During the Cold War, we had peace protests against nukes, Che Guevara T-shirts and leftists standing outside auto factories with leaflets trying to raise workers’ consciousness. Along with these relatively benign actions, we also had the Red Army Faction kidnapping bankers and governments toppled by communist revolutionaries around the world.
Now, the war for the proletariat has since long become passé. For leftist elites, the working class is not nearly as hip as it once was and mostly outlived its usefulness.
The welfare state had reduced the appetite for class warfare among the working class. At the same time, leftist cultural norms quickly became too extreme for many in the working class to embrace, many who questioned whether new leftist policies would harm their interests.
A substitute for the proletariat was desperately needed. And it has arrived in the form of the immigrant, the victim of colonialism, racism and imperialism. For the left, this group was living proof of the futility of borders, nations and cultural identity. It could also form a new useful voting bloc in favor of a leftist agenda.
At the same time, LGBT campaigns against oppressive moral and legal norms began, a group the left embraced as it shifted towards identity politics.
These groups, both immigrants and those from LGBT communities, were diverse enough for the left to claim it was morally superior.
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