One of the main forces behind leftism, in addition to its powerful hatred for the West, is profound historical ignorance. Leftist education across the West means that people know the wrong thing or know just a sliver of the right thing, with that sliver managing to be a complete perversion of the whole picture. If you want a visual, check out the classic meme that seemingly shows a despairing child held down by a booted foot on the head, only for the wide-angle to show the child doing it to himself.
We see leftist ignorance in endless things, from the dangerous to the silly. One dangerous area of ignorance is the contention that America is uniquely evil because it had slavery and uniquely racist because those slaves were black.
In fact, slavery is as old as humankind. When tribes or (as human societies developed) nations won wars, they didn’t have the ability to take prisoners. Their choices were to slaughter the enemy, every man, woman, and child, or to take them as slaves. Given that, until we harnessed fossil fuel, societies were entirely reliant on brute force labor, whether by animals or people, slavery was a smart idea.
Muslim slave trade in Cairo, 1849, uploaded by Rawpixel. CC BY 4.0.
As for why the British introduced African slaves to North America, just as the French, Belgians, Spanish, Portuguese and others introduced African slaves to their colonies, the reason was twofold: First, blacks were resistant to malaria (unlike, say, the Irish, whom the British first tried to use as slaves in the new world). Second, thanks to endless tribal warfare in Africa, there was an equally endless supply of African slaves, which Muslim traders were happy to broker to Europeans.
What leftists also conveniently ignore is that, while slavery still exists in Africa and the Muslim world (although it was technically made illegal in most places a few decades ago), it was the West that finally woke up to slavery’s immorality and ended it, with America doing so at the cost of 600,000 dead.
The only thing the indoctrinated know is that the United States had black slaves. The universality of slavery, the complicity of Africans and Muslims in the slave trade, and the West’s slavery-ending epiphany don’t exist for leftists.
As I said, this ignorance is dangerous because it’s used as a lever to destroy America from within.
There’s also the ridiculous part of leftist ignorance. All primitive societies have had some form of dreadlocks, which make a virtue of the inability to groom. But up in Vancouver, the ignoramuses behind a concert venue banned a white woman who appeared with dreads because it was impermissible “cultural appropriation.” Ironically, they used the English language to ban her, yet it was clear that one of the people doing the banning was culturally appropriating the English language. Logic and knowledge are anathema to the left:
A woman in Vancouver was denied access to a "2SLGBTIAQ+-friendly" outdoor theatre because her hair violated the venue's "Code of Conduct Cultural Appropriation policy." pic.twitter.com/reB5DbDtL1
— Alex Zoltan (@AmazingZoltan) August 15, 2025
The most frightening misinformation (at least for me) is that which powers the current worldwide wave of antisemitism, one that sees country after country (plus that foul excrescence, little Pete Buttigieg) announcing recognition of a “Palestinian” state. Slaughter Jews; get a reward.
For many on the left, the hostility to Israel is predicated upon indoctrinated ignorance: All that they know or want to know is that Jews are colonizers and that the so-called “Palestinians” are the indigenous people.
In fact, the opposite is true: Jews have occupied that particular strip of land continuously for almost 4,000 years, and the last nation on that land was theirs. For 1,500 years, Jews have been victims of Muslim colonization. More than that, the Arabs currently on the land have roots no deeper than about 180 years. They are the interlopers.
As for the current nation of Israel, Jews bought the land, won the land in defensive wars, and achieved recognition as a nation because they had all the hallmarks of a nation: borders, a functioning self-government, a self-reliant economy, etc. The people in Gaza and the West Bank have none of these things.
None of that matters to the Muslims, who lay claim to the land because Mohamed dreamed about it once. Muslims are the living embodiment of the toddler’s creed, for, like toddlers, they assert ownership of things (land, women, whatever) if they like them, if they temporarily possess them, if they can acquire them by force, if they once possessed them, etc. Nothing else—justice, morality, decency, historic ties—matters. If they want it, it’s theirs.
All of which gets me to a tweet I want to share with you. It mentions briefly a point that Niall Ferguson expanded upon in great detail in his book Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. Ferguson’s point is a simple one: All nations in history that could practice imperialism did so. What’s striking is that, when looking at colonialism from the 15th century to the present, Britain is the only nation that benefited its colonies, leaving them with functional infrastructures and liberty-based values.
The practical result is that, in whatever geographic region a British colony exists, that colony will be the best place to live in the region. Given that colonialism, like slavery, is something that humankind has always done, the lucky people were those whom the British colonized.
But what about the flip side to that? Are there exceptionally unlucky colonies that came under the rule of imperialists who made everything worse? Well, one can easily say that people colonized by European powers other than Britain fared less well than the former British colonies. In all of them, the indigenous people are suffering more abuse and indignities from their governments, and their societies range from marginally functioning to complete basket cases (something Ferguson proves with lots of data).
However, there is one colonizer who stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to abuse, slaughter, dysfunction, and despair—and that, of course, is Islam:
The British colonialism lasted a few centuries, left behind railroads, legal systems, education, and modern institutions.
— Dan Burmawi (@DanBurmawy) August 15, 2025
It wasn't perfect. It had its sins. But it also built.
The British brought modern medicine, science, engineering, and governance. They opened schools, built…
The British colonialism lasted a few centuries, left behind railroads, legal systems, education, and modern institutions.
It wasn't perfect. It had its sins. But it also built.
The British brought modern medicine, science, engineering, and governance. They opened schools, built cities, printed books, developed infrastructure, and left behind functioning states, many of which are now sovereign global players.
Now compare that to Islamic colonialism,
1,400 years long, relentless, brutal, and still ongoing.
It left behind slavery, tribalism, religious apartheid, cultural erasure, and the complete destruction of countless civilizations.
In India alone, Islamic invasions are estimated to have killed 80 million Hindus.
Entire cultures, Zoroastrians, Berbers, Assyrians, Nubians, Copts, were wiped out, Arabized, or reduced to second-class citizens.
Native languages were erased. Indigenous philosophies were buried under Arabic supremacism.
Libraries were destroyed.
Islamic empires didn't bring modernity.
They stole achievements from conquered people, translated their works, stamped Arabic on them, and claimed the glory.
What was preserved from the Greeks, Persians, and Indians wasn't Islamic brilliance, it was Islamic appropriation.
Islamic colonialism didn't leave behind parliaments, constitutions, or democratic institutions.
It left behind dictatorships, theocracies, blasphemy laws, and sharia brutality.
It replaced thinkers with clerics, debate with dogma, and diversity with submission.
Never put British and Islamic colonialism in the same category.
British colonialism built nations.
Islamic colonialism buried them.