Celebrating Atrocities in Service of Ideology

The far left's embrace of terror is a warning - we are on the cusp of much darker times, and liberals must be willing to speak up, and stand for human rights.

Like many young liberals, there was a brief undistinguished stage during my undergraduate years in which the collective ideology of the USSR and Red China briefly held sway in the developing regions of my intellectual cortex. Thankfully, that was probably blasted out during a particularly caustic Heartbreakers set down at Max’s, but the willingness of young people to accept vast atrocities in the service of some hipster T-shirt slogan ideology left the bitter taste of cynicism in my throat. This served me well as a political reporter in the Bronx in the 1980s, but opened up a chasm between my young semi-working class self (union member, partially blue collar family) and the rich kids who said that Stalin was right, and that Mao churned out the best dorm room posters.

That’s when I settled for institutional liberalism, the wisest ideological choice anyone can ever make. But I digress.

The purpose of this post is to recommend Susie Linfield’s brilliant essay, The Return of the Progressive Atrocity, in Quillette, Claire Lehmann’s Australia-based but internationally focused ‘zine of counter-orthodoxy, which regularly skewers the farthest corners of the against-the-wall heterodox Stalinist left (though in fairness, I do not particularly dig its occasional adolescent libertarian bent). Whatever. No publication is perfect. But ballerina-cum-essayist Linfield (surely a James Wolcott emissary?) is so entirely on point that I thought my brilliant readers would enjoy the discussion.

This is Linfield’s theory of the case (and I promise not to quote too much, because it’s not fair, and you need to go read the entire essay today):

In recent years, the Left’s embrace of terror seemed to have ebbed; you won’t find many defenders of al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, or Boko Haram. The notable exception has been groups devoted to the destruction of Israel: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, all of which still garner enthusiasm and deluded admiration. One might have thought that an orgy of sadistic murder, of the kind that Hamas committed on October 7th, would have inspired serious moral and political self-interrogation. As the past four weeks have illustrated, however, the exact opposite is the case.

The extraordinary nature of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have swept through the capitals of the West—demonstrations that began before Israel dropped a single bomb on Gaza—has, perhaps, not been fully appreciated. Horrific massacres of unarmed civilians are, unfortunately, taking place right now in South Sudan, Congo, Ethiopia, Syria, and Darfur. Unforgivably, the so-called international community usually ignores them. But none inspires cries of esteem for the perpetrators and acclaim for their crimes. And nowhere are the victims—defenseless civilians, including children and their mothers—blamed for being murdered. That is what is happening now. The deadliest single day in the post-Holocaust history of the Jewish people has been greeted in some quarters with joy and—to be blunt—an entirely undisguised hatred of Jews.

Many of the sentiments that have been expressed—on social media, during street marches, and in the pages of various publications—reveal an astonishing distance from anything that might be considered rational political judgment and ordinary humanity. 

Now, it’s true that Linfield has been on to the left’s anti-semitism march for quite some time. Her book, The Lions' Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky (2019), is pretty much required reading. Surely, the Labour Party in the UK during the Corbyn years could have used it. Yes, yes - I realize this is a controversial view among progressives (who are really liberals, but chickened out during the Reagan years, and accepted a far less muscular term). But c’mon, people. The more combative leftist side of the western polity does indeed have a problem with Jews. The sun rises in the east as well.

Anyway, Linfield teaches at NYU (where I once toiled in the adjunct sweatshops myself) and I find her arguments both persuasive and worthy of wider reading. By you. Yes, you over there! Read this:

In Dissent, a journal with which I have long been associated and that was formerly the home of Michael Walzer’s liberal-left Zionism, history professor Gabriel Winant described Israel as a “genocide machine” and argued that Israeli victims should not be grieved. Joseph Massad, a tenured professor at Columbia who teaches Middle Eastern studies and intellectual history, was unable to contain his enthusiasm: the attacks were “innovative,” “astonishing,” a “major achievement,” “awesome,” “incredible,” and “a stunning victory”; he wondered with excitement “if this is the start of the Palestinian War of Liberation.” (Thousands have signed a petition demanding that Massad be fired; tempting though this is, I maintain that these are the times to defend free-speech principles.) Some student organizations do have ties to the region and, presumably, know what’s going on there. The inaptly named Students for Justice in Palestine, the most bloodthirsty of student groups, declared “Glory to Our Martyrs”; described the massacre as “a historic win”; and demanded, “Do not let Western media call this terrorism. This is DECOLONIZATION.” 

To equate such pro-Hamas groups and activists with being “pro-Palestinian” should be a misnomer, just as it would be to call violent settlers in the West Bank “pro-Israel.” Yet the clear and often overtly expressed implication—of the demonstrators, the articles, the cascade of statements and open letters—is that the October 7th attacks and the Palestinian national project are synonymous. If not, why do so many demonstrators lustily echo the Hamas program? (At my own university, much to my shame: “We don’t want no two states, we want all of it.”) Even among those who would never actually align themselves with a terror group, there is cursory—and sometimes zero—condemnation of the killers, which is replaced by censure of Zionism as a presumptively racist-imperialist project and by hasty pivots to the so-called “root cause” of Hamas’s violence.

Look, people. Here are several truths. 

1. The anti-semitism we can all see is real and global. And depressing as hell.

2. The protests that accept (or celebrate) the Hamas atrocities are anti-Palestinian and damage that cause.

3. Palestinian statehood (the real deal - economic development, human rights, feminism, liberalism, opportunity) is a very worthy goal.

4. Netanyahu and his cronies must go.

5. Hamas must surrender unconditionally or be destroyed.

6. Other theocratic Islamic states (the overwhelming majority in the region) must do better.

7. The U.S. should demand better value for its investment.

8. Pretending isn’t being. Slogans do nothing. Israel will (and should) exist. Palestine will (and should) exist. Nobody is going anywhere.

9. Stop killing civilians.

10. Maybe no World War 3?

In any case, I’m a liberal. And therefore on the left. So here’s another truism from Linfield’s essay (which, I must say, was pretty fucking brave):

The Western Left’s response to October 7th will, I believe, be viewed as a moment of moral corruption on a par with the defense of Stalin’s purges, Czechoslovakia’s antisemitic show trials of 1952, the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and Poland’s antisemitic expulsions of 1968, along with the denial of the Khmer Rouge genocide (see under: Chomsky, Noam) and the adulation of China’s vicious Cultural Revolution. Since October 7th, there have been a handful of liberal and Left writers who have written bravely and honestly: Jonathan Freedland and Howard Jacobson in the Guardian, Michael Walzer in the Atlantic; Michelle Goldberg at the New York Times, Alan Johnson and Cary Nelson in Fathom, Seyla Benhabib on Medium. They are, alas, exceptions. Halliday’s leftism—the leftism of humane universalism rather than anti-imperialism—is in eclipse, as was Memmi’s.

Hey Republicans. Hey conservatives. Hey libertarians. Hey centrists. I know there are some of each on this list. If I can call this out, you can call out the deadly nihilism of Trump and his band of fascists. Yeah, get busy.

Because no one should be comfortable. Liberal democracy is a boring cliche. Also the best system of human organization ever developed. Defend it.