Individualism
For many generations the term individualism has been equated with capitalism. Capitalism, the gathering of wealth in order to invest or save, has been equated with greed by socially-minded people who prioritise the apparent unfairness it can engender. But human beings are individuals, they are not money; nor are they those people around them, be that family or immediate community.
Groups lead to group-think, including insider-bias. This bias operates on the socio-human principle that we are right, and he/she is wrong, because he/she is not us. Overcoming this insider-bias - which is an intellectual failing - is a higher virtue, a true act of empathy. The free speech fallback 'I hate what you say but I'll defend to the death you right to say it' is classically based in this act of genuine empathy.
This kind of empathy has nothing to do with kindness. Tt's about elevating the mind out of base self-interest and strives to benefit all parties. This builds trust and respect, which is in turn good for the individual. Terms like racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic are neologisms, new words generally coined by social justice activists in the media. They are useful in promulgating political points, but meaningless in themselves. They are describing elements of the human psyche that have been relabelled immoral for the purposes of presumed 21st century social progress.
All animals have insider bias, as the unknown outsider may kill them and impregnate the females in their community. But human civilisation needs look beyond those evolutionary impulses to know that everyone is an outsider sometimes, so to imagine oneself as that all the time. This is how to engender a truly empathic state of mind.
An individual person isn't racist, as he or she treats the unknown other on their own qualities when it is individual meets individual. Even when they don't speak the same language, an international language of signs and meanings takes its place, and understanding grows. A group however can't actually be trusted to make the right decisions, even if democracy says that the voice of people is 'the Voice of God'. Populism is an easy thing to blame, but needs to be checked constantly for the base instincts of insider bias.
There is another saying, that you need to love yourself first before you can love others, and this is also true. Self-love is not narcissism, nor selfishness, nor arrogance; it is a positive characteristic. This has been ignored in 21st century social politics as unhelpful or somehow damaging to society, even while most people understand it to be true. This is because it is easier to blame others for our failings than take responsibility for them ourselves. This is why the ability to genuinely apologise is valuable, and vanishing. Apologising is an honourable thing, which has been relabelled in our mediated culture as weakness stemming from some degree of newly relabelled immorality.
Victimology has turned into a new form of McCarthyism. McCarthyism was a 'witch-hunt' carried out to expose alleged communists in mid 20th century US government. Claiming victimhood for alleged historical actions, or the behaviour of (usually) men in the present, has become its own currency. This currency is traded in media and compensation payouts, and future sympathy from activists schooled in the politicisation of sexual misadventure.
The individual is again attacked, as female tears bring automatic evolutionarily-honed sympathy - even if those tears are from the stress of the moment, rather than the alleged past actions themselves. The accused suddenly finds themselves with no friends beyond immediate family. This is a disempowering tactic, designed to create the impression of the 'lone wolf' in the dock, acting against the rules of the community.
A form of entitled positivity will then be employed by the accuser's supporters, bestowing praise on her for coming forward. The communal essence of gossip and shared sisterhood against the outsider lone operative comes into full effect, as a form of community policing comes into effect in the building of 'bad character' cases, in the absence of actual evidence. So while the individual is a threat to communist type states, so is he or she to the puritanical community.
This is a community that ignores the principle of 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone' in favour of insider-bias. Such ancient wisdom is problematic to the political morality of postmodernism, where all inter-personal relationships refer to power. So while the individual is on strong moral ground in being answerable only to his own conscience, and assuming that he isn't acting in bad faith, his existence is under existential threat within the endless subjectivity of postmodern culture.
The connection of the individual to capitalism has transmogrified to the connection with behavioural deviance, as a new lever towards societal compliance. Whether the poppies will be ever allowed to grow tall again in a liberal democratic west which appears to be crammed with Trojan Horses remains to be seen.
Compelling Speech - The Stammering Enigma available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Compelling-Speech-Stammering-Sean-Parker/dp/B0BW2QM7NY