The Fall of Ideals: How Progressivism and Economics Shaped the Fate of Diversity and Inclusion

It is 2010. The buzzwords 'diversity' & 'inclusion' leave a cheer of spirits, indicating the richness that comes with engaging in people with a multitude of backgrounds & from many walks of life. It is reflected in the zeitgeist as well, with the cultural stampede ringing through every facet of mankind. 

Turn to 2024. The words, now ridiculed, leave behind a trail of jeers. The public is thoroughly discontented and their mere mention leaves the environment permeated with groans. It is not a mystery why this shift in the zeitgest and the generic shift in people's attitudes took place. 

While much of the world's troubles & doom and gloom is placed squarely on Conservative shoulders - from xenophobia to wars to overall regression, the Progressives escape much of the blame or have managed to deflect it through their vice-like grip on outlets that shape public opinion. 

However, they escape much of the attention when it comes to mutilating the spirit behind the now much maligned words with their consistently overused messaging that has sharply polarised the public opinion in the opposite direction. 

In order to understand the 'why', there is a need to focus & investigate the 'how'. The prime reason why this messaging has backfired is both the fumbling standards caused with the decline in meritocracy as well as the headwinds in economic growth. It is not easy to gauge that Enlightenment ideals can only be put in place if there is enough food on the table. Without prosperity, any sort of activism centered around such ideals is doomed to fail because under the prevalent situation of "every man for himself", the rallying cry for such activism is lost in the hubris of other, more pressing demands. 

A way to historically look at it is through the lens of European climb from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance. While primordial civilisations such as India & China declined, what took the European Middle Ages to the flying trajectory of Renaissance was its own economic growth (often supplanted by colonisation but it will be a folly to not admit the staggering advancements that were subsequently pulled off beginning with the Printing Press). Without such an environment, the Enlightenment ideals previously mentioned would have never seen the light of the day and remained floundered. Since we mentioned the Printing Press it is telling to note that Gutenberg was only a success because relative to others, the European populace had the capacity to purchase mass produced books, unlike other nations/civilisations which were still involved with crude methods. Another by-product of this was the rapid spread of Protestantism via the distribution of Luther's 95 Theses made possible through the printing press. 

It is also possible to paint a corollary of the present with the past in terms of 'anti-war activism'. Contrast the 1970s where sweeping protests & public outcry over the Vietnam War forced the United States administration to rethink and pull its forces off from the Vietnamese soil, barring any future involvement (otherwise Vietnam's fate might have looked similar to Korea's with the opposing sides not having ceased the state of war but merely an armistice). On the other hand, 2024 was marked by similar outcry against the Israel-Hamas conflict with both youth & the Elites involved. But the marked difference between now and then is the economic downturn which has shifted the news focus to pressing matters for the domestic public - Inflation, Immigration etc. as a result of which any resistance towards the United States' iron-clad support for Israel has dropped out of the news cycle & outside campuses, indicating business as usual on the war fronts. This may also be said true for the European counterparts, which have seen pockets of protests and societal flares now and then without any deepening cracks. 

After looking at societal effects, it is also worth looking at the ripples in the economy and industry that the phenomenon has wreaked. The worst victim was the total sidelining of meritocracy that has tanked many-a-enterprises and to the extent of nations. Boeing comes out as the first instance where the aviation behemoth has burned its finances by cutting corners where it mattered, leading to quality failures but earning high credits on the DEI and to some extent financialisation indices!

This has also reflected throughout the Big Tech, where companies like Intel have gone from innovation highs to QC issues propping up here and there. As of 2025, even Meta has joined the bandwagon with Mark Zuckerberg publicly supporting the approach used at X and envisioned by Elon Musk. Supplanted by such tactics and complementary policy changes, the German automobile industry is staring at a historic crisis with more job cuts to follow as they spread their ripples throughout Europe's most productive & important economy. It is quite easy to trace the political trajectory as economic hardship rises, with these homogenised nation states having to take in more and more immigrants/low skilled workers to account for the collapsing demographics (for instance Germany needs a rapid influx of 200,000 workers to sustain its economy), which in effect leads to the rise of parties either on the far left or right side of the spectrum causing greater instability. A recent example can be seen in the rise of AfD in Germany, a broadsided Left coalition in France or the surprise success of the PVV in the Netherlands. 

It is astonishing to think that in 2020, nobody believed that the terminologies and principles associated with what the Conservatives lampoon as "wokeism" would ever be stopped. Instead, Trumpism has covered American towns, making inroads even in the demographics which would scourge Republicans with all their might. All careful shaping of public opinion washed down in its entirety with the increase in standards of living pinching everyone's pockets coupled alongside the ever-increasing migration perceived as taking away the fair share of the employment from the homegrowns.

It is all the more sad because a multicultural world, in its truest sense, is a fun and an entertaining world. There is no greater joy to be felt than in the company of a fellow and interesting man, goes the quote with a slight modification. Alas, the mad romp of progressivism had to taint it for all of us.