Modern progressivism is a social chameleon; it turns itself, and its history, into whatever it needs to to accomplish its ends.

Modern media, for the most part, are oblivious, if not downright supportive.

But there are exceptions.

David Mikics at “Arts and Letters” reviews Nellie Bowles’ Morning After the Revolution, a brief history of modern American progressivism’s contortions since the death of George Floyd.

The latest litmus test goal for progressives, erasing Israel from the map, will prove to be no more achievable than eradicating whiteness. But the movement has never been about actual results, only the public display of righteous intentions. Lately the righteousness has been serving evil ends, but few leftists are willing to admit this. Instead, they say that students demanding justice is a noble thing, whether or not what they are demanding is actually just; or that there really aren’t many extremists; or that they oppose genocide in Gaza, whether or not a genocide is actually happening, and while ignoring the actual genocidal rhetoric and actions of Hamas; or mostly, that you should be denouncing Trump instead.

Michelle Goldberg, in her Times op-ed about Bowles’ new book, wistfully yearned for the return of the “progressive urgency that marked the Trump presidency.” Except, the urgency is still there—not this time smashing the windows of minority business owners, saying that math is racist, or championing the right to shoot up in public, but applauding the murder of Jews, past and future. Putting progressive urgency in the past tense is a way of closing the book on that past while at the same time erasing what progressives are saying and doing in the present, in order to avoid any moral or practical responsibility for a political program that has clearly gone off the rails.

Progressivism’s moral bankruptcy is hard to overlook. Unless, of course, you write for The New York Times, in which case your strategy is to pretend that the left extremism of the past few years either didn’t happen or doesn’t matter. Luckily, we have Nellie Bowles to show us otherwise.

The whole thing is worth a read.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, June 4th, 2024 at 11:00 am and is filed under Orwell Overestimated Democrats, PC / "Woke" Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.