The Mindset That Is Reshaping the West

Ashti Waissi 

 

 

There is a way of looking at the world that has become deeply rooted in Western culture, especially among younger generations. Almost every political and social issue is now reduced to the same simple formula: one group is the oppressor, and the other is the oppressed. Once those labels are attached, everything else becomes easier to justify.The oppressed side automatically receives sympathy, the so-called oppressor is automatically blamed, and any facts that complicate that narrative are often ignored.

I believe this way of thinking has done enormous damage to how we understand complicated issues. Instead of looking at facts, history, and context, everything gets forced into the same narrow political narrative. This is one of the reasons our world feels divided and confused: we are no longer encouraged to understand the full picture before choosing a side.

You can see this way of thinking in almost every major political and social debate today, whether it is race, immigration, gender, colonialism, Israel, capitalism, or even terrorism. Issues with completely different histories and circumstances are pushed into the same ideological framework. Western countries are cast as the oppressors, minorities as the oppressed, Israel as the colonizer, Palestinians as the colonized, men as privileged, and women as oppressed. Even traditional ideas about sex and gender are treated as oppressive. Once everything is viewed through this lens, questioning the framework itself can be enough to make you part of the so-called problem and quickly get you labelled racist, sexist, Islamophobic, a Zionist, or whatever other label fits the narrative.

It is, unfortunately, an incredibly easy worldview to teach because it requires very little understanding or critical thinking. You no longer need to study history deeply. You do not need to understand radical religion of Islamism, economics, geopolitics, or competing political systems. You simply need to see which side has the loudest audience, which cause is trending, and then choose a side.

That mentality has become especially obvious since October 7 terrorist attack. The way parts of the Western world now talk about terrorism is completely different from the way terrorism was understood after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

On October 7, 2023, Palestinian Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel, murdered innocent civilians, and took hostages. Yet almost immediately, Muslims in Western countries were celebrating what Hamas had done to innocent Jewish people, while parts of the Western “activist” movement had already shifted the conversation entirely into Israel versus Palestine, colonizer versus colonized, and oppressor versus oppressed. Hamas’s antisemitism, radical Islamist ideology, and the brutality of what had just happened quickly became secondary because Palestinians had already been placed on the side that many activists viewed as the “oppressed.”

Let’s differentiate between caring about innocent children in Gaza and supporting the terrorist organization Hamas, because they are not the same thing. No one should be okay with innocent children dying. But unfortunately, in the West, woke-left ideology and Islamist organizations have pushed people into supporting or defending terrorists rather than siding with Israel, a country fighting Islamist terrorist groups to prevent them from expanding and eventually bringing the same ideology and violence into Western societies.

Instead, we are watching people in the West defend the very terrorists who use innocent civilians as human shields while blaming Israel for fighting them. You can care about innocent civilians dying in Gaza without supporting Hamas, justifying terrorism, or pretending Israel does not have the right to defend itself against Islamist terrorist organizations.

Since October 7, we have watched parts of the pro-Palestinian movement across Western campuses cross the line from protesting the war into defending Hamas, glorifying violence, spreading antisemitic rhetoric, and intimidating Jewish students who have absolutely nothing to do with the decisions of the Israeli government or the war in Gaza.

A 2026 Government of Canada-commissioned study of Jewish postsecondary students found that 84 per cent of respondents considered antisemitism a serious problem on campus, 68 per cent said their campus was not a safe and inclusive place for Jewish students, and 72 per cent said they limited what they said in class about being Jewish. Nearly one in five also reported professors as the source of antisemitic incidents.

Those numbers should worry anyone who has spent years hearing that universities are becoming more “inclusive” and “accepting.” If Jewish students are afraid to speak openly about who they are, then clearly something has gone very wrong with the version of “inclusion” these institutions keep promoting.

How does a movement so obsessed with inclusion create an environment where Jewish students are afraid to openly identify themselves as Jewish? And why does “inclusion” seem to apply only to certain groups instead of everyone equally? If inclusion is truly the principle these institutions claim to stand for, then Jewish students should not be treated as the exception.

I think part of the answer is that identity politics has created its own hierarchy of who gets to be seen as a victim and who does not. Jews and Israel often do not fit neatly into the category of victimhood that modern progressive politics recognizes. Israel is a Jewish state, and Palestinians refuse to recognize it and a number of Muslim-majority countries. It is powerful, Western-aligned, and militarily successful, so it is automatically placed in the oppressor category. Once that label is attached, hatred directed toward Jews can be ignored, minimized, or repackaged as political activism in ways that would never be accepted if it were directed at another minority group.

The same mentality shows up in the immigration debate. For years, simply questioning the scale of immigration in Canada was treated by many progressive voices as though it meant you were against immigrants themselves. But immigration policy is not about proving how compassionate you are. It is public policy, and it has real consequences for housing, healthcare, infrastructure, wages, and social cohesion. As of July 1, 2026, Canada still had roughly 2.78 million non-permanent residents, representing 6.7 per cent of the country’s population, even after recent declines.

A country should be able to have an honest conversation about mass immigration, illegal immigration, housing, integration, infrastructure, cultural cohesion, security, and the capacity of public services without people immediately being labelled racist, xenophobic, or anti-immigrant. These are legitimate policy concerns that directly affect the future of a country. There is nothing compassionate about allowing immigration levels to grow faster than housing, healthcare, infrastructure, and communities can realistically handle, and then shutting down anyone who questions those policies with political labels.

Gender ideology has been pulled into the same ideological framework. What I find especially concerning is how these ideas are being introduced to children at such young ages through the education system. Why should young children be taught complex ideas about gender identity and sexual orientation before they are even old enough to fully understand biology, relationships, or sexuality? Why should questions about being gay, lesbian, or identifying as another gender become part of classroom instruction and be forced on children at such a young age?

To me, there is no difference between forcing a particular religious ideology on children and forcing a particular ideology about gender on them. Schools are meant to educate children, teach them basic respect for other people, and give them the skills to think for themselves.They should not be places where complicated social or ideological beliefs are presented in a way that leaves no room for parents to question what their children are being taught.

Once again, the oppressor-versus-oppressed framework makes genuine discussion almost impossible. Parents who question whether these subjects belong in classrooms at such young ages can quickly be treated as hateful, intolerant, or hostile toward gay people or religious groups instead of having their concerns taken seriously.

History is being affected by the same way of thinking. Too often, young people are taught to focus mainly on everything their country or civilization did wrong, while paying far less attention to what it built, achieved, and contributed to the world. History should be taught honestly, but it should not be used to make an entire generation feel ashamed of the society they inherited.

Western history is far more complicated than the negative version often presented today. Canada and other Western countries also built systems based on parliamentary democracy, individual rights, freedom of expression, equality before the law, and scientific advancement. Yet too many young people are instead left feeling ashamed of being white, guilty over what their ancestors may have done, or afraid to discuss certain historical facts because they might be labelled “racist”.

This may be the most damaging part of the oppressor-versus-oppressed worldview. It does not teach young people how to improve their society. It teaches them to distrust it.

And once you distrust your own civilization enough, almost any movement opposing it can begin to look attractive. A radical activist becomes a revolutionary. A terrorist can be reimagined as a resistance fighter. Mass immigration becomes morally untouchable because questioning borders is treated as cruel. A religious ideology hostile to democracy can escape scrutiny because criticizing it risks offending a minority community.

That is what happens when everything is reduced to oppressor versus oppressed. History, context, responsibility, and facts become secondary to identity and victimhood.

That is not how a serious society should understand the world, and it is not how we should be raising the next generation to think.