Hamas Has Exposed the Moral Bankruptcy of Self-Proclaimed "Progressives"

Black Lives Matter supports Hamas, which is not surprising because antisemitism has been a major problem in Leftist Black circles for decades. Although some prominent Black individuals--including boxer Floyd Mayweather, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and New York Rep. Ritchie Torres--have condemned Hamas and offered support to the victims of Hamas' October 7 mass casualty terrorist attack, as a whole the Black community has either been silent or has been openly supportive of Hamas and openly hostile toward Israel. This is a tragic departure from the beliefs and practices of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who understood that anti-Zionism is often used as a code word for antisemitism; when members of the Civil Rights Movement spewed anti-Zionist rhetoric he declared, "Don’t talk like that! When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking antisemitism!"

Feminists and proponents of "Me Too" have been conspicuously silent about Hamas' deliberate, planned usage of rape against civilians, which is by definition a war crime. 

Hamas' double war crime of using Gazan civilians as human shields while launching rockets against Israeli civilians is also either ignored or excused in Leftist circles.

In general, it is crystal clear that "intersectionality," "antiracism," and "social justice" are empty slogans that do not apply to Jews. Hamas kills Jews because they are Jews, and the self-proclaimed "progressives" support Hamas based on a perverse and twisted worldview that condemns all white people as oppressors while excusing any actions committed by non-white people as justifiable "resistance." In this twisted worldview, Jews are classified as white even though white supremacists/Nazis reject the notion that Jews are white (and the reality is that individual Jews may be members of any racial group, and the Jewish community as a whole cannot correctly be classified as white or any other race).

This is not surprising to anyone who has read with understanding the Marxist ideas that form the fundamental underpinnings of Critical Race Theory and the other anti-intellectual nonsense spewed by the self-proclaimed "progressives" who have taken over so many college campuses and so many media outlets. Intersectionality, antiracism, BLM, "Me Too," and Critical Race Theory are not about helping the people and groups that they are purportedly designed to help; they are about fundamentally restructuring society away from being capitalist and democratic and toward being Marxist and authoritarian (which starts with increasing the government's control and power over every aspect of our lives, which is part of the Leftist program). In short, those concepts and movements are not only often inherently antisemitic but they are not supporting anything that is positive. American society specifically and Western civilization in general are based on bedrock principles that are anathema to Marxists. As Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic explained in their 2001 book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, "Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law." 

People and groups who attack the "very foundations of the liberal order" are fundamentally incapable of distinguishing between a terrorist group like Hamas that tortures children, rapes women, massacres civilians, and takes civilians hostage and a democratic nation like Israel that is fighting a defensive war. Civilian hostages held captive by Hamas are not morally equivalent to terrorists arrested by Israel, convicted in a court of law, and sentenced to prison sentences, but many media outlets act as if there is no difference between Hamas terrorizing civilians and Israel lawfully detaining terrorists and criminals.

Instead, self-proclaimed "progressives" divide the world into oppressors and oppressed--much like intellectual lightweight Ibram X. Kendi divides the world into racists and antiracists--with the oppressors almost always being white. Oppressed people are permitted to do anything in service of "resistance," while oppressors have no rights. The liberal order speaks of basic rights such as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The self-proclaimed "progressives" look at murdered Jews and feel joy that the resistance has been successful.

Here is a description of the grotesque reality of just a fraction of what Hamas did on October 7:

At a sidebar event at the United Nations to raise awareness of sexual crimes committed by Hamas during the October 7th massacre, army reservist Shari Mendes spoke about what her unit saw at the Shura base as they prepared female bodies for burial.

The event, entitled "Hear Our Voices: Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 Hamas terror attack," had as its keynote speaker, Sheryl Sandberg formerly an executive at Facebook, as well as other speakers, including those who, like Mendes, dealt directly with the dead bodies of women.

The purpose of the event was to demand that the United Nations regard the sexual violence committed by Hamas as war crimes and to address the silence in the UN and among many global women’s group.

After nearly two months, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced an investigation into the crimes.

Shari Mendes reported that many of the corpses had tense facial expressions and clenched fists that expressed the agony and torment of their final moments.

She described one female soldier's arm was broken in so many places it was difficult to fit inside a body bag. The entire side of one corpse was entirely shredded by a grenade and hard to identify.

Mendes reported that her team commander saw bodies of female soldiers that had been shot in the crotch, the breasts and inside the vagina.

The faces of many were shot many times in what appeared to be an intent to mutilate them beyond recognition.

Mendes said, "Heads and faces were covered in blood. They were shot in the eyes, face, and skull." One female soldier’s face had been shot so many times that the head had nearly fallen off.

Others' brains were falling out of their skulls.

"Our unit has seen bodies that were beheaded or had limbs cut off, mutilated," Mendes said. "One young woman came in with no legs: they had been cut off. We saw several severed heads, one with a large kitchen knife still embedded in the neck."

Mendes said that, in some cases, the disfigurement of the faces was done after death, because it was clear they were made when there was no more blood left in the body and the corpses had already bled out.

"Charred remains arrived and had to be identified and prepared for burial. These bodies were burned beyond recognition, often without arms or legs; they did not resemble anything human," Mendes said.

"Sometimes we sifted through piles of ash that disintegrated as we touched them. These soldiers were burnt alive at very high temperatures."

Mendes described the sheer scale of the task, "Body bags just kept coming in all shapes and sizes. Many were oozing liquids and the floors were wet. The smell of death was already unbearable."

She continued, "It is impossible to overemphasize the number of bodies we were dealing with; the sense of shock and despair."

Self-proclaimed "progressives" are fundamentally incapable of condemning the brutalities described above because those brutalities were committed by Muslims against Jews; in the binary "progressive" taxonomy, Jews are oppressors because they are classified as white, while Muslims are oppressed because they are not classified as white (the sheer idiocy of these definitions from the standpoint of genetics, cultural identity, and even physical appearance could be the topic of another essay). The Nazis targeted Jews for genocide because they classified Jews as "life unworthy of life." The Soviet Union massacred millions of people as part of the process of supposedly purging the country of bourgeois influence, and Cambodia underwent a similar process during the "Killing Fields" era in the 1970s. The twisted thinking is the same, whether the twisted thinking emanates from the Right or from the Left: the Enemy is not human and deserves no mercy.

Therefore, the antisemitism of the self-proclaimed "progressives" is not a glitch or a fluke; it is a natural outgrowth of deeply flawed thinking, and it can only be cured by addressing those deep flaws. Racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry exist and should be fought against--but Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, "Me Too," and other catchphrase movements are not about fighting bigotry but about undermining Western civilization; until that is understood, our country and our world will keep heading down a dangerous path toward death and destruction that will culminate in the obliteration of the foundations of the liberal order that is the best hope for uplifting all of humanity.

As is often the case, the Jewish people are the canary in the coal mine; the way that the self-proclaimed "progressives" not only disregard Jewish suffering but joyfully celebrate it foreshadows the Marxist revolution that they hope will restructure society, just as it restructured the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea, and many other countries. They assure us that this time Marxism/socialism will have a different, positive outcome, but their leaders know better and their followers are prototypical "useful idiots." 

What can be done to curb the malign influence of the self-proclaimed "progressives"? 

Here are a few steps:

1) Don't vote for self-proclaimed "progressives." We need to vote the self-proclaimed "Squad" and all of their allies out of Congress (and out of any other elected offices) as soon as possible.

2) Don't contribute money, time, or any other support to organizations that are founded on Marxist, anti-democratic principles. If you do a little research, it is not difficult to identify these organizations, and it is also helpful to understand that most of them use the same catchphrases/terminology that provide great warning signs of their true nature/goals.

3) Fight against the infiltration of pseudo-intellectual nonsense into the education system. No reasonable person is saying that slavery should not be taught about in the schools, or that racism should not be discussed--but the notion that entire groups of people can be classified as oppressed or oppressors (or racists or antiracists) should be consigned to the dustbin of discredited concepts. 

4) If you went to college, urge your alma mater to sign up with Universities United Against Terrorism. My undergrad alma mater Excelsior University signed up after I contacted the university president; shamefully, my law school alma mater University of Dayton has not signed up. Make it clear to colleges, corporations, and charities that you will redirect your contributions away from institutions that lack the moral clarity/courage to condemn Hamas and toward institutions that display moral clarity and courage. 

The self-proclaimed "progressives" are defiant, loud, and strident, but they have not taken over society--yet. It is our duty to make sure that they never do while also being aware that our society is not perfect and while working toward improving our society in the areas where it falls short of its foundational ideals.