Diangelo, considered to be in the front ranks of white anti-racist thinkers, rejects the whole idea of individuality because it holds that we are each unique and stand apart from others, even those within our social groups. As for objectivity, Diangelo dismisses the idea that it is possible for individuals to be free of collective bias. Those tired old Enlightenment concepts make it very difficult for white people to explore the collective aspects of the white experience.

Under systemic collectivism, an aging Indigenous man can only see the world through his collective prism as an aging Indigenous man, not as an individual with his own intellect and thoughts. A young white woman working at a downtown Toronto bank can only grasp the world around her through her white female privilege. She cannot think for herself.

Not to be left out of the capitalism-bashing ritual is Desmond Cole. In his book, The Skin Were In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power, the Toronto journalist who was fired from the Toronto Star for failing to observe journalisms general adherence to objectivity, Cole states that White power works in concert with other forms of power including capitalism (the dominance of private profit over public benefit).

The physical bookshelves are filled with these ideas, as are the online services and publication lists of university presses, which crank them out by the hundreds.

The overthrow of these core concepts is a calculated and highly public effort to destroy the great fundamental principles that have lifted human beings from ignorance and servitude

These shots at capitalism and individualism as oppressive scourges did not fly into the text of todays best-sellers on the wings of a dove. They have been systematically implanted in the culture over the last half-century by ideological warriors camouflaged as opponents of racism, sexism, inequality, homophobia, colonialism. After straight-up Marxism had self-destructed by the middle of the 20th century, after the workers of the world failed to unite around a communist revolution, cabals of neo-Marxists developed new theories. If we cannot succeed with workers, maybe we can overthrow capitalism and its enabling Enlightenment individualism by appealing to a much larger middle-class population by weaving racism, sexism, inequality, globalization and climate change into one big movement.

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Terence Corcoran: You are not you, and other truths of the new world - Financial Post