The end of America's Marxist era

DEI was simply Marxism in corporate buzzwords: it never accomplished what it advertised and merely divided the country

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago, and a racist today."

—Thomas Sowell

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is ending in America, and if you’re confused why, or still think it was a good idea, let us dispel you of this notion today. I get it for some of you: DEI looks good on paper. The words sound nice, who could argue against these things? Unfortunately, it’s not in practice. DEI was divisive, Marxist policy that is very much the antithesis of what it means to be American. It divided the country. It amplified hatred. It was wholly illiberal and devolved into a grift: in corporate America, it went so far as to have companies adopt fake ESG scores which were exploited and eventually fell apart (all eerily similar to what happened in the movie The Big Short). Tobacco companies branded as highly ethical merely by ticking boxes, an odd kind of moral inversion these policies enabled in many areas. It broke AI models, with embarrassingly ahistorical generations. If it continued, it could have ripped apart the country altogether.

I wanted to share a very brief analysis of why we should be glad it’s over. It’s also noteworthy for awhile we weren’t even allowed to critique any of this without fear of retribution or being canceled by the mob. Just consider for a moment how dystopian that is. At no point should we enact policy which may not be criticized and debated without fear. Any good policy would hold up to scrutiny, that which falls apart under rational discourse should not persist. It’s undemocratic and totalitarian.

Also of note, I am not a contrarian for writing today’s story. While some on LinkedIn are aghast DEI is going away and can’t fathom why, here in the real world DEI being a failure is a widely held position by reasonable people on all sides. Here’s a critique on DEI from a liberal, here’s one from a conservative, here’s one from trad media, here’s one from the creator of a popular internet programming language. I’d highly recommend you read them. There’s countless others, because citizens who aren’t nihilistic care about the health of civilization.

Many implementing these policies had good intentions. Although the architects are openly Marxist and several of whom are guilty of fraud. And where there’s smoke, there’s fire in the form of a sprawling DEI-industrial complex filled with other grifters. They created a landscape where the very minorities DEI should have protected found themselves vulnerable to new forms of marginalization (while profiting from this). As a Jewish American I witnessed in horror the plight of Jewish students on college campuses post October 7th, where the promise of inclusivity turned into a breeding ground for antisemitism. This in itself is a damning enough example that the entire thing should be thrown out.

The irony is palpable: a policy designed to embrace diversity instead created an environment where support for terrorist regimes was openly endorsed, and those who should be safeguarded became targets. Our own public school systems taught antisemitism. Ivy league administrators were dragged before congress, and Harvard just settled two antisemitism lawsuits. Students were barricaded in rooms under threat of mob violence. Deeply unsocial behavior is still ongoing at Columbia and other institutions. These things just don’t happen with functional policy and leadership.

This is an “anti-racism seminar” at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia that happened recently. Completely insane to have a slide like this, no matter the context. We’re stopping this in America, thankfully.

This perverse outcome stems from the fundamental flaw in DEI's ideological foundation: a Marxist-worldview that divides society into oppressors and oppressed, leaving no room for nuance or complexity. It’s profoundly unamerican. The DEI framework, in its zeal to right historical wrongs, created a hierarchy of victimhood where some minorities are deemed more worthy than others. Jewish students, perceived as white and privileged, found themselves cast as oppressors in this simplistic narrative, their own history of persecution conveniently overlooked. Jews are a canary in the coal mine for the health of a civilization, with the far right and far left (some say woke right and woke left) converging on blaming us for all problems and viewing our people as evil. When you get any policy or ideology that results in ostracizing entire population cohorts based on background, you know something has gone wrong. It’s clear the antisemitism on the left was being pushed through our institutions, and the antisemitism on the right is being pushed by fringe losers online. Of course neither is good, but the institutional endorsement is far more concerning for those who understand systems.

This ideological rigidity leaves no room for alternative explanations or solutions, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of division and resentment. The failure of DEI to achieve its stated goals is not just an academic concern, it has real-world consequences that rippled through society. After all, these students eventually move into the real world, into corporate America and governance, carrying with them the same Marxist thinking and oppressor narratives. On campuses, we witnessed the bizarre spectacle of progressives aligning themselves with violent regimes that embody the antithesis of liberal western values. In media outlets, at companies and within non-profits, we saw actively hostile and false narratives painted about Jewish people. I’ve been reading them since October 7th, when all “the work” by DEI professionals was basically weaponized against us.

The cognitive dissonance on display is a result of DEI's flawed premise that oppression is solely a function of power dynamics, ignoring the spirit of America is for the individual to succeed and overcome, and that our culture does not prioritize any one group over others. It overlooks the nuance that empowerment comes not from homogenizing outcomes but building a culture where every individual is free to achieve based on their unique potential, merit and work ethic. By focusing narrowly on group identities, or that our own country itself is evil and a ‘colonial oppressor,’ DEI undermines the shared value that all men are created equal, under god that form the foundation of American society.

DEI literally just divided America. If you are still supportive, you basically want division. How can anyone argue these policies were good? The inverse of their stated outcome was achieved.

Further, the implementation of DEI policies devolved into a performative exercise, a check-box approach focused on appearances over any real change. This superficiality not only failed to address any real issues but bred cynicism and backlash, further entrenching societal divisions. The existential crisis facing American society is not one of insufficient diversity or inclusion, but a crisis of shared values and common purpose. DEI exacerbated this crisis by emphasizing differences over commonalities, grievances over aspirations. Oddly, the media participated in amplifying this, because it gets clicks and attention, and this brings to light the harm of having such businesses be run in this way.

The media under the DEI regime, essentially hard at work to divide America. And make no mistake trad media during this time had more influence in driving narratives than social.

As one commentator on this topic notes, "without robust, transparent, and respectful debates, DEI frameworks may persist in enforcing litmus tests, censorship, and practices, potentially ushering in an era reminiscent of institutionalized McCarthyism." Of course, there haven’t been meaningful debates until recently when we were even allowed to discuss this topic openly, without angry mobs coming to berate us. But now, it’s being cast aside by a majority of the country, who opposes this illiberal ideology and voted it out this election (some continue to just blame inflation but I reiterate culture matters just as much, and we were building one which was highly corrosive, while reasonable liberals and party leaders ignored this). I have also touched on this topic in previous posts. The only logical reasons I can think of people would remain endorsing of the DEI-industrial complex is they’re paid to, haven’t been attacked yet, think they must virtue signal to others, or don’t really care about what happens to other groups of citizens who are perceived lower importance to protect. None of these are great reasons.

Stunning chart showing how the DEI regime touched academia. All these grievance papers end up making their way into Wikipedia in the form of revising history along with media stories and exacerbate division in the country, quite pointlessly. The academic-industrial complex is a far-left indoctrination camp for political activism and breeding ground for division and antisemitism.

In our quest for a more just society, the path forward lies not in divisive ideologies but renewed commitment to universal principles of human dignity for all and individual merit. The failure of DEI serves as a reminder good intentions unmoored from reality and historical wisdom lead to disastrous outcomes. Ironic because outcomes broadly aren’t measured or even considered here, the entire movement celebrates inputs and quotas. Everyone gets a trophy, everyone should have equal outcomes (except for the more equal among us, of course). Again, this is Marxist thinking. We are in America, where all this is antithetical to our way of life. The experiment was run, and it was a bad one, but of course we’ll continue to see “real socialism has never been tried” types insist there’s a way to do it right. There isn’t.

We stand at this crossroads and must ask ourselves: can we forge a better approach that accepts everyone, regardless of background, based on ability and merit, without resorting to ideological conformity and stack ranking groups of people? The liberalism of the 90s seemed to do this well, and slowly, then all at once came off the rails through the 2010s. We should ask what we were doing right, and what caused us to get so far off track.

If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?