First, it's a misdirection. It's a bargain with the social far-left in an attempt to reduce the power of the economic far-left given that those two groups overlap so much. We will go along with your culture war because it's the cheapest alternative available to us.
Second, it's the first-mover problem and a coordination problem. Nobody's brand wants to be singled out by a social media mob. Being around the 5th percentile makes you a target. So everyone tries to be around the median. The median keeps shifting up and up, as the people in the 5th percentile keep re-upping the ante as they chase the ever-increasing median. It's just a consequence of social media mobs targeting the bottom percentiles for brand damage. Their only other option is to regime shift into full blown anti-woke, which simply isn't viable for many companies. If all companies simultaneously shifted downwards (by becoming not-woke), there wouldn't be a problem, but that coordination can't happen with heterogeneous entities.
It's a propaganda technique. If the opposite of wokeism etc. were popular and accepted by a large number of people, propagandists would use that. They would, for example, brand any dissent as "not white" or "gay" or "miscegenated" or "degenerate" etc. They did in fact do this generations ago.
If we lived in a super-religious society any dissent would be satanic. This version is still leveraged within the evangelical community.
All narratives will be weaponized by propagandists regardless of whether the narrative itself has objective merit when considered in good faith.
"It will be weaponized. No exceptions."
Indeed, just look at how "carbon footprint" came from the oil industry. I left behind a conservative religious upbringing, but never found an escape from tribalism and guilt tripping, whether for conservative or liberal causes. Manipulating our need for agency (by touting personal responsibility) and belonging (by guilt tripping and shunning) is an astonishingly good way to divide and conquer a society that really has a lot in common.