trumped all other progressive concerns. The theory seems to be that oppressing women and gays is bad unless Muslims do it in which case it’s empowering, perhaps even a delightful example of cultural diversity.
I don’t get it. Logical feminists would spend their time protesting outside the Saudi and Iranian embassies instead of excoriating American society for imagined patriarchal sins. Logical gay activists and transactivists would despise Palestinian culture. There is no way to square this circle.
Last May, this anti-Israel charade occurred at the Univ. of Wash. (from a local radio news): “SEATTLE — King County prosecutors have charged 33 people with trespassing in connection with the occupation of the University of Washington’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building in May 2025 that resulted in about $1 million in damage. Thirty-three people — 23 of them UW students — face misdemeanor criminal trespassing charges following the May protest, in which demonstrators occupied a newly renovated engineering building, spray-painted walls and broke equipment. Protesters set dumpsters on fire and shattered windows before police in riot gear forcibly entered the building and made arrests.”
A UW faculty supporter of the Engineering Building vandals recently protested their treatment as follows: ” Several required medical care for injuries sustained during their arrest. Some were subjected to dehumanizing remarks from police officers. King County prosecutors have declined all felony and vandalism charges for lack of evidence. ” [“Lack of evidence” means no specific testimony as to WHICH of the trespassers did the spray-painting and damage.] The writer’s heart-wringing concern about the vandals’ subjection to “dehumanizing remarks” surely merits prominent inclusion in the Doyle list of woke golden oldies.
Jonathan Pie was not created by Andrew Doyle. He was created by Tom Walker, who also plays him and writes almost all material. Andrew Doyle has written a very limited amount of content alongside Tom Walker, but this is insignificant in the context of Jonathan Pie’s overall output
You beat me to it. Jonathan Pie is an excellent character.
Older people may recall the earlier age of ‘political correctness’ which descended into absurdity by claiming that Manchester should be renamed Personchester, manholes should be renamed personholes, chairman should become chairperson (or chair) and that one should never use the word ‘blackboard’ for the classroom display equipment.
This was I believe the high tide of the earlier ‘political correctness’ which then receded, abandoning the absurd stuff. It did leave behind ‘sensible’ bits of awareness though (such as ‘Chair’ for the leader of a committee). So my hope is that – in a similar way – we have seen the high tide of wokeness (with all its absurdities) but the ‘sensible bits’ will be left behind.
A human mammalian biped can hope.
Back in late ‘70s, I was at a party, and heard one of the attendees say “when I was a freshperson in college…”. I had had enough to drink that I said “oh sh!t! Did you really say “freshperson”? As you might imagine, she was quite offended. The host told me later that she regarded herself as quite the intellectual. I replied that a more accurate term would be pseudo-intellectual, subspecies ditz.
I had a friend who, at the time, was into esoterica. He convinced me to come along to see a documentary about some psychic. As expected, I was not impressed. After the movie, he recognized some of the usual suspects but, since I was new, they introduced themselves to me. One woman said (translating from German) “I am a cow”. Turns out that she considered herself to be a feminist and believed in astrology (sign Taurus).