The left sees itself involved in a moral battle against oppression and injustice, one between good and evil. With that worldview, appeals to abstract ideas won’t cut it. Rule of law as an argument against illegal immigration won’t budge a progressive who sees illegal aliens as refugees done wrong by their governments (and ours). Same goes for proposing economic solutions to BLM’s list of oppression-based grievances.

The rhetoric towards whites resembles what Jews endured at the turn of the last century. “Europhobia,” anti-white animus, or “whitenessphobia” pours from nearly every major U.S. institution on a regular basis: major media outlets, places of work, governing bodies, and schools at all levels. Professors at prestigious universities are sharing white-shaming memes or declaring things like “white lives don’t matter.” Most disturbingly, these same toxic ideas have even been used to excuse heinous crimes, rape (as payback for historical black slavery) and murder (as payback for structural racism). Calling the ideas “un-American propaganda” as the White House did, is too vague. The people who espouse them are bigoted, full stop.

Failing to call out expressions of anti-white bigotry signals that the left is off the hook for their own racism. They’re not. If faced with a strong groundswell of coordinated voices, many among the woke left will suffer a deflated sense of moral righteousness. Conservative tactics may include: boycotts of companies that finance BLM extremism or engage in woke advertising, demands to universities to defund CRT/Whiteness-Studies courses, or open letters from top conservative and liberal voices condemning the more influential Europhobic speakers. As for the more strident and dismissive among the left, they’ll be forced to proclaim, even louder, that ‘racism against whites is not a thing’—a position that’s far more alienating to the mass public than it is defensible.