Letters: Wokery is a form of dictatorship

Democracy rules

Sir: I share the sentiments of both Rod Liddle (‘Trump displays weakness, not strength’, 8 March) and Douglas Murray (‘How MAGA turned on Ukraine’). I am one of those peculiar political animals who finds himself in agreement with certain elements of the right, including those represented by Donald Trump, on just about everything except Ukraine. Nevertheless, I see his election as an essential antidote to the poisonous ideology of the woke that has all but conquered the rest of the West in terms of the manner in which we live and are governed. Nor is the US immune.

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Without wishing to quibble with a courageous and eloquent speaker and columnist, I should add that Douglas Murray’s statement that ‘most of the American public may dislike woke, but they dislike dictators too’ is true, but at the same time slightly erroneous. Wokery is a form of dictatorship. And, alas, I have to confess that that concern, in spite of my passionate advocacy of Ukraine’s sovereign rights, and an extreme discomfort at the United States’ new policy approach, trumps Ukraine. What is the point of upholding democracy there if we do not do so here?

My preference would be to restore and maintain basic freedoms everywhere, but we do not live in an ideal world, and one has to make difficult choices. That does not make me, in the words of Rod Liddle, ‘stupid or amoral’, though I might be if I believed that Trump could do no wrong.

Derrick Gillingham

London SW1