Under the guise of virtue, progressivism and moral rectitude, substantial parts of the Western Left have in the past few decades enacted gross censorship of texts and words, instilled fear in workplaces, seminar rooms and social settings, demanded – and often got – the instant sacking of anyone spuriously accused of racism or transphobia and, of course, maliciously rewritten the historical record.
In the past month, this descent into barbarism has reached a new low point. Jewish businesses have been vandalised, posters of the civilians kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 have been torn down in New York and London. Across the West protesters have taken to the streets streets demanding, with terrifying words and imagery, what would amount to a second Holocaust.
This is a sick, diseased, death-cult Left. It is a Left that thinks sadistic terrorists ought to triumph, and dresses up this violent fantasy as righteous. But the arrival of this corrupted Left was not inevitable: noble traditions of humanism and universalism, and a strong moral sense once made the Western Left a powerful force for good; good ideas co-existed with bad ones.
So it is is simply dizzying to see how a set of fringe ideologies, generally the province of a few intellectuals keen on post-colonial theory and post-structuralism, overspilled their bounds and became the excuse for hundreds of thousands of people cheering on savage, Jew-killing terrorists on British and American streets.
In America, the moral collapse of the Left, and its rebirth as a force for evil is particularly stark. Growing up in the US, I never questioned the virtue of the Democratic party, certainly over the Republicans with their anti-abortion, gun-toting stances.
The Democrats were the party of civilised people who wanted to help the poor and needy, but who still held firm to America’s core values: that it should defend itself and its interests abroad robustly and justly, and that it is good to prosper. Israel was a big part of the picture in our family, and in the Clinton era I don’t remember ever questioning American commitment to the safety of the Jewish state. A longer history of the American Left includes heroic battles for civil rights and a vigorous defence of free speech.
These were days long before the likes of Bernie Sanders and anti-Israel congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became cult figures.
Omar was ousted from the Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this year for a history of comments including: “Israel has hypnotised the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” Tlaib was censured last week in Congress for using the slogan “from the river to the sea”, widely associated with calls for Israel’s extermination. Instead of being appalled, virtue-warriors rallied round her and her flimsy claim that the chant is really just an “aspirational call for freedom and human rights”.
Sanders ran for president in 2020 and is the godfather of the new American Left. He shocked the world last week with a true and just statement.
“I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, a permanent ceasefire, with an organisation like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the State of Israel...” Sanders told CNN on Sunday. “Hamas has got to go.”
He has spent the time since under fire from his own supporters. Despite the utterly basic truth of his statement, the state of America’s Left is now such that it simply could not stand to hear it.
“Biggest political disappointment of our generation,” immediately wrote Briahna Joy Gray, who was National Press Secretary for Sanders’s own presidential campaign, on X (formerly Twitter). And, as soon as AIPAC (America Israel Public Affairs Committee) praised Sanders’s comment, he tweeted his revulsion at the organisation, taking care to distance himself from the so-called Israel lobby.
Meanwhile Elizabeth Warren, another grandee and former Democratic hopeful for president, has been going on about Israel’s desire to control Gaza indefinitely; a state of affairs Israel would much rather have been able to avoid, but which Warren and her ilk have pounced on as evidence of its nefarious and colonial ambitions. It’s gross.
In the UK, where a Labour frontbencher has resigned over Starmer’s generally mild response to the attack on Israel, which has only stopped short of calling for a ceasefire, Labour is still riven with hatred of the Jewish state.
Here too, as in the US, the loony fringe and seminar-room madness, has co-opted too much of the Left, making it a breeding ground for anti-Semitism, reality-denial, pacifism, eco-madness, cultural bullying and authoritarianism.
And yet in this country too the Left has a history with noble aspects, such as genuine desire to defend the poor and confer dignity on the working man, and a robust sense of right and wrong, including when to wage just war.
In the aftermath of the founding of Israel, Labour supported and defended the fledgling, embattled state. Long gone are those days.
The same decline has marred the politics of Left-wing Europe; having once had formidable foes in the form of anti-Semitic fascists, too much of the Left in Europe now openly despises Israel (the German ruling party is a proud exception), and sides with Islamists.
People like myself have been left politically homeless. I am no fan of traditional Right-wing causes, like family values and religion, and deplore the history and present aims of the far Right. I am a proud supporter of abortion rights.
But it does not follow that I hate the West and think terrorists and despots should be allowed to punish us until we’re destroyed.
Under the guise of virtue, progressivism and moral rectitude, substantial parts of the Western Left have in the past few decades enacted gross censorship of texts and words, instilled fear in workplaces, seminar rooms and social settings, demanded – and often got – the instant sacking of anyone spuriously accused of racism or transphobia and, of course, maliciously rewritten the historical record.
In the past month, this descent into barbarism has reached a new low point. Jewish businesses have been vandalised, posters of the civilians kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 have been torn down in New York and London. Across the West protesters have taken to the streets streets demanding, with terrifying words and imagery, what would amount to a second Holocaust.
This is a sick, diseased, death-cult Left. It is a Left that thinks sadistic terrorists ought to triumph, and dresses up this violent fantasy as righteous. But the arrival of this corrupted Left was not inevitable: noble traditions of humanism and universalism, and a strong moral sense once made the Western Left a powerful force for good; good ideas co-existed with bad ones.
So it is is simply dizzying to see how a set of fringe ideologies, generally the province of a few intellectuals keen on post-colonial theory and post-structuralism, overspilled their bounds and became the excuse for hundreds of thousands of people cheering on savage, Jew-killing terrorists on British and American streets.
In America, the moral collapse of the Left, and its rebirth as a force for evil is particularly stark. Growing up in the US, I never questioned the virtue of the Democratic party, certainly over the Republicans with their anti-abortion, gun-toting stances.
The Democrats were the party of civilised people who wanted to help the poor and needy, but who still held firm to America’s core values: that it should defend itself and its interests abroad robustly and justly, and that it is good to prosper. Israel was a big part of the picture in our family, and in the Clinton era I don’t remember ever questioning American commitment to the safety of the Jewish state. A longer history of the American Left includes heroic battles for civil rights and a vigorous defence of free speech.
These were days long before the likes of Bernie Sanders and anti-Israel congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became cult figures.
Omar was ousted from the Foreign Affairs Committee earlier this year for a history of comments including: “Israel has hypnotised the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” Tlaib was censured last week in Congress for using the slogan “from the river to the sea”, widely associated with calls for Israel’s extermination. Instead of being appalled, virtue-warriors rallied round her and her flimsy claim that the chant is really just an “aspirational call for freedom and human rights”.
Sanders ran for president in 2020 and is the godfather of the new American Left. He shocked the world last week with a true and just statement.
“I don’t know how you can have a ceasefire, a permanent ceasefire, with an organisation like Hamas, which is dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the State of Israel...” Sanders told CNN on Sunday. “Hamas has got to go.”
He has spent the time since under fire from his own supporters. Despite the utterly basic truth of his statement, the state of America’s Left is now such that it simply could not stand to hear it.
“Biggest political disappointment of our generation,” immediately wrote Briahna Joy Gray, who was National Press Secretary for Sanders’s own presidential campaign, on X (formerly Twitter). And, as soon as AIPAC (America Israel Public Affairs Committee) praised Sanders’s comment, he tweeted his revulsion at the organisation, taking care to distance himself from the so-called Israel lobby.
Meanwhile Elizabeth Warren, another grandee and former Democratic hopeful for president, has been going on about Israel’s desire to control Gaza indefinitely; a state of affairs Israel would much rather have been able to avoid, but which Warren and her ilk have pounced on as evidence of its nefarious and colonial ambitions. It’s gross.
In the UK, where a Labour frontbencher has resigned over Starmer’s generally mild response to the attack on Israel, which has only stopped short of calling for a ceasefire, Labour is still riven with hatred of the Jewish state.
Here too, as in the US, the loony fringe and seminar-room madness, has co-opted too much of the Left, making it a breeding ground for anti-Semitism, reality-denial, pacifism, eco-madness, cultural bullying and authoritarianism.
And yet in this country too the Left has a history with noble aspects, such as genuine desire to defend the poor and confer dignity on the working man, and a robust sense of right and wrong, including when to wage just war.
In the aftermath of the founding of Israel, Labour supported and defended the fledgling, embattled state. Long gone are those days.
The same decline has marred the politics of Left-wing Europe; having once had formidable foes in the form of anti-Semitic fascists, too much of the Left in Europe now openly despises Israel (the German ruling party is a proud exception), and sides with Islamists.
People like myself have been left politically homeless. I am no fan of traditional Right-wing causes, like family values and religion, and deplore the history and present aims of the far Right. I am a proud supporter of abortion rights.
But it does not follow that I hate the West and think terrorists and despots should be allowed to punish us until we’re destroyed.