I agree with this assessment. But I also believe there is a wide and spreading devaluation of human life in general. I see it in the streets as people are killed without remorse in broad daylight. I see it in social media from frustrated, angry people who have been convinced that their opponents are less than human and who have inexplicably discarded their moral compass.
The tsunami of antisemitism is just the most obvious and outrageous example. I thought during the riots, burning, and looting of 2020 that to the progressives Black Lives Matter but not all black lives matter alike. Black victims of the riots who lost their homes, black business owners who lost their livelihoods, and black people who were killed by rioters didn't matter as much as those killed by the police. They, like the Jews are now, were sacrificed on the alter of the Progressive Religion. "It is for the greater good", I was told by a young woke person with neither a rational nor an ethical justification. That was when I began to fear for the future. Now I see from the hateful, antisemitic fruit that my fears were justified.
I agree. I saw a good commentary on the same point about devaluing human life just the other day but now I can't remember who the speaker was or exactly where I saw it. In any event, yes, I think greater exposure to the endless torrent of negative news has made us more aware but also more numb. I think problems in our institutions and the practice of framing everything in an oppressor-victim formula also hardens the heart for many. The victims are made to feel they can never improve their lot while the oppressors are made to feel they are bad people thanks to immutable characteristics over which they have no control. In both cases, people shrug and withdraw and this no doubt impacts their concern for the world at large. Future generations will look back on Progressive Religion with disgust and shame, and wonder how we were ever so stupid to fall for the scam, and the answer is that it fed on our desire to be good people, and the result has been that there is less good left in us for our brethren.
“This is the influence of Marxist analysis, which prizes power critiques. Jews dying in the Holocaust do not have power, but Jews in Israel do. I am sorry to tell you, but the logic really is just that simple. It does not matter that Hamas is ideologically worse than the Nazis. They are without power” ...
Exactly this. We have witnessed the privilege DEI cult erode humanity based on this distorted power paradigm world view. Identity and diversity were a Trojan horse for narcissism all along and narcissism breeds extremism and sigh here we are.
I have been shocked by the eruption on the streets and at elite universities of leftwing antisemitism. It is stunning. I did not see that coming. It has made me do a lot of rethinking.
Atrocities are atrocities. Murder and rape are murder and rape. It should not be morally difficult to condemn such barbarism. How the pogrom on October 7th can be celebrated by those on the left-wing is shocking.
When I was a senior in high school, way back in the paleolithic period of 1969, I wrote a term paper on George Orwell. One statement of his opened my paper and has stayed with me since: "The fact to which we have have got to cling, as to a life-belt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive."
I think many on the left, let alone the right, have forgotten or given up how to be a "normal decent person."
But as I think and reflect on it the leftwing has previously supported genocidal violence. During the genocidal war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as Milosevic and Karadzic used criminal gang battalions to engage in ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats from the Republika Srpska, it was leftwing British academics and journalists who were cheerleading and defending the Serbs, even as they built concentration camps for the Muslims, and dismissed evidence of the concentration camps.
I deployed for four years to B-H after the war and leftwing British journalists attacked the UN-mandated Office of the High Representative (OHR) and the Stabilization Force (SFOR) as colonial oppressors. Both OHR and SFOR were working to arrest war criminals from all three sides (Serb, Croat, and Bosniak-Muslim) who had engaged in war crimes. But the left-wingers mostly concentrated on OHR/SFOR efforts directed at the Serbs and Croats who did the bulk of the ethnic cleansing, with even Croats victims of Serb and Muslim ethnic cleansing.
You can clearly see the power differential working. SFOR was NATO-based, powerful, and thus the oppressors and new colonizers in B-H. The Serbs who instigated the war and who did the bulk of the ethnic cleansing were the victims, though they had the stronger military force throughout the war.
And I have not quite worked it out intellectually, but there seems to be an affinity between antisemitism and transgenderism. The Tablet ran an article on the medical associations and medical schools that have not condemned Hamas. But aren't these the same medical associations who believe men can declare themselves to be women and should be considered and treated as such?
I think I am still trying to come to grips with antisemitism of the left-wing. Your articles certainly help to clarify some issues that I am still grappling with. But, antisemitism cannot to any degree be tolerated or condoned or excused, no matter the source.
Thank you for this thoughtful response and lucid explanation of how certain issues are framed. I too am struggling with the shocking and heartbreaking display of antisemitism across the West.
I agree with this assessment. But I also believe there is a wide and spreading devaluation of human life in general. I see it in the streets as people are killed without remorse in broad daylight. I see it in social media from frustrated, angry people who have been convinced that their opponents are less than human and who have inexplicably discarded their moral compass.
The tsunami of antisemitism is just the most obvious and outrageous example. I thought during the riots, burning, and looting of 2020 that to the progressives Black Lives Matter but not all black lives matter alike. Black victims of the riots who lost their homes, black business owners who lost their livelihoods, and black people who were killed by rioters didn't matter as much as those killed by the police. They, like the Jews are now, were sacrificed on the alter of the Progressive Religion. "It is for the greater good", I was told by a young woke person with neither a rational nor an ethical justification. That was when I began to fear for the future. Now I see from the hateful, antisemitic fruit that my fears were justified.
I agree. I saw a good commentary on the same point about devaluing human life just the other day but now I can't remember who the speaker was or exactly where I saw it. In any event, yes, I think greater exposure to the endless torrent of negative news has made us more aware but also more numb. I think problems in our institutions and the practice of framing everything in an oppressor-victim formula also hardens the heart for many. The victims are made to feel they can never improve their lot while the oppressors are made to feel they are bad people thanks to immutable characteristics over which they have no control. In both cases, people shrug and withdraw and this no doubt impacts their concern for the world at large. Future generations will look back on Progressive Religion with disgust and shame, and wonder how we were ever so stupid to fall for the scam, and the answer is that it fed on our desire to be good people, and the result has been that there is less good left in us for our brethren.
“This is the influence of Marxist analysis, which prizes power critiques. Jews dying in the Holocaust do not have power, but Jews in Israel do. I am sorry to tell you, but the logic really is just that simple. It does not matter that Hamas is ideologically worse than the Nazis. They are without power” ...
Exactly this. We have witnessed the privilege DEI cult erode humanity based on this distorted power paradigm world view. Identity and diversity were a Trojan horse for narcissism all along and narcissism breeds extremism and sigh here we are.
Thanks. Brilliant and incisive. The far left bullshit named and called out for what it is.
I have been shocked by the eruption on the streets and at elite universities of leftwing antisemitism. It is stunning. I did not see that coming. It has made me do a lot of rethinking.
Atrocities are atrocities. Murder and rape are murder and rape. It should not be morally difficult to condemn such barbarism. How the pogrom on October 7th can be celebrated by those on the left-wing is shocking.
When I was a senior in high school, way back in the paleolithic period of 1969, I wrote a term paper on George Orwell. One statement of his opened my paper and has stayed with me since: "The fact to which we have have got to cling, as to a life-belt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive."
I think many on the left, let alone the right, have forgotten or given up how to be a "normal decent person."
But as I think and reflect on it the leftwing has previously supported genocidal violence. During the genocidal war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as Milosevic and Karadzic used criminal gang battalions to engage in ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats from the Republika Srpska, it was leftwing British academics and journalists who were cheerleading and defending the Serbs, even as they built concentration camps for the Muslims, and dismissed evidence of the concentration camps.
I deployed for four years to B-H after the war and leftwing British journalists attacked the UN-mandated Office of the High Representative (OHR) and the Stabilization Force (SFOR) as colonial oppressors. Both OHR and SFOR were working to arrest war criminals from all three sides (Serb, Croat, and Bosniak-Muslim) who had engaged in war crimes. But the left-wingers mostly concentrated on OHR/SFOR efforts directed at the Serbs and Croats who did the bulk of the ethnic cleansing, with even Croats victims of Serb and Muslim ethnic cleansing.
You can clearly see the power differential working. SFOR was NATO-based, powerful, and thus the oppressors and new colonizers in B-H. The Serbs who instigated the war and who did the bulk of the ethnic cleansing were the victims, though they had the stronger military force throughout the war.
And I have not quite worked it out intellectually, but there seems to be an affinity between antisemitism and transgenderism. The Tablet ran an article on the medical associations and medical schools that have not condemned Hamas. But aren't these the same medical associations who believe men can declare themselves to be women and should be considered and treated as such?
I think I am still trying to come to grips with antisemitism of the left-wing. Your articles certainly help to clarify some issues that I am still grappling with. But, antisemitism cannot to any degree be tolerated or condoned or excused, no matter the source.
Thank you for this thoughtful response and lucid explanation of how certain issues are framed. I too am struggling with the shocking and heartbreaking display of antisemitism across the West.
Thanks, Penny. Every word of encouragement helps. And thanks for sharing your essay -- I enjoyed it and restacked it!