A thought provoking article. I hear what you are saying and, to some extent, understand your anger and frustration. However, I do not fully align with you extending your argument to Wokism. Woke, or whatever commentators call it, is being used to dismiss the concerns of the voices of those who feel left out of history. It is being used by those on the extreme right to demean the voices of those without a voice. I am not a supporter of the radical left. Yes, let us have constructive debates, but labelling the injustices perpetuated and continuing today under the general label of Woke is wrong.
Ancient Greece was not the only civilisation to exist, nor did it exist in isolation from all others.
Scientists or so-called scientists have in the past used reason to label non-whites as inferior (i.e. the Enlightenment movement).
I don’t support corporations using the general concerns of others and the injustices perpetrated against them to market their wares. However, is there only one lens through which one can view history? The overall narrative is from those of the conquerers (i.e. the Western World). Is it wrong to ask for other voices to be heard and for a more objective and non-western, less biased interpretation of history? Indeed, would not a reasoned scientific approach would require such an approach?
On the subject of protestors tearing down statues, one need to contextualise why this is happening. There might be no need to tear down these statues if we had a less biased interpretation of history or those statues being used to reinforce ideas of racial superiority. Hopefully, there will be no need to tear down statues in the future because we will have more objective views of these individuals.
I feel uncomfortable the comparisons with the Taliban. Were you against the Eastern European in the 1980s knocking down statues of Lenin? Would you agree to statues of Hitler being erected? Some of the colonialists were responsible for acts that were equally as reprehensible as his. Further, in battles, the victors in Ancient Greece practised dioikismos.
