The mechanism

Is wokeness why Trump theory, unpacked

“The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting.”

Thus spake the Harper’s letter, a 2020 document that, for convoluted reasons, is now regularly blamed by progressives for being the reason why Trump. The signatories (of whom I was of course the most notable) are meant to have enabled right-wing illiberalism by focusing only on left excesses, which aren’t even excesses, which are actually quite charming. Is the thinking, at any rate, among the ‘wokeness just means kindness’ brigade.

The counterargument is, no, the point of opposing cancel culture or left excesses or (some versions of what’s meant by) wokeness was to preserve liberalism, to protect America and the world from what Trump and the like have up their sleeves. This seems self-evident to me, but also like something that is not actually self-evident (source: everyone who scoffs at it), and needs unpacking. Below is a rough attempt at laying out the mechanism according to which left excesses helped facilitate—didn’t monocausally bring about, but opened the door to—the blech before us: