This book confirms Eric Kaufmann as the foremost theorist of what has been called the ‘great awokening’. In Taboo and his previous book, Whiteshift, he provides the history, the political analysis and the phrases and definitions to help us untangle what has become known as ‘wokeness’, as well as a route map for challenging the ideology.

His definition of ‘woke’ as the ‘sacralization of historically disadvantaged race, gender and sexual identity groups’ doesn’t trip off the tongue, but his overall analysis is lucid and original. The focus is on its two main effects: progressive intolerance, leading to a curtailment of free speech and thought (summed up in the phrase ‘cancel culture’), and deculturation, meaning the prioritising of diversity and group identity over communitarian values and national belonging as a result of the divisive analysis of critical race theory (with its notions of white privilege, structural racism and intersectionality).

Kaufmann is no reactionary. Rather, he thinks that the overshoot, the over-­valorisation of victimhood, is damaging to human flourishing:

The pursuit of equality is important, but should focus on lifting the weak rather than targeting historic ‘oppressor’ groups, making room for a broader suite of values including expressive freedom and the