One must have the honesty to recognize the stroke of genius from the left, because it is one. The greatest rhetorical heist of the century boils down to a single word: racist.
Here’s the mechanism.
After 1945, after the civil rights movement, the West made racism the absolute evil. Rightly so: it is one of its greatest moral conquests. “Racist” became the most radioactive word in the language, the modern excommunication, instant social death.
The stroke of genius was to hijack this moral capital. Not to protect people: to protect an ideology.
Results egalitarianism never wins a debate on the facts. It produces the opposite of what it promises, everywhere, every time. So instead of winning the debate, they made the debate unaffordable. You question the outcomes of immigration without assimilation? Racist. You defend merit? Racist. Advanced math? Racist. Borders? Racist. The word stopped describing a behavior and started describing a position on the chessboard.
And look at the technical beauty of the setup. No need for arguments: the accusation is enough. No need for a trial: denial makes the case worse (your defensiveness proves your guilt). No need for police: fear does the work, everyone polices themselves and their neighbor for free. It just takes publicly executing a few examples a year to keep millions in line. An irrefutable ideology, protected by an unpronounceable word. The two firewalls of the same system: French Theory had abolished truth, the accusation abolished debate.
——-
A planned economy, a military empire, a concrete wall. What didn’t fall was the idea. The idea that the world is divided between oppressors and oppressed. The idea that there is a final equality to be achieved, by any means necessary. The idea that everything that exists (the family, the nation, merit, inheritance) is a structure of domination to be torn down.
———
Wokism is a political economy of scarcity. It needs gatekeepers who control access to careers. It needs commissars between you and the outcome. It needs spots to be scarce for their redistribution to make sense. Its peak was COVID: populations immobilized, dependent on official channels, every interaction subject to authorization. The peak of the globalist project and the woke peak fall in the same year in all the data. It’s not a coincidence. It’s the same phenomenon.