Not anti-racist but anti-capitalist. In Yugoslavia no one could own a business that employs more than 8 people, so all bigger companies were owned by the government, because anti-capitalist. As a result, management of all but micro business was selected not based on ones success and merit, but based on political connections, and in addition to that, there was no competition. The products mostly sucked and companies were performing badly. The economy was mostly surviving on international loans, and when this stopped, as a result, we had enormous inflation in the mid and late 80s. Food became scarce, I remember one time when you could buy only 1kg of sugar per household. Electricity was also scarce and there were periodic blackouts. Under such economic conditions, all it took is few “charismatic” sociopaths to start two bloody wars (the first one being in Croatia and Bosnia between 1991-1995 and the second one in Kosovo 1998-1999).

Again, anti-racism has nothing to do with it, and I am appaled at how you have tried to mark me as a racist.

>Is your argument that the ethnic conflict and genocide in several former Yugoslav republics in the 1990s was caused by an education system indoctrinating people with anti-racist attitudes?

It didn't start off that way. They never do. They start off, almost always, as "fighting for the underdog or oppressed".

After time, that goes "viral" and gets lots of broad support from the people as it is very reasonable and eventually becomes the main, acceptable, opinion of society (this is where we are getting now with various "wokenesses" and "hatenesses").

After that, other opinions and points of view are added to the original positions. Then, dissidents to any of those points of view are ostracized, and eventually it becomes illegal or quasi-illegal to hold different opinions or say certain things or act certain ways. In fact, people that do are considered "enemies of the state" or just "enemies". And it goes downhill from there.

This is how you can go from a worker's support group, or a minority protection group, and eventually turn into people getting their heads cut off for political reasons, put in to work camps, or straight up tortured or burned to death in the streets.

It really doesn't make any sense how it goes from something so reasonable to something so unreasonable, but it has happened over, and over again in nearly every part of the world. South America, Europe, Africa, Asia. And it almost always happens the same way.

And there are signs of it are happening here.

That is what they are eluding to. And the worst part is that once it gets going, it doesn't take long.

My parents grew up during the Cultural Revolution. I'm slightly modifying some terminology so the parallels become more clear (original terminology was in Mandarin anyways, so...):

It started off as pro-equality and for the people. Then, any evidence that you are outperforming others in a "capitalist" way became evidence that you are anti-equality and therefore against the people. This quickly devolved into merit not being determined by a willingness to pay (the cornerstone of economics) to merit being determined by virtue-signaling and connections (the cornerstone of politics). As many other posters have mentioned, this is a poor way to judge merit and soon beliefs come up against reality. When this happens reality always wins and things that become dependent on higher-productivity (in modern society, this is almost all things) collapse.

I see a lot of parallels. For the left, the structures of capitalism and racism are intertwined. In this article, the author gives examples of how being a white male and doing well is itself evidence of soft-racism. These parents are noticing that in corporate boards, medical schools, law schools, elite colleges across the country, merit is determined not by accomplishments but by virtue-signaling (note: this is not the same as Affirmative Action; one is boosting entrance rates for Blacks, American Indians, and Latinos/Latinas, the other is saying "only this type of White person who has acknowledged that racism/capitalism is inherent to their accomplishments is allowed").

Assuming these beliefs come to dominate American power structures in the next 20 years (more than in the past 20), I am quite worried. Some structural anti-racism might be a net good. Heck, America has a lot of room to move to the left and a bit more equality may also be a net good -- McCarthyism was much more extreme in the other direction, after all. But historically, this cult-like faith-based groupthink where dissension and alternate beliefs are seen as evil has not turned out well; reality always wins over beliefs.