The Radical Left’s Moral Inversion: From Class Politics to Identity Dogma Is a Trojan Horse with Dangerous Consequences
By Paul Vallas
January 18th, 2026
The contemporary far left has abandoned class-based politics in favor of a rigid moral framework that divides society into permanent victims and villains, with “white supremacy” cast as the root of nearly every injustice. This “oppressed vs. oppressor” worldview is not a movement for justice but a modern-day Trojan Horse—an inviting vessel through which radical ideologies infiltrate Western discourse, weaken democratic institutions, and revive authoritarian ambitions.
Inside that horse, coexisting in concealment, are forces determined to undermine and ultimately subjugate the West.
The term Trojan Horse refers to something that appears noble or harmless but conceals destructive intent—a reference to the ancient Greek ruse in which soldiers hid within a wooden horse to infiltrate and conquer the city of Troy. Applied here, it describes how radical leftists and Islamist extremists hide behind moral language and social justice rhetoric to penetrate and corrode Western democratic systems from within.
What presents itself as a struggle for equity and inclusion is, in fact, a coordinated effort to replace individualism with collectivism and moral pluralism with ideological conformity. The “oppressed vs. oppressor” narrative provides the cover: it appeals to compassion and fairness while carrying within it a toxic fusion of far-left dogma and Islamist extremism. Wrapped in the language of justice, it seeks to exchange liberal democracy for dogma-driven control.
While this alliance presents itself as a partnership for liberation the bond between the far left and Islamist fundamentalists is forged not in shared ideals but in shared hatred—of Western civilization, capitalism, and perceived colonialism. For radicals on the far left, the West represents systemic oppression; for Islamists, it symbolizes moral decay and an obstacle to religious domination. Together, they occupy the Trojan Horse that advances under the banner of justice, using moral language to disguise their intent to dismantle the foundations of democracy and replace them with coercive, illiberal alternatives.
From Class Conflict to Identity Dogma
Historically, leftist politics revolved around class: who owns capital, who earns wages, and how legal and economic systems shape opportunity. That debate was grounded in material realities—jobs, education, housing, and mobility—and often served working-class Americans well.
Over time, however, class analysis gave way to an absolutist moral ideology built around identity. “Systems of oppression” are now defined almost entirely in racial terms, with “white supremacy” invoked as a universal explanation for complex social problems. Attempts to introduce nuance—such as examining internal dysfunctions or leadership failures within marginalized communities—are dismissed as “racism” or “victim-blaming.”
This new creed builds a moral fortress around its leaders, shielding them from accountability and scrutiny. The same moral blindness that excuses internal failures within communities also enables silence toward atrocities committed by ideological allies abroad.
White Supremacy as Universal Scapegoat
In this worldview, white people become metaphors for every global injustice—colonialism, capitalism, border enforcement, policing. History is flattened into moral theater, depicting Western civilization as uniquely malicious while ignoring centuries of non-Western conquest and slavery. Each disagreement is reframed not as a solvable issue but as evidence of latent racism.
This identity-centered politics replaces outcomes with outrage. When policing is seen only as racial oppression, communities most desperate for safety bear the greatest cost. When academic rigor is dismissed as “white supremacy,” minority children suffer lowered expectations.
The Dishonest Equation of Zionism and Colonialism
A central pillar of this ideology equates Zionism with European colonialism. Israel is portrayed as a white settler state displacing indigenous people—a distortion that fuels antisemitism by falsely linking Jewish self-determination to racial oppression. It erases Jewish origins in the Middle East and centuries of continuous presence in the land of Israel.
By casting Jews as “white colonizers,” this ideology justifies violence against civilians as “anti-colonial resistance.” Denying Israel’s founding as an anti-colonial act after the Holocaust, it weaponizes moral language to invert victim and aggressor—a deceptive tactic carried into Western discourse through that same Trojan horse of identity politics.
Rehabilitation of Failed Socialism
The “oppressor vs. oppressed” model also works to resuscitate discredited socialist and communist projects. By shifting the struggle from class to identity—race, gender, sexuality—it widens the revolutionary base and cloaks radical collectivism in moral legitimacy. Critical theory and intersectional ideology replace economic reasoning with militant moralism, recasting culture itself as an oppressive system in need of dismantling.
This transformation persuades people they are oppressed by invisible power structures, breeding resentment and revolutionary zeal. It targets not only economic structures but the moral and civic institutions of the West—faith, family, law, and education. Thus, the Trojan horse advances again: disguised as compassion, it carries a blueprint for dismantling the very institutions that sustain liberty.
The Left’s Alliance with Radical Islam and Its Silence About Islamic Atrocities
The most striking act of moral inversion is the left’s accommodation of Islamist extremism within its “oppressed” coalition. By portraying violent fundamentalists as victims of Western imperialism, far-left movements offer legitimacy to forces that crush dissent, persecute women, criminalize homosexuality, and preach antisemitism. The atrocities of jihadist groups—including Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre of Israeli civilians—are framed as “responses” to colonialism, while the Iranian regime’s brutality toward women and protesters is largely ignored.
Consider the long record of crimes against humanity that draw near-total silence from progressive voices: the Assad regime in Syria slaughtering over 200,000 of its own citizens and abducting nearly 100,000 more who vanished; the murder of over 100,000 Christians and the burning of 19,000 churches in Nigeria; Hamas’s execution of Gazan Palestinians following the cease-fire; and the Iranian regime’s medieval suppression of protestors—in which thousands have been killed, imprisoned, or disappeared since 1979.
Iran’s ruling clerics have crushed six major uprisings since the Islamic Revolution, each marked by systemic murder and imprisonment. There were no Western demonstrations when the mullahs killed 5,000 and jailed 15,000 in response to protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, the Kurdish woman beaten for not wearing a hijab. Today, at least 2,000 more Iranians have been killed and thousands detained in new waves of protest.
The hard left in the U.S. once decorated their X posts with Ukrainian flags, but where is their concern for the people of Iran? The far left’s silence in the West is not accidental—it is the price of maintaining the illusion that all opposition to the West is virtuous. This, too, is the Trojan horse at work: guarding barbarism with the shield of moral relativism.
The Cost to Truth, Accountability, and Justice
A politics based on permanent categories of oppressor and oppressed poisons the foundations of free society—truth and justice. When moral judgment precedes evidence, inquiry becomes taboo, and debate devolves into accusation rather than analysis. By treating “structural racism” as the sole explanation for every failure, ideological leaders shield themselves from criticism.
The economic collapse of socialist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela or the human rights atrocities of Iran and Syria are excused in the name of ideological loyalty. The same denial sustains failing schools, unsafe neighborhoods, and unaccountable governance here at home—local casualties of a larger Trojan deception.
Restoring a Politics of Common Humanity
The public must recognize that the radical left and its Islamist allies are not movements of liberation but of domination—one secular, one religious. Both use moral rhetoric as the Trojan horse for authoritarian control. Their alliance seeks to replace liberal democracy with systems that subordinate the individual to ideology and silence dissent about the atrocities committed in their name.
True justice requires consistent moral standards. Atrocities committed by Islamists, left-wing revolutionaries, or right-wing extremists must be condemned equally. Equality and opportunity cannot rest on collective guilt or selective outrage.
To restore trust and civic unity, politics must return to first principles: equality of opportunity, safety, education, and democratic accountability. Western institutions are imperfect but vital—they are the walls protecting liberty from every new Trojan horse disguised as justice and compassion.
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Paul Vallas formerly ran the public school systems in Chicago, Philadelphia and the Louisiana Recovery School District. He was a candidate for Mayor of Chicago.
