I have a setting that is intended to be set in the "present day" (i.e., whenever the reader is reading it) set in the United States which involves a secret society of supernatural people with superpowers who have protected people from other factions of supernatural monsters for centuries. The society is led by an immortal who has been around since the turn of the 20th century and grew up dealing with the political upheavals of the early 20th century (1918 Flu, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, etc.). The organization has ties to the U.S. government where the superhumans keep the monsters suppressed and police themselves in exchange for the government helping them maintain their secrecy.
Most of the people with powers live more or less normal lives among humans (think pre-Krakoa X-Men more than Harry Potter) and hence can't just retreat to a hidden world where muggle socio-political issues aren't their concern like the Wizarding World does in Harry Potter. The supernaturals don't have a strict cultural identity (e.g., contrast with depictions of vampires who see themselves as "above" and apart from human affairs) that would encourage them to see human issues as "not their problem" and ordinary humans can become supernatural rather than it being strictly inherited (and hence have more ties to the mortal world).
The organization has a strict non-interventionist policy in muggle affairs. In-Universe the reasons given are that the superhumans don't want to create a system where a caste of demigods rule over humanity, and they're afraid of persecution. The nature of their powers (they're creepy to look at and have side effects that could be creatively misinterpreted to paint them as a danger to society) means they're really vulnerable to bad PR, and they have a history of persecution (think witch-hunts). Perhaps most notably most (but not all) of them could easily be killed by sufficient humans banding together and shooting them with high-caliber guns, so there's no "god-like mage somehow being oppressed by mere mortals" trope. Out-Of-Universe it's for the simple reason of maintaining verisimilitude, since we don't have superhumans running around IRL. I want to have a setting where the supernatural is hidden at the start of the story so I can have the typical "discovering the supernatural world" plot.
This explanation for why the supernaturals weren't exposed to the public by getting involved in human affairs worked pretty well up until the last year or so, given that most of the 20th century post-World War II was relatively politically stable, at least compared to pre-World War II history (i.e., no open warfare in most western countries, no massive wars but lots of little ones). The Cold War, of course, was going on but the defining feature of that was it played out as back-alley espionage, proxy wars, and high tension over MAD but it never actually got "hot". However in recent times there's been a massive rise in authoritarianism, violent extremism, and general hysteria in the West, as well as an increasing sentiment of "burn the whole system down" and the destruction of the idea of Western culture in general.
Because of this, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to justify why this supernatural organization was able to avoid getting directly involved in current events (assuming that the reader is reading this in some post-2020s world where "present day" is closer to pre-COVID normal). Specifically I am finding it hard to swallow that this immortal character, who lived through World War II, saw the horrors that totalitarianism and extremism brought, fought on the side of the Allies against the Nazis, and grew up in America and hence has that super-patriotic mindset typical of the World War II generation that is no longer common place today, would just sit idly by and watch what they might perceive as history repeating itself in their home country.
There's also the issue of increasing radicalization among the younger supernaturals because the supernaturals, like everyone else, have a diversity of opinions on any given subject. There are likely to be supernaturals who ascribe to the increasingly popular belief among young people that American/Western society is fundamentally and systematically bigoted and oppressive and must be destroyed or changed through violent action, and all of a sudden they have the power to do so. To paraphrase what I said in a previous answer, imagine what would happen if a disaffected member of a marginalized group or ANTIFA protestor fed up with American society decided they were done being non-violent and joined in the riots: just one individual making this choice would potentially blow the masquerade wide open and likely cause huge amounts of death and destruction before finally being put down because of their superpowers (not to mention that is a political can of worms I do not want to open). Not to mention right-leaning and left-leaning supernaturals just plain slaughtering each other in superbrawls or an outright civil war over disagreements, especially since one of the side effects of powers is increased aggression and tendency towards violence (which is, again, why they have a non-interventionist policy). Some of the radical supernaturals may even see the masquerade itself as one of the structures of systemic bigotry oppressing them in the first place, because it forces them to hide their true selves and support the status quo. This exact issue happened within the backstory of the story during the early 20th century and the immortal character fought against it, and hence would be more sensitive to these issues than the average person.
Even if the older supernaturals tell the younger generation to knock it off because they'll out everyone and get then killed, younger radicalized members might just write them off as just being tools of the white, cis, heteronormative patriarchy (or have internalized bigotry if they belong to a marginalized group), and hence write them off (or rebel violently against them). It's easy to write the supernaturals as quietly taking out the extremist members of their group behind the scenes (and this is what likely happened with similar supernatural right-wing extremists given the form those tend to take), but less so when everything is in chaos and the violence is more public (werewolves rampaging in CHAZ, anyone?)
Earlier events I can more easily handwave that the supernatural may have been present it was just never publicly known, a la X-Men: First Class, but that's mostly because these events occurred before social media (hence a lot of chaos to keep things obscured), were events where the superhumans really couldn't do anything (MAD in the Cold War, Chernobyl), or were out of the public eye enough to handwave it. It's much harder to say "well the system designed to suppress the supernatural caught it" when the issue is potentially that very system breaking down.
To be clear, this question isn't plot-specific because the story doesn't revolve around the supernatural community dealing with current events of the 2020s at all. What I am trying to do is figure out how I can justify how the supernatural can still be considered a secret in a "modern-day setting" set at whatever year the reader picks up the book (i.e., post-2021), without turning the setting into a pre-2020 period piece, given that the supernatural community has several strong, in-character motivations to break secrecy and use their powers to try and openly influence human society. I don't want the supernatural to be revealed prior to the story because removing the masquerade destroys verisimilitude(i.e., we don't have supernatural beings as public figures or known phenomena IRL). This is something that isn't just unique to my issue, but is going to be a major plot hole for any story that involves immortal or supernatural characters living in secrecy among humanity post-2020. Given this, how can I justify why the supernatural and people with superpowers didn't get exposed due to current events and why the supernatural world didn't try to get involved in recent politics?
