... signal a particular vice. It's vice signalling. We generally think of war as bad and try to avoid it, most especially the people tasked with fighting said wars.

Nothing has changed about the performative-ness, in fact if anything it's gotten more performative and hollow. They just signal vices rather than virtues, so a bunch of rightist-flavored-Lenin's useful idiots think it is fresh or effective or anti-"woke" or at least different.