The passive liberal center got shock-politicized after 2008

Evidence

But now the formerly passive, postpolitical liberal center underwent a kind of reactive shock-politicization. In parallel, movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter showed that the demands of groups long marginalized under mass democracy had reached a tipping point. Women, people of color, and migrants could no longer be ignored. As history returned in the form of a global pandemic and inflation was triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—forcing governments once more to intervene directly in the lives of their citizens—OECD countries found themselves engulfed in a kind of permanent Dreyfus Affair, one that extended to family gatherings, circles of friends, and workplace cliques. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 214

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Permanent Dreyfus Affair’ evokes a totalizing political saturation reaching private life — parallels the reading purpose’s claim that saturation produces little durable change.