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Welcome to the Woke Trials
In 2013, the journalist Julie Burchill wrote a mischievous newspaper column defending a friend against political extremists. She was pursued by an outraged mob, denounced in Parliament and never published in that paper - or any other - for many years. Welcome To The Woke Trials is part-memoir and part-indictment of what happened to her between then and now, as the regiments of Woke took over; an irreverent and entertaining analysis of the key elements of a continuing and disturbing phenomenon. Raised in a Communist household and a lifelong Labour voter, Burchill also makes the case for a progressive future politics, a time when we see ourselves as a common humanity with similar hopes and visions - rather than a childish world of villains and victims.
- GenresNonfictionSociety
256 pages, Hardcover
Published July 20, 2021
5 people are currently reading
71 people want to read
About the author
Julie Burchill
30 books56 followersJulie Burchill is an English writer and columnist known for her provocative comments. Beginning as a writer for the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has written for newspapers such as The Sunday Times and The Guardian. She is a self-declared "militant feminist". She has several times been involved in legal action resulting from her work. She is also an author and novelist, her 1989 novel Ambition being a bestseller, and her 2004 novel Sugar Rush being adapted for television.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 8, 2022
I am only to the end of chapter one and I am in thrall 0f this fantastic, verbose, and acerbic-tongued woman...I so want to be her when I grow up! I am not usually a fan of non-fiction, but to my mind, this book is categorically prize-winning. With everything going on in the world nowadays, it is very easy to be completely disheartened by humans, humanity, and life in general...and then you read the phrase 'lest some snivelling snowflake has a tantrum' (Pp 5) in the introduction and spotted a pinprick of light at the bottom of the well of humanities idiocy. Thank you, Ms. Burchill. Without people like you bringing attention to something that is slowly eroding the hard-fought-for and won rights of women (the menstruating type), we may as well give up now, hit up Elon Musk and SpaceX to build spaceships so women can bugger off and colonise Venus, preferably leaving the Woke's behind...or better still, send all the Woke's to Mars so they can continue to spout their drivel to the Martians.
December 12, 2021
Never one to miss a popular bandwagon, tedious, unfunny, mercenary cultural hack Julie Burchill attempts to grab some of that 'anti-woke' (the current rebrand for 'anti-PC') action. Unfortunately, it seems like she missed the 2019-20 publishing sweet spot by attempting to whip up an online harassment campaign that spectacularly backfired. Legal action by her would-be victim saw the book being promptly dropped by the original publisher. It then transpired that her hastily found-and-then-abandoned replacement was overseen by a closet white supremacist, pushing it further away from that brief window of sensationalist press coverage these sorts of titles rely upon for their profit margins. All of this was ironically tied up with her being sacked from her latest punditry gig at *The Daily Telegraph* for being openly racist online, six months before it finally saw publication. Always interesting to note that those who scream about 'being cancelled' often never seem to be languishing in public exile for that long.
As with much of her existing 'oeuvre', Burchil's text appears completely oblivious to the inherent contradiction at its heart. The narrative is framed by the experience of having her performative vulgarity challenged by members of the minority group she happened to be punching down at in 2013. The author then devotes page after page to (re)establishing her victimhood status and identifying the myriad of injustices that allegedly reinforce it. This framing of her own '#Identity' is basically the same as that used by the so-called 'outrage mob', whom she accuses of having 'killed progressive politics' while alienating some fantastical concept of a culturally homogenous 'working class' that's only ever existed in Burchill's head. It also undermines her, far from invalid, case for moving beyond a 'childish world of villains and victims', despite her dedicating more than 200 pages indulging in that very same simplistic metanarrative. Incidentally, Burchill more or less took this same sort of stance in her last book when she tried to position herself as the final arbiter for determining who was and was not allowed to '#Identify' as Jewish. That and the fact she spent much of December 2020 attempting to do what was basically the same thing via social media that she claims to have been on the receiving end of back in January 2013.
Ultimately, this is just another iteration of the same reheated, polemical swill that's already been regurgitated countless times across books, newspapers, magazines and internet echo chambers, where the same outrage-fermenting, narrative dopamine hits are performed, over and over again. Nevertheless, one can't help but detect a sense of growing desperation in Burchill's output. Given the length of time that's elapsed between this and her previous, now largely forgotten, offering from 2014, coupled with her getting the boot from the *Telegraph* of all places, Burchill's cultivated boorish public persona appears ever more worn and diminished. As the former *Sun* editor Roy Gleenslade remarked a decade ago: "my admittedly occasional reading of her columns in recent years has left [me] feeling that she realises her old schtick is no longer working. She has run out of steam – and sympathetic newspaper editors".
As with much of her existing 'oeuvre', Burchil's text appears completely oblivious to the inherent contradiction at its heart. The narrative is framed by the experience of having her performative vulgarity challenged by members of the minority group she happened to be punching down at in 2013. The author then devotes page after page to (re)establishing her victimhood status and identifying the myriad of injustices that allegedly reinforce it. This framing of her own '#Identity' is basically the same as that used by the so-called 'outrage mob', whom she accuses of having 'killed progressive politics' while alienating some fantastical concept of a culturally homogenous 'working class' that's only ever existed in Burchill's head. It also undermines her, far from invalid, case for moving beyond a 'childish world of villains and victims', despite her dedicating more than 200 pages indulging in that very same simplistic metanarrative. Incidentally, Burchill more or less took this same sort of stance in her last book when she tried to position herself as the final arbiter for determining who was and was not allowed to '#Identify' as Jewish. That and the fact she spent much of December 2020 attempting to do what was basically the same thing via social media that she claims to have been on the receiving end of back in January 2013.
Ultimately, this is just another iteration of the same reheated, polemical swill that's already been regurgitated countless times across books, newspapers, magazines and internet echo chambers, where the same outrage-fermenting, narrative dopamine hits are performed, over and over again. Nevertheless, one can't help but detect a sense of growing desperation in Burchill's output. Given the length of time that's elapsed between this and her previous, now largely forgotten, offering from 2014, coupled with her getting the boot from the *Telegraph* of all places, Burchill's cultivated boorish public persona appears ever more worn and diminished. As the former *Sun* editor Roy Gleenslade remarked a decade ago: "my admittedly occasional reading of her columns in recent years has left [me] feeling that she realises her old schtick is no longer working. She has run out of steam – and sympathetic newspaper editors".
December 5, 2021
I imagine this was quite a personal book for Julie Burchill to write, bound up with her Woke conflicts. I found it a bit unstructured, with random conflicts and vitriol. But it had plenty to say on the Woke, and I agree witth most of it. Some of the feminist stuff leaves me cold. And at times it gets so covered in bile as to make the argument hard to follow.
My usual books are history or science. I enjoyed it though.
My usual books are history or science. I enjoyed it though.
December 12, 2021
Never one to miss a popular bandwagon, tedious, unfunny, mercenary cultural hack Julie Burchill attempts to grab some of that 'anti-woke' (the current rebrand for 'anti-PC') action. Unfortunately, it seems like she missed the 2019-20 publishing sweet spot by attempting to whip up an online harassment campaign that spectacularly backfired. Legal action by her would-be victim saw the book being promptly dropped by the original publisher. It then transpired that her hastily found-and-then-abandoned replacement was overseen by a closet white supremacist, pushing it further away from that brief window of sensationalist press coverage these sorts of titles rely upon for their profit margins. All of this was ironically tied up with her being sacked from her latest punditry gig at *The Daily Telegraph* for being openly racist online, six months before it finally saw publication. Always interesting to note that those who scream about 'being cancelled' often never seem to languish in public exile for that long.
As with much of her existing 'oeuvre', Burchil's text appears completely oblivious to the inherent contradiction at its heart. The narrative is framed by the experience of having her performative vulgarity challenged by members of the minority group she happened to be punching down at in 2013. The author then devotes page after page to (re)establishing her victimhood status and identifying the myriad of injustices that allegedly reinforce it. This framing of her own '#Identity' is basically the same as that used by the so-called 'outrage mob', whom she accuses of having 'killed progressive politics' while alienating some fantastical concept of a culturally homogenous 'working class' that's only ever existed in Burchill's head. It also undermines her, far from invalid, case for moving beyond a 'childish world of villains and victims', despite her dedicating more than 200 pages indulging in that very same simplistic metanarrative. Incidentally, Burchill more or less took this same sort of stance in her last book when she tried to position herself as the final arbiter for determining who was and was not allowed to '#Identify' as Jewish. That and the fact she spent much of December 2020 attempting to do what was basically the same thing via social media that she claims to have been on the receiving end of back in January 2013.
Ultimately, this is just another iteration of the same reheated, polemical swill that's already been regurgitated countless times across books, newspapers, magazines and internet echo chambers, where the same outrage-fermenting, narrative dopamine hits are performed, over and over again. Nevertheless, one can't help but detect a sense of growing desperation in Burchill's output. Given the length of time that elapsed between this and her previous, now largely forgotten, offering from 2014, coupled with her getting the boot from the *Telegraph* of all places, Burchill's cultivated boorish public persona appears ever more worn and diminished. As the former *Sun* editor Roy Gleenslade remarked a decade ago: "my admittedly occasional reading of her columns in recent years has left [me] feeling that she realises her old schtick is no longer working. She has run out of steam – and sympathetic newspaper editors".
As with much of her existing 'oeuvre', Burchil's text appears completely oblivious to the inherent contradiction at its heart. The narrative is framed by the experience of having her performative vulgarity challenged by members of the minority group she happened to be punching down at in 2013. The author then devotes page after page to (re)establishing her victimhood status and identifying the myriad of injustices that allegedly reinforce it. This framing of her own '#Identity' is basically the same as that used by the so-called 'outrage mob', whom she accuses of having 'killed progressive politics' while alienating some fantastical concept of a culturally homogenous 'working class' that's only ever existed in Burchill's head. It also undermines her, far from invalid, case for moving beyond a 'childish world of villains and victims', despite her dedicating more than 200 pages indulging in that very same simplistic metanarrative. Incidentally, Burchill more or less took this same sort of stance in her last book when she tried to position herself as the final arbiter for determining who was and was not allowed to '#Identify' as Jewish. That and the fact she spent much of December 2020 attempting to do what was basically the same thing via social media that she claims to have been on the receiving end of back in January 2013.
Ultimately, this is just another iteration of the same reheated, polemical swill that's already been regurgitated countless times across books, newspapers, magazines and internet echo chambers, where the same outrage-fermenting, narrative dopamine hits are performed, over and over again. Nevertheless, one can't help but detect a sense of growing desperation in Burchill's output. Given the length of time that elapsed between this and her previous, now largely forgotten, offering from 2014, coupled with her getting the boot from the *Telegraph* of all places, Burchill's cultivated boorish public persona appears ever more worn and diminished. As the former *Sun* editor Roy Gleenslade remarked a decade ago: "my admittedly occasional reading of her columns in recent years has left [me] feeling that she realises her old schtick is no longer working. She has run out of steam – and sympathetic newspaper editors".
June 12, 2023
Not Julie at her best, unfortunately. She’s as caustic and cutting as ever, which is why most of us read her — if you want kind, you do not look to Ms Burchill — but the editing and formatting of this book was really poor. From typos and mistakes (such as £12 million people…) to the lack of an overarching, uniting theme.
The book itself is structured into chapters, but I think each chapter should be read as a wholly independent essay, each loosely grouped around a central thesis — some more loosely than others, it must be said. But even within each chapter/essay, the structure isn’t great. It’s meandering and there are parts that, while not actually direct repeats, feel very samey.
That said, I did appreciate her criticism of how the middle class treats the working class. Julie is great for this, and what she says is true. The hypocrisy is gross and the vitriol is both ragingly hypocritical and a complete abandonment of what the left is supposed to represent. I also appreciated her comments about left-wing antisemitism. I’m glad she points that out.
The book itself is structured into chapters, but I think each chapter should be read as a wholly independent essay, each loosely grouped around a central thesis — some more loosely than others, it must be said. But even within each chapter/essay, the structure isn’t great. It’s meandering and there are parts that, while not actually direct repeats, feel very samey.
That said, I did appreciate her criticism of how the middle class treats the working class. Julie is great for this, and what she says is true. The hypocrisy is gross and the vitriol is both ragingly hypocritical and a complete abandonment of what the left is supposed to represent. I also appreciated her comments about left-wing antisemitism. I’m glad she points that out.
March 30, 2025
The book is an entertaining and at times eye-opening read. It outlines the debates and conflicts over gender identity, the attacks on free speech and women's rights.
Julie Burchill's forthright style can be quite funny at times. I laughed out loud in several places.
She has been ill served by her proofreaders as the book has many typos. Also, one wonders if the book shows signs of an American editor. I doubt the phrase 'turkeys in favour of Thanksgiving' p 145 springs readily to a British mind.
Julie Burchill's forthright style can be quite funny at times. I laughed out loud in several places.
She has been ill served by her proofreaders as the book has many typos. Also, one wonders if the book shows signs of an American editor. I doubt the phrase 'turkeys in favour of Thanksgiving' p 145 springs readily to a British mind.
February 9, 2022
Some very interesting elements, though very hard to read. It’s written in the style of a “shock” OpEd piece which works in a newspaper but not consistently over 250 pages.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews