Even a ‘literal communist' like Ash Sarkar knows the Left is in crisis

Telegraph

24-02-2025

'WHO FUNDS YOU?' This has been the deathly cry of every angry online Leftist over the last few years.
These detectives of 'dirty money' will harangue anyone who works at a think-tank or media outlet that deviates even a tad from the suffocating woke consensus. 'Who's paying you to say this?', they madly wail.
That's how conceited the Left is: they're so flabbergasted that anyone would dare to defy their holy writ that they assume we must have been put up to it by some filthy-rich troublemaker. Now, in a turn of events that is as delicious as it is eye-opening, we're finally discovering who's funding them – none other than the American Empire.
It is such a fun spectacle – many of the institutions loved by the Lefties who yell 'Who funds you?' were getting funding from the mighty machine of America's Deep State. Donald Trump's raiding of the coffers of USAID – the United States Agency for International Development – has exposed just how much of the woke industrial complex was backed by America.
The BBC was getting US government funding. The digital liberal outlet Politico pocketed a sweet $8m in subscriptions paid for by the US state. Rory Stewart's wife's charity was funded too.
And now we discover that Stonewall, Britain's best-known LGBTQ+ charity, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the American bureaucracy. This morning, it was reported that Stonewall might have to lay off half of its 114-strong workforce. And the reason, it seems, is because Trump has tightened America's purse strings.
Stonewall appears to have received oodles of money from America's Global Equality Fund. It was reportedly for Stonewall's work in Eastern Europe, where it has been working with police and other state agencies on 'adapting their systems' to make them 'more sensitive to the needs of the LGBTQ+ community'.
Stonewall staff are said to be 'shellshocked' by the cuts that will have to be made following Trump's puncturing of the bloated American state. I bet they're not nearly as shocked as the rest of us are to discover that a hyper-woke UK charity was being part-funded by a foreign government.
Stonewall has lost the plot in recent years. It started life with the noble goal of winning gay equality, but ended up drowning in the alphabet soup of LGBTQIA etc. It became Britain's chief proponent of the hocus pocus of the trans ideology.
For a very pretty penny, it offered its services to government bodies, universities and other institutions, feeding them such 21st-century hoo-hah as 'men can become women' and all bathrooms should be 'gender neutral'. Thankfully, many government departments cut ties with Stonewall in recent years, after clocking how nutty its agenda had become.
It is shocking to me that a charity scorned by its own government continued to get money from the American government. It has a whiff of foreign intervention. To my mind, Stonewall and the others who got US cash were essentially the shock troops of America's woke colonialism.
The ideology of political correctness really is in trouble. Even woke commentators like Ash Sarkar can see it. She's currently promoting her new book, Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War. Woke is dead, she says. And identity politics has been a 'disaster' for the Left. The Left, she says, has lost the argument to the 'hard-Right'.
Eh? That's not what has happened at all. In truth, ordinary people are tired of the eccentric ideologies of their supposed betters. From the millions of working-class Americans who voted Trump to Britain's own trans-sceptical brigade, there's been a mass pushback against the divisive, destructive creeds of old.
Older Empires gave the 'uncivilised' world the Bible and common law. The New Empire gave them the religion of gender fluidity and woke correct-speak. The US government spent millions on globalising wokeness. It funded a trans comic book in Peru, an 'equality' musical in Ireland, LGBT activism in Guatemala. And the woke ideologues of Stonewall.
One of the reasons Stonewall's influence in the UK dipped in recent years is because of the brilliant work of gender-critical feminists. They shone a harsh light on the gender insanity it was foisting on government departments. It makes me proud that these plucky, self-funded women humbled a vast charity that was in the pay of the American state. A very British revolt against the woke industrial complex. TERF Island 1, American Empire 0.
Woke really is dying, but the culprit isn't the 'hard-Right' – it's everyday men and women who want common sense back.