I was struck by a question as I was piecing my arguments together for a future series of articles. How can racism and sexism be dominant ideologies of a society which near universally rejects those labels? If these beliefs are so widespread, why are they condemned?

I realised the prejudices we commonly refer to as racism and sexism are often quite distinct from the ideologies which once justified them.

We can call the original version of racism and sexism ‘supremacy’. The supremacist believes their chosen people are inherently superior, morally and intellectually, to their lessers. This was the dominant ideology across most of the world until relatively recently.

Social conservatism still has the occasional taint of supremacy, which rears its head particularly in the form of religious sexism. However, neoconservatism and neoliberalism have adopted a new method of justifying their prejudices.

Supremacists believe that the unequal status of various groups in the world is proof of inherent mental and moral inequality.

Similarly, but importantly distinct, modern prejudice rests on the belief that the unequal status of various groups in the world is the result of poor (or ‘different’) choices being made. In this way, victims of discrimination and circumstances are made out to be self-sabotagers who simply need to get their acts together.

Critically this allows the prejudiced individual to claim no prejudice whatsoever. In fact this may be somewhat true, in the sense that they believe anyone who falls on hard times has it coming. This is, however, still a prejudice, and applying it to entire categories of people is a further prejudice on top of that.

Although the end result may be prejudice against women and other racial groups, this can be an entirely oblivious and unconscious bias which results purely from their ideology.

It should come as no surprise that this shift came about when the political right stopped openly stating supremacist perspectives and switched to dog whistle tactics. The modern ideology reinforces prejudice without ever having to acknowledge its existence.

The left, however, has been led to continue fighting the phantom of an enemy which has largely moved on. The overt prejudice of the far right is only a threat in areas with an active fascist organisation such as a street gang or the like. Far more insidious and looming of a threat is the harsh indifference of the modern centrist.

The ideology which underpins the modern prejudice is one which celebrates an individual’s free choice. It is necessary to believe wholeheartedly in a currently present reality of freedom of choice before we can fully judge individuals for choosing poorly.

But the left has largely failed to challenge this narrative. Instead they vehemently defend the supposed free choice of the individual, ignoring some of the oldest socialist concepts in doing so. Instead they focus on the symptom of the problem. The left tries to tackle ‘stigma’. The biggest obstacle to success and happiness in modern society, they seem to claim, is people looking down on you.

But this is such a trivial and superficial way of looking at the situation. The biggest obstacles to success and happiness in life are the circumstances which push you into situations which people look down on you for.

The biggest problem with suffering from a disability, for example, is not the stigma involved. The biggest problem is suffering from the disability and not being able to get the help you need. The stigma may prevent you from receiving help, but the stigma exists because giving you help does not align with the economic interests of people with power and influence.

To put it simply: the prejudice propagates the circumstance, but does not create it. Rather, the circumstance necessitates a prejudice in order to justify it.

Therefore, in order to end prejudice we must change the circumstances, not the other way around.

In trying to mitigate this stigma the left has begun to destroy itself. Criticising the circumstances people end up in is interpreted as criticising the free choice of the people involved, and therefore an attempt at shaming and therefore a reinforcement of the status quo. But since the circumstances people find themselves in cannot be changed unless we recognise them for what they objectively are, this is the exact opposite of the truth.

A radical critique of prejudice under capitalism would include a complete deconstruction of the notion of free choice within the current system. Instead of trying to shelter people’s ‘choices’ from criticism, we should be working to help bring about a world in which people can make educated decisions for their own benefit, free of coercion and excessive stress.

People have been waking up to the reality of the situation since the financial crisis of 2008. You can only maintain a belief in the poor decisions of individuals leading to ruin when it hasn’t happened to too many people you care about. When their faith in neoliberalism and neoconservatism have been crushed, they look elsewhere for an explanation. The left’s doctrine of individual choice appears far too close to the ideologies they just rejected. Rather, populist right-wingers give them convenient scapegoats to blame for their problems instead.

Supremacy rears its ugly head again, but it has learned its lesson and still speaks with the language of the new prejudice. Muslims, perhaps, or foreigners in general, it claims, are fundamentally incompatible with your way of life, with your democracy. They make the wrong decisions.

You shouldn’t have to support their mistakes. In fact, what’s happened to you isn’t your fault at all. It’s their decisions which put you in this mess. They decided to fail in life, and then they decided you had to pay for it.

This intoxicating propaganda falls on ears already primed and willing to receive it. A new faith to replace the old one. And the left is hopelessly unprepared for the battle, with language and concepts which only add fuel to the fire.

The political right correctly associates the left with elite institutions such as the media, universities, non profit organisations and so on, but they misunderstand who is in control. The left has absolutely no legitimacy as an opponent of neoliberalism, because it has been utterly compromised from within.

Communists and anarchists routinely denounce liberals and liberalism as a matter of course, while defending to their last breath concepts which are entirely dependent on liberal ideology for justification. Feminists now enthusiastically support every instance of the degradation of the female body as long as it is undergone ‘willingly’, and they insist that revulsion at abuse is in itself the greatest misogyny of all. Anti-imperialists support the imperial ambitions of the Russian state, Islamic extremists and reactionaries of every colour.

It is clear that the the left must rise again, to prevent the return of fascism and deliver economic and social justice before humanity fully destroys itself in one of a thousand ways. But in order to be reborn, it has to die.