He very literally tried to pull a "I can't be racist, I have black friends" because he's worked with a couple people who happen to be Palestinian

I've lived in a place (and visited a couple others) where being a white person meant being subjected to suspicion and discrimination. It wasn't reverse racism, it was xenophobia and plain old garden-variety racism. Being on the receiving end was highly instructive, as were the supportive comments such as "but we don't mean you, you're one of the good ones." There were also cases of extreme discrimination and abusive behavior towards minorities that, to an outsider like me, seemed almost exactly like the majority population.

bridges to nowhere, my friends

The issue is that they refuse to understand what it means.

The people who come up with those thought-terminating slogans know what they're doing. The dim bulbs who repeat it might not understand, but their puppeteers do.