DarrenJBeattie

It's both. Well-meaning rank & file more likely to be driven by excessive altruism, while leadership cadres are more sinister.

I think you are generously conflating virtue signaling with "excessive altruism." Put it this way--if signaling open borders came with the same professional and social costs as being a restrictionist, how many of the "rank and file" would still do it?

Also, many virtue signalers have enough bucks to be mostly insulated from the problems they accuse others of being fascists for trying to address. E.g., affirmative action in government hiring hurts whites who are on the border between lower and middle-class.

With that said, in some cases, middle-class folk do suffer consequences from virtue signalling & excessive altruism contributes to their imprudent capitulation to the social norms propagated by corporate entertainment & news, big tech, and the education establishment. I know some

...such people. It's a mistake to attempt a blanket explanation here. Each individual case has its own etiological mix of prudence and excessive altruism. But DJB is right that the tendency to describe the whole phenomena in terms of pathological altruism is very misleading.