> I'm effectively being demoted due to my general lack of kindness

I am posting on a throwaway and I'm going to offer some unsolicited advice:

You need to change jobs now.

If you want to do a better job at politicking, you've already poisoned the well at your current company.

Once you've been branded as being unkind and it's stuck, you can't recover from that with the same people.

Sorry if that comes across as unkind, but I feel it's worth pointing out explicitly in case you haven't discovered it on your own yet.