Andrew Sullivan

Why America’s social justice narratives always crash and burn

The wonderful thing about woke narratives is that you only have to wait a while until they collapse. The core of Donald Trump’s appeal in 2016, we were told by the media, was that white supremacists and various gammons saw a chance to reverse racial progress. The results of 2020 showed that, in fact, black and Latino support for Trump had increased over those four years, while Biden won by increasing his white male vote. The ‘racial reckoning’ in the wake of George Floyd’s murder was proof, we were told, that we needed to ‘defund the police’. Only months later, the Democratic primary for New York City’s mayoral election was won by a black former cop, Eric Adams, who promised to increase police funding and had more support among African Americans and Latinos than upscale whites.

Has any movement ever crashed and burned more quickly than the social justice revolution?

Last year every major media organisation ran story after story about how white supremacists, inspired by Trump’s rhetoric on the ‘China virus’, were inflicting random violence against Asian Americans. As video after video and local news story after local news story showed that the attacks were largely by young black men or deranged homeless people, the establishment media started to run articles about ‘multiracial whiteness’ to cover their posteriors. While racial justice figures insisted critical race theory (CRT) was only being taught in a few law schools, teachers leaked secondary and even primary school curricula showing precisely the concepts of CRT in action. The CRT scholars moved seamlessly to the argument that, sure, it’s there — and should be taught.


Unlike in Britain, where there is a strong debate about trans questions, especially the treatment of children with gender dysphoria, the woke media in the US will not print a word about it, and when they do, describe it as function of hateful transphobia and nothing else.

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Written by
Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan is a journalist, author and former editor of the New Republic. Last year he launched his Weekly Dish newsletter, website and podcast.

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