The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time

by Yascha Mounk

Some illiberal norms, including unforgiving social sanctions for unpopular speech, the need to pay lip service to a Manichaean version of antiracism, and the occasional witch hunt against innocents, are likely to remain part of the culture of America’s most influential institutions for the foreseeable future. At the same time, the growing resistance to the identity trap will make it more feasible to undo some of its worst excesses. Other illiberal norms, including the most extreme prohibitions on forms of so-called cultural appropriation and the most blatant attempts by the state to discriminate between citizens on the basis of their race, are likely to prove short-lived. The next decades will, in other words, consist of a protracted fight over the extent to which the worlds of culture and education, business and politics will be governed by the core ideas and assumptions of the identity synthesis. According to this third scenario—which I consider the most likely—the forces favoring the identity trap and the forces favoring its retrenchment will continue to clash for many years to come.

Let's see how the Hamas-Israel war will change his predictions. I think it is hastening the reckoning. But cancel culture is not gone. I fear we will wind up in a trump dictatorship as the left fractures and the disempowered go with the bully who seems fun and far away instead of the bully on their block.