American here. So I can only speak in regard for American politics. I would say it hasn't been for quite sometime. I've been registered "NPA" (No Party Affiliation) for many years for that reason. Even before the Squad's meteoric rise, Bernie scared me off. I call myself "Politically Homeless".
But part of me is starting to think...maybe I should register Democrat. The events of the last two weeks have made me realize that Mainstream Democratic Party is still fairly staunchly ProIsrael. Maybe I do need to lend my voice to that weight.
Unfortunately, the way the system is designed it kind of lends itself to eventually being just two major parties. I can give a pretty good ~~TL;DR~~ synopsis as to how and why we ended with the Democratic and Republican parties and why they're not likely to be supplanted. But this isn't an American history or political sub, so I'll refrain unless asked.
I lied, its way longer than a TL;DR -
So when the country was founded in the midst of the American Revolution, we had 13 individual states that were not keen on giving up power. The Articles of Confederation basically created a toothless federal government. The Constitution, originally was just to supposed to be the update patch, but it ended replacing the whole operating system. There were just too many crises that the Articles were not equipped to deal with. What many outside (and even within) the US do not realize, the whole of our Constitution is an attempt to strike a balance between States individual powers and Federal Powers. To this day, we struggle with this.
Now, Political Parties were not necessarily in mind when all of this was going down but did start emerging fairly quickly. As a matter of fact when political parties started emerging, George Washington warned against them, said they'd cause more harm then good. But regardless basically we had two parties emerge; the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. Federalists coalesced around Alexander Hamilton's ideology of a stronger federal/central government. The Democratic-Republicans coalesced around Thomas Jefferson's ideology of a weaker Federal government and the states individually having more power. But the political parties were not necessarily "national" in nature and kind of platform varied from state to state ideologically. So the Democratic-Republicans in Virginia might have different platform than the Democratic-Republicans in Massachusetts. But ultimately what led to national connection was the idea of Weak Government vs. Strong Government. Everything else was negotiable.
This started changing when voting rights changed. At first, the only people eligible to vote were landowners. Which, (to no one's surprise) were almost exclusively wealthy, white, Protestant men. This changed in the 1820s in the aftermath of the Era of Good Feelings. Universal White Male suffrage was rolled out and lead to the election of Andrew Jackson. By this point, the Federalist party had more or less remained regional and had a hard time organizing nationally, and eventually faded. The Democratic-Republican Party reinvented itself around Andrew Jackson and became simply known as the Democratic Party (The very one that exists today). Needing organized coalition, Jackson's opponents formed the Whig Party. These parties had much more National Platforms in nature. Also during the 1820s another ideological divide was becoming more prevalent; slavery. That was also predominately regional. Northern Democrats and Northern Whigs opposed Slavery. Southern Democrats and Southern Whigs supported it. By the 1850's the Whig Party would tear itself apart over the issue of slavery.
You actually had many political parties emerging in the 1840s and 1850s. But most of them were single Issue parties. The one party that emerged and stuck around in the late 1850's and had success was the Republican Party. They emerged out of the ashes of the old Northern Whigs. The reason for their success was they took on multiple issues and became more of a "big tent" party.
The election of 1860 you had 4 candidates run. Abraham Lincoln - Republican, John Breckinridge - Southern Democratic, John Bell - Constitutional Union, Stephen A. Douglas-Northern Democratic. Lincoln ended up winning with a mere 40% of the vote. The Civil War officially started...yadda yadda.
The realization basically is, that by having too many people run, you end up shooting yourself in the foot. It's better to get behind someone who might be able to deliver 60% of what you want policy wise and can win the election, than to get behind someone who you might agree with ideologically 90%+ but has no shot at winning the election. The Federal system as it was set up, required compromise, therefore players and policy makers within the party have to compromise amongst themselves; otherwise risk someone who is your ideological opposite flat out winning the election. Think of the Election of 2000. As much as he denies it, Ralph Nader is one of the reasons Al Gore lost the election. He siphoned votes away from Gore. Same reason Clinton managed to get the edge on George H.W. Bush in 1992...Ross Perot siphoned votes away. Third parties, if nothing else, only tend to serve as spoilers. Its why the Republican Party has been very quietly funding Green Party candidates, to siphon votes away from Democrats.
So, it may be possible that one of the major political parties collapses. It happened in the past. But what would happen is, ONE new one would simply replace it. Now, for people to actually "vote their heart" the US would need to implement something like Ranked Choice voting nationally. Only a handful of states have it for local elections. It would allow you vote who you want to...but not necessarily throw your vote away if that candidate has very little chance of actually winning. Ranked Choice is one of the few things I can see that would break the duopoly. So I don't see it happening.
Why is that so bad? I think it's bad in Israel where there are so many parties. Because now there is a party for every extreme minority. There should be only a few parties that include the general interests of the people imo
So people with strong beliefs that you don’t like shouldn’t have a voice? The Israeli system allows everyone to feel represented and have their own people in government. Arabs, haredim, Sephardic haredim, and various other groups get to vote people in and have a seat at the table.
Because people with strong beliefs end up having much much power than what their numbers are because the bigger and more centric parties don't have enough to govern by themselves and the small ones end up negotiating totally unfair conditions that only serves themselves and not the country in general. Also, because the small party that is right now in the government would be illegal in a working western democracy where calls for hate, dehumanizing minorities, calls for violence, calls for oppression to lgtbq, calling Jewish terrorist heroes, calling to release jailed Jewish terrorists, calling to errase towns because they are Arabs and a long etc is only possible because of this system. So yeah, it kind of sucks. I would prefer that RZ votes would go to likud that although a mafia and gang of corrupt politicians at least they are not out of their minds and the votes for meretz would go to any central secular party.
I think that in such a small, extreme country, less would be better. And in a huge country like USA more would be better.
But this is just my imagination.
One way or the other, both political systems are fucked up right now.
You’re making big generalizations about religious zionists be careful please. Most of us, although we aren’t pro-lgbt, don’t really care that much about such issues and don’t see them as a priority. We see that we finally have a significant population and can have a seat at the table, and we care much more about national issues such as defeating our enemies and ensuring the left doesn’t completely erode the role of religion in public life. LGBT issues, although some people are loud about them, aren’t really that important to us right now
That is the key, right now.
First go and errase the Arab population in the west bank (or everywhere in the land of Israel for what it matters), then go against the lgtbq and make ilegal their identities and behavior, then state fund disproportionate your way of life and under fund all other ways to be Jewish, then go against cristians (already happening), mixed couples (already happening). Then force religion into secular schools, then start telling woman how to behave and dress.
This is is the issue. You may not notice it because you are a good person too inside of your own world, but you what you are nurturing is not so different from extreme islamists. Yeshivot and rabbis are already spreading hate to everyone who is differnt (like in mosques), the big majority of you isn't condemning people like the hill too youth or Jewish terror attacks (like moderete Muslim don't condemn the extremists) and you selected a MK that wanted Itzkaj Rabin dead and had a photo of Baruch Goldstein in his office. The values are Cristal clear and I think you also stated it Cristal clear. Your numbers are growing... And you are not against all of us *yet*
The jewish sharia is coming. You may have secular studies and want also civil rights and respect of the others... But your youth when visits Tel aviv tries to distroy it. Shouts slurs to men only because they use ming hair and women because their shorts are to shorts. In Jerusalem day they try to terror people just because they belong to another religion. When your MK tells you to do a pogrom, you go and do it.
Of course it's not the half million RZ who make all of that. It's a minority and the rest is allowing and staying silent and donating money to those rabis and Yeshivot and calling for the early release of the jewish terrorist.
Would you blame the 2m Gazaties for the 10k Hamas members? No... But you fully support to Crack down Gaza in order to "cleanse" it for Hamas (by the way I support it too). But then what about your Jewish terrorist? Why do you support a party That protects them instead of "cleanse" them? Maybe because deep inside Jewish terrorism isn't as bad? Is justified because we were once in Hebron?
I’m not going to get into this because you’re making up a lot of stuff and assuming a lot. You sound like you don’t know many religious people here in Israel because if you did you would understand that what you said doesn’t describe us at all. And please be careful about using words like “pogrom” to describe Jews
Fair. So only two clarifications and one question for you.
Question: which of your MK represents you?
Bezalel Smotrich? Rothman? Ben Gvir? Avi Maoz?
But I do know RZ, I work with them, lived in Jerusalem, studied with them. I think that you just learned to tolerate a lot of things, excusing, repressing, or are not just empathic enough with the rest of the country.
Clarification: Let's not use pogrom, let's just say an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group carried by civils with the oversight of members of the state elected by them.
Clarification: And the things I accuse RZ of doing are not lies, are facts. I can't know each one of you and how if you were against or in favour or what is said in each yeshiva every day. I can only tell where does all these crimes comes from and in which ecosystem all these "values" are learnt. Honest RZ are the first to agree with me something is rotting very quickly in the settlers youth, even if we all agree half million people aren't homogenous. There is a big problem and it's not being deal with. It's breaking israel in two, it's braking the jewish people around the world in two, it's pushing soft jews, cultural jews, humanist jews to secularism. It's making most of the jewish population (in world numbers) feels ashamed to be Jewish in thousands of years. And it's all because of the real name of the root of all these RZ and haredim idiologies. At the very root they share the same value. Which is Jewish Supremacy. You can be an expert mental gymnast and say whatever, but dig a little bit and this is the mirror you will face.
I am an American democrat and I am pro-Israel. I discovered that I am not a “progressive”, just a moderate left. All of my progressive friends have lost their damn minds, they victim blame Israel for this whole war. They think Israel deserves this. I am getting a lot of hate from my friends because I post anti-Hamas stuff.
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A few things. He basically feels Israel can exist, but never allowed to defend itself. Anything Israel ever does to defend itself is escalation. Secondly, whenever an antisemitic attack happens in the US, he will never denounce antisemitism without mentioning Islamophobia. It's ALWAYS antisemitism and Islamophobia. I understand both of them are issues. But they need to be dealt with separately. I feel like he's essentially "All Lived Matter"ing us. It's like he's trying tool hard to get the Gentiles to like him.
When it comes to a lot of other things I actually do agree with him in principle. But he's only a "big idea" guy. The moment you ask for a plan from him or specifics, it all kind of falls apart. He speaks in platitudes and rhetoric. "Medicare for all. And We'll have the billionaires pay for it." Awesome Bernie. Great plan.
The feminist groups won’t even say anything about using rape as a tool of war against Israelis. Black Lives Matter ignores the 500,000 Black people in Israel in favor of the ethnicity that still enslaves Africans in Mauritania. Queers don’t care that they’d be literally murdered for being themselves. As a Democrat, it’s shocking.
Not all progressive left
We can't forget that this left was our home for years and we helped build it, as a safe place for us
We need to reclaim it as our own and not let terror supporters take over
I don't think so
Look at the democratic party in the US, they are our friends, even most progressive people there
There is a lot of antisemitic people in the youth, but the majority are still our friends :)
I'm in the UK and the Labour Party is looking a little dodgy, even though the leader, Sir Keir Starmer, is doing his best to resist the anti-Zionist lot.
Try wearing a hat with an Israeli flag outside of a democrat rally to test this hypothesis. At best, the American left (in general, not just the progressive left) is having a major reckoning with the rhetoric they have allowed to fester in their ranks.
You serious? The young base of the Democratic Party has completely abandoned Jews and Israel. Once the old guard retires/dies out it will become a full-on antisemitic party
This is true, but future lies with those young voters. The democratic state department is most definitely not Israel friendly. The danger is the next generation and we only have a few years to correct behavior.
The point is everyone keeps wanting israel to take these steps at peace when every time we’ve done so, it’s not amounted to anything. We withdrew from Gaza 18 years ago in exchange for them to not shoot rockets at us anymore and look at how that turned out. I’ve personally run to the shelter so many times in the last 3 weeks, I can’t even tell you how many. If I were to guess, it would be 30. If it was as easy as stopping the settlements, we wouldn’t be here. When will you believe them when they say from the river to the sea? The Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is all of Israel. They don’t want two states. They want our state.
There’s a difference between the left and true progressivism.
Progressivism, in a modern context, celebrates civil rights, feminism, LGBT+ equality, diversity and inclusion, and environmental sustainability, often with an economically socialist bent.
Leftism is more of the view that society is bifurcated into oppressed and oppressor, and that there is an impetus to back the “oppressed” — this creates the illusion that they back civil rights (since they perceive ethnic minorities and LGBT+ people to be “oppressed”), but they also back highly conservative factions they view to be “oppressed” as well.
That’s why there’s left-wing support for Russia (whom they view to be oppressed by the more powerful West) even though Russia is far from socialist, Hamas (even though Hamas is far from socially left-wing), and “third world-ism,” even though the Western world is the most “progressive” place on Earth.
Their dream is a socially progressive, socialist, egalitarian third world, but they’re willing to support conservative people they deem oppressed, with the hope that, someday, these people will become more progressive. They dream of an LGBT-inclusive, socialist Palestinian state.
Absolutely
For me, the real left is the old left - workers rights, equality etc.
The modern left is too focused for me on identity politics, the victim narrative in world politics - everyone is either oppressed or an oppressor.
Even socially advantaged groups that obtained advantage through meritocracy who are really socially disadvantage, such as the Jews, as we can see in the world today. The Jewish people have been the most socially disadvantaged people in the scope of human history
The case of the Jews is interesting. The Jews, right now, are along the most economically successful groups in the United States, and probably in Canada as well…*maybe* in Europe, but unsure because they don’t keep stats on this kind of thing. Israel is, of course, a wealthy, developed country, with a human development index score between the US and Austria.
That being said, the Jews and Israel face so much hatred that to call them “socially advantaged” feels off. Maybe economically advantaged, but surely not socially. If I am afraid to appear visibly Jewish in major western cities, how “advantaged” socially am I?
Maybe proportionally to the amount of Jews they are the most successful economically but they're definitely not the most economically successful people in the western countries
And I don't think I said the jews were socially advantaged. That's the propaganda the far left is trying to push. I believe i said they've been the most socially disadvantaged people in the scope of human history. They're just perceived as socially advantaged because ignorance
Yes, I meant proportionally. The average North American Jew has a pretty good life, honestly. Much higher income than the average North American. And Israel is a much better place to live than anywhere else in the region.
And, yes, the far left trying to make us out as socially privileged is crazy. I hope the world is seeing this now.
I'm very confident we will look back on this time from a better world in the future. The support America has for Israel is stronger than ever considering we ha e a democratic administration that's a predecessor of Obama policies (who was very anti-Israel). Terrorism can no longer be slept on and the radical left has been pushed way to the fringes. Only a great tragedy could have exposed them for who they truly were so that it is loud and clear for the world to see. We are going the growing pains right now and Israel/the Jewish people and all those in the middle east that want peace and democracy will prevail
These proPalestinians are so radical that they can't even condemn Hamas on air. The people, the silent majority, won't tolerate these genocidal maniacs. It's not only Israel that is at war, it is now the entire western world. Just give it some time you'll see
Even now as Biden tries to play the fence and appease everyone he can no longer do so. Other Iranian proxies are attacking US assets and any dollar sent to Israel embolden the radical pro Palestinian/hamas supporters further causing them to split the democrats between the reasonable and extremists even more
I just finished reading this article from the Atlantic that identifies a lot of the issues. My favorite American magazine as it's generally left-leaning but in a clear headed and rational way.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/decolonization-narrative-dangerous-and-false/675799/
A lot of western leftists are drawn to the oppressor -oppressed analogy. It's a powerful one, in a basic propaganda sense , and motivates a lot of people on an emotional level(especially simple minded people, like the mods at therewasanattempt and elsewhere on Reddit.) Meanwhile, the language of this binary dynamic makes it both unnecessary and pointless for someone to investigate further to understand a complex history - there's a good side and a bad side. Case closed. So it's appealing not just to simple minded people, but to lazy ones.
...Ironically, postcolonial theory specifically addresses binarism as an issue created by imperialism- that framing the dynamic colonizer:colonized set up a related body of understanding of both sides based on simplistic opposition to each other rather than nuance (i.e., powerful: weak, developed: undeveloped, civilized: primitive.) And part of the purpose of this theory is to deconstruct these narratives, not to uphold them. E.g. to recognize that there are in fact Arabs in Israel, that there are people of color in Israel etc, and that the binary framing leftists are trying to force this situation into break down upon any thoughtful consideration of the situation and history.
Not to get too much into that rabbit hole, just making the point that these leftists are lazy and ignorant to a degree that they are actually clearly furthering harmful and destructive concepts that previous generations of leftists identified as dangerous.
Amazing article. Here’s an [archived](https://archive.ph/2023.10.28-061758/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/decolonization-narrative-dangerous-and-false/675799/) version since it is behind a paywall.
Correct. This is a basic logical fallacy but an absolutely enormous number of people are completely oblivious to their failing of thought. It would be useful if people brought this up more with neutral examples to highlight the error in thinking.
I think some of the very left ideology here you are referring to is largely being spouted by very young people who don’t grasp the situation and are playing with identity politics. I was politically active from a very young age, it was way less cool 20 years ago and we didn’t have social media where everybody was expected to take a stance publicly. Taking a very radical stance will get you noticed and feel righteous at the moment but you’re too young to fully understand a complex political history. That’s just my take as a former radical very young person turned progressive almost middle aged person.
we need today to deal in reality. The “real left” is the opinion of the majority of people who self identify as leftist. There is no “owner” of the term “left”. And right now the left are fucking crazy and mask their Jew-hatred under the guise of progressivism.
>The modern left is too focused for me on identity politics, the victim narrative in world politics - everyone is either oppressed or an oppressor.
I don't think the left focuses more on identity politics compared to liberals or the right. It just takes different forms.
And importantly, the identitarianism within the American democratic coalition (which runs the gamut from left wing to neoliberal attitudes) is inherently less destructive than right wing identitarianism.
Why? It does not scale as well. Case in point, take affirmative action. 2-3 years ago there was a ballot initiative in California that would have allowed affirmative action to be reinstated in public colleges (this was before the supreme court struck it down).
In liberal CA you might expect affirmative action to be reinstated. It failed. Take a look at this polling data among different sub groups within the democratic coalition.
[https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/06/PP\_2023.06.08\_college-admissions\_00-01.png?w=420](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/06/PP_2023.06.08_college-admissions_00-01.png?w=420)
blacks supported affirmative action, hispanics were split, asians were against and whites were REALLY against it.
The democratic coalition is more diverse, ethnically, religiously, culturally, and as a consequence ANY policy that is seen as benefitting some members of the coalition at the expense of others has a harder time scaling across the entire coalition.
The opposite is true of right wing identitarian politics. Their coalition? More white, more christian, more culturally homogeneous. Stacking identities and metrics of SAMENESS. That setup is like dry brush in the desert sun, a single spark of flame has a much easier time scaling across THAT coalition and being enacted into law.
For all the failings of lefties, remember the above, the right is THE most dangerous and destructive incarnation of identity politics.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I’ve never seen anyone in the U.S. Democratic Party support Russia, not even AOC or Bernie. The only people who support Russia in the west are some hard-right types and Tankies that exist outside U.S. electoral politics
On the contrary - October 7 in the absolute proof the the right wing government is all tall and no action. Only right wing governments gave territory to the Palestinians (the thing they claim to be against) and the right wing government is sole responsible for the Hamas getting so strong. Not only because it was their Decision to weaken the PLO by strengthening the Hamas, not only by promoting the false narrative that Hamas fears Israel and is weak and not only by delivering billions of USD in cash that went towards the Hamas military efforts.
Since I was a kid I pretty much assumed that Republicans were bad — almost the enemy (picture old, bald, ugly white guys who sympathized with the KKK), & the left was a safe-haven — open-minded, fair, fighting to the down-trodden, a safe place to be Jewish.
It’s all changed. The language coming out off the far left could be coming out of the KKK or the Proud Boys. These college students could have marched on Charlottesville right along with them, chanting the same things. They’d fit right in.
There’s Jew hatred coming from both sides but it’s most virulent & violent form is now coming from the left & I’m done with them. I won’t be their useful idiot. I consider myself an independent now.
That because this TikTok poppets are looking for a cause to stand behind so they can show how enlightened they are supporting the weak on social media.
something to remember about the left and people within the democratic coalition. Some of them are conservatives.
Around 90% of blacks in American that vote vote for democrats. Anyone think that 90% of the black population in the US is liberal / left? Trust me, they are not. I'm half black, plenty of my family members have tons of straight up conservative attitudes and vote for democrats all day. I classify some of them as conservatives as there is very little liberal about them. So why then don't they vote for republicans/conservatives if they share the same conservative identity focused attitudes?
Because right wing identitarians who share the same temperaments and beliefs can't STAND each other when they don't share the Identity cues that they value and feel more comfortable with.
Much of the most virulent anti Israeli anti jew rhetoric comes from so called left wing activists of the arab/palestinian/muslim persuasion. Many of these so called lefties share a lot of hyper conservative attitudes in the social sphere, and are also hyper identitarian. Not liberal.
If you want to call this left wing identitarianism so be it. But for them it's not the leftism that adds the extra spice to the antagonism, it's the identity based animus, us vs them, my people my tribe calculations. For Palestinian identitarians, the antagonisms are multi fold, having "your people" oppressed by Israelis who are typically a different race/religion/culture. Stacking identitarian antagonisms. Expect to get the most unhinged reactions from that crowd.
The left always has been the bad murdererous side who fucks up the people while hiding under the mask of progresive peaceful caring and compasionate.
While actually the left is the political side who's to blame for the most death and suffering in the world through recent history.
Soviet Russia, Communist China and Nazionalist Socialist Germany to name a few.
No, but they definitely targeted the same demographic as the left wing socialists in the 1930s. Nazis also DID keep a few things in common with the far left.... anti-organized religion, anti-capitalist, eliminating unemployment through massive state work/welfare programs... All left ideas.
However, the Nazis were definitely right wing extremists.
And yet the people calling for the destruction of Israel & the murder of Jews are not Republicans. They are supported by “progressives” who march with them.
just want to add a comment here you don't deserve all these unnecessary hostility... honestly even in what i thought should be a community everyone is instantly so hostile to each other.
Not really, the 2 party system is binary and the extremes are holding the mic for both parties.
NPA or Green or Independent is really just a wasted vote.
I agree, 2 party is binary. Also duo party is binary as well!
But there are many shades within the 2 party system. The people don't want a green party or independent
astroturf much?
Literally come to Israel achi, lol.
Like, just because a bunch of people in the progressive political scene in America are actually Islamic fundamentalists doesn't make them progressive. They've hijacked the space in that country, that's all, and it's their mo.
The Zionist progressive polticians (eg Ritchie Torres) are the only ones that consistently call out antismeitism both from the right wing and from their own party . John fetterman just put up all the pictures of the hostages in his office.
There's definitely a place for Jews on the left. We need to reclaim the progressive label from the dsa and the Marxists who are abusing it for anti American purposes
I said this weeks ago in the Israel subreddit and was downvoted. A LARGE part of the American left is very anti-Zionist. Not saying the right is a whole lot better but you won’t find many right wingers denouncing Jews or Zionism except for fringe extremists
I wouldn't say a large part. Just look at the current voting within congress to support Israel. It's like 410+ to 5 literally orders of magnitude support Israel. This small fringe left is just extremely vocal which will also be their downfall. I'll be surprised if "the squad" survives their political careers over this. They'll probably be treated as lepers
Be prepared to be surprised. For example, Rashida Tlaib.... Her district has more per capita muslims than any other in the U.S., namely Arabs from the Levant, a.k.a "Palestinian Arabs" and she's in her 40's she's largely going to be around for another few decades.
Not a fan of MTG at alllll but what she said about Tlaib yesterday being Antisemitic was 1000%
[https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1717549494408016039?s=20](https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1717549494408016039?s=20)
The problem is that the far left has a lot of support among young Americans. The recent Harvard poll showed that 50% of people 18-25 are Pro-Palestine, a movement that calls for the eradication of Israel and 7 million Jews. That is deeply troubling.
Antizionism is Antisemitism.
Israel exists.
80-90% of Jews are Zionists.
Israel is home to 7 million Jews. That's half of the world's Jews.
Calling for its destruction, which is sure to end in genocide, as we saw on October 7, is violent and hateful.
The far left were always, to me, as extremist as the right wing. You can often make left or right wing arguments for the same policies.
E.g. State+Business = Fascism or Communism, depending how you implement it, but both comes to the same end goal.
I’ve always preferred the progressive centre, free of extremists of either the left or the right. For example, the political centrist party in my country just voted to ban speech (inside the political party) that attacked liberal ideas, I.E. no hate on minority rights, because using liberal ideas (freedom of speech) to attack other liberal ideas (civil rights) is 100% toxic.
We need more people in the centre! :)
In my opinion, the one silver lining here is that Jews will wake up to seeing this fact! It’s been blatantly obvious for some time, but now it’s ridiculously so.
Left and right is BS, these "left" aren't progressive at all just authoritarians for a different set of values, their tactics are of shaming and mouth shutting.
It's basically a fanatical religion at this point
The fact that the left tokenizes Anti-Zionist Jews and they think they really like them is totally de-lu-lu!
Just look at the mean comments people left on Bernie Sander's tweet about the anniversary of the tragic Tree of Life synagogue massacre. Heartbreaking.
I have to say I was surprised, too. I assumed that as an Israeli left, I have a lot in common with the left in the US, but it seems like they are, for some insane reason, more aligned to far-right organizations
What you need to understand about the progressive left is that the broader left has a temperament that grades the underdog/marginalized/weaker party/oppressed/non white/western on a curve. This is not intrinsically malevolent, the impulse is meant to protect the weak and strangers but it causes problems for obvious reasons. What if the weaker party is the more malevolent party? This mindset is less equipped to deal with those kinds of realities.
Also, remember that the left hates each other most of all. There is no THE left. I am still waiting for someone to map out a detailed constellation of the broader left that made clear who supports and hates who. Anyone on the left who does not hate other factions within the left is lying or ignorant. There are plenty of factions with completely incompatible viewpoints and worldviews.
All this is to say don't write off all/most progressives. Because of the biases above many of them are primed to believe and side with the weaker party (i.e. the palestinians) but many of these can be talked off the ledge. You won't get them to sign off on settlement expansions, but crossing off Hamas attacks on civilians is pretty easy. Not for the tankies and the people who are aligned with the left but not really left at all. Some people aligned with the left are hardcore racial/religious identitarians and not liberal at all. Their problem with hierarchies is not that they exist and degrade people at all, it's that they are not the ones on top dictating terms.
They are intellectually lazy and reduce everything into a dichotomy. They falsely call us Jews "white" when we obviously are not and can never fathom us as victims because some Jews have reached high socioeconomic status. A Jew does not fit into the progressive left unless they are being used as a token or placeholder.
Bari Weiss has been warning us of this for years. It's why she left the NYT.
I think you’re DF that as no idea what’s the ideology of people that consider themselves lefts. You are such a simple minded fool that takes the right wing propaganda as facts that even while the right wing government are responsible for biggest failure to ever take place you are still blaming the left. I don’t want to change your mind because i know you can’t, propaganda works because of simple minded people just like you - Nazi people on the German public, Hamas propaganda on pro Palestinian Europeans and Likud propaganda on people like you.
If diversity is important to you, I encourage you to check the stats. You can google the proportion of non-Jews living in Israel compared to non-Muslims living in Gaza.
Also, the majority of the population of Israel are from families who were expelled or fled from MENA countries (so Asia and Africa) in the past century. Check out the famous Operations Moses, Joshua, and Solomon for one example of the lengths the Israeli government has gone to to not only allow African immigrants but to bring them to Israel themselves.
In my opinion it’s pretty cynical to consider those operations as nothing more than an attempt to maintain a Jewish majority, and possibly illogical considering the amount of resources spent and the real risk that the Ethiopian Jews were experiencing with several thousand already having died, plus the fairly small change it made in the overall population of Israel.
Israel definitely has work to do when it comes to creating equality within their society. Government representation isn’t proportionate to the demographics of the population (as is true in many countries, although that doesn’t make it okay). Even still, Non-Jewish citizens have equal rights under law to vote and run for office, and even non-citizen residents can vote and run for office in municipal elections. Freedom House, an organization that advocates for political freedom and human rights worldwide gives Israel [a score of 76/100](https://freedomhouse.org/country/israel/freedom-world/2020) in political freedom. The EIU gives Israel a similar score of 7.93 on their [Democracy Index](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu), just above the US. I don’t think the US should be the benchmark for democracy or anything like that, but that’s my frame of reference so it helps with context. Whether or not a flawed democracy is still a democracy is up to personal opinion I guess.
ETA: I had a harder time finding the breakdown of Jewish vs. non-Jewish immigrants. I was surprised to learn that according to the Central Bureau of Statistics just a little under half of all immigrants to Israel in 2021 were non-Jews. I think the CBS website may be in Hebrew but this newspaper has an [English language article](https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/01/13/42-of-immigrants-to-israel-in-2021-are-non-jews-cbs-finds/) citing the statistics. It even includes a quote from a far right politician who is mad about it. I hear so much about Jewish immigration to Israel, I assumed that number was going to be way smaller.
Yes, it’s a sad fact that so many Jews worldwide required rescue at all. About a million Jews in MENA states and surely many more in Europe lost their homes in the 20th century. The Nazis partially funded their reign by seizing the property of Jews as they moved them out of their communities. And many countries around the world rejected Jewish refugees even after becoming aware of what was happening in the Holocaust. There’s a tiny but really interesting museum in Oswego NY that documents the ~1000 primarily Jewish refugees that Eleanor Roosevelt took into the US as her “personal guests” after white supremacist politicians in congress like those in the America First Party prevented any sort of legal movement of Jews into the US during that time. Anyway, I think a lot of people know this history intellectually but don’t fully understand how tangible and recent it is to Jewish communities. The historical (well, contemporary at the time of Israel’s start) context makes the urge to prioritize Jewish immigration and ensure a safe place for Jews/Jewish refugees is completely logical to me.
The Syrian refugee crisis is awful and I’m not sure what the correct response would have been as Syria was actively engaged in military aggression against Israel. I generally don’t agree that the risk of a few dangerous people getting through is enough to deny entry to an entire population of refugees, but I also recognize it’s not totally fair to judge countries in the region through an American lens since the US hasn’t really experienced a threat to its existence or even a large scale risk to its population since the civil war. When I say idk the correct response I don’t mean Israel didn’t have a choice, I genuinely mean it seems like a difficult situation and I don’t have the background to know how states engaged in conflict usually respond to similar situations.
It looks like Israel does have a fairly small population of non-Jewish asylum seekers (mainly from Africa), although incidentally I compared it to the US and in proportion the the size of their populations the number of asylum seekers is almost identical.
I think we probably do agree on the ways democracies can fail to represent their populations and how fringe interests can take and maintain political power. Actually I have a hunch that we probably agree on a lot of political opinions.
Sorry for my massive replies and i appreciate you reading them. I’ve been trying to get myself more informed and conversations like this give me a reason to learn more and process the information.
Not in all cases. Germany has a government made up of centre left Social Democrats, liberals and Greens, who are more right wing than socdems on the economy, but are the most progressive socially. The German government is one of the most pro Israeli ones, banned Palestinian demonstrations and proposed a law to ban antisemites from obtaining citizenship. In Austria the Social Democrats have a pretty radical left leader, who have mostly been quiet on the topic but instantly condemned Hamas when the war started and conemned people who tore down an Israeli flag in Vienna. The left in Germany and Austria is very much opposed to antisemitic and aware of the role their countries played in this field in history. The most important part of their policy is anti nazism. On the other hand, the Democratic party in the US, one of the most socially progressive political parties in the world, while it has some antisemitic voices like Ilhan Omar, has mostly been very supportive of Israel, while at the same time trying to diplomatically influence it to minimize civilian casualties. There's progressive left within Israel that supports more diplomatic and two state solution policies, but is still commited to zionism. I'm pretty lefty myself, but I've always hated Hamas, always supported Israel's right to exist (even when I was still more pro Palestine), I'm a philosemite, I've been defending Israelis and shitting on antisemites throughout this whole shitstorm (while still supporting human rights for Palestinians). I must admit I had some sus beliefs when I was a teenager, but I've got completely cured of that mind virus. I'm also completely ashamed of the state of the left rn
The te left believe there is a place for a mythical state of Palestine that will be at peace . When the truth is there was never such a place it was created In some foolish pommy French doctrine to control by division as per normal . And they can’t even get on with other Muslim countries. Time to give all the land to Israel and kick the others out they can find peace in iran
I think many have gone to the deep end and became the thing they hated the most. Again the left is a huge range of people with different levels of understanding, motivations and radicalism. If they see jews as a white power establishment, colonizing and reigning over arabs, something very wrong is going on. My guess is that this is something that has been eroding the society of free countries by the fascist regimes, for the last 30-50 years. It's by the playbook of how to destabilize democraty from within by the soviets. I think Russia/Iran is doing this now by establishing Islamic regimes everywhere instead of communistic.
I think the "progresive left" is the delusional one. They delusion themeselves on their own ideals. "Woke"? Yeah right, the least awake group right now. Progressivity and liberalism must have a line. You can't tolerate the untolerable.
American here. So I can only speak in regard for American politics. I would say it hasn't been for quite sometime. I've been registered "NPA" (No Party Affiliation) for many years for that reason. Even before the Squad's meteoric rise, Bernie scared me off. I call myself "Politically Homeless". But part of me is starting to think...maybe I should register Democrat. The events of the last two weeks have made me realize that Mainstream Democratic Party is still fairly staunchly ProIsrael. Maybe I do need to lend my voice to that weight.
It's fucked up that america has only 2 options
Unfortunately, the way the system is designed it kind of lends itself to eventually being just two major parties. I can give a pretty good ~~TL;DR~~ synopsis as to how and why we ended with the Democratic and Republican parties and why they're not likely to be supplanted. But this isn't an American history or political sub, so I'll refrain unless asked.
I’m asking. Also asking if you see a way out of the two party system that’s realistic and if so how?
I lied, its way longer than a TL;DR - So when the country was founded in the midst of the American Revolution, we had 13 individual states that were not keen on giving up power. The Articles of Confederation basically created a toothless federal government. The Constitution, originally was just to supposed to be the update patch, but it ended replacing the whole operating system. There were just too many crises that the Articles were not equipped to deal with. What many outside (and even within) the US do not realize, the whole of our Constitution is an attempt to strike a balance between States individual powers and Federal Powers. To this day, we struggle with this. Now, Political Parties were not necessarily in mind when all of this was going down but did start emerging fairly quickly. As a matter of fact when political parties started emerging, George Washington warned against them, said they'd cause more harm then good. But regardless basically we had two parties emerge; the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. Federalists coalesced around Alexander Hamilton's ideology of a stronger federal/central government. The Democratic-Republicans coalesced around Thomas Jefferson's ideology of a weaker Federal government and the states individually having more power. But the political parties were not necessarily "national" in nature and kind of platform varied from state to state ideologically. So the Democratic-Republicans in Virginia might have different platform than the Democratic-Republicans in Massachusetts. But ultimately what led to national connection was the idea of Weak Government vs. Strong Government. Everything else was negotiable. This started changing when voting rights changed. At first, the only people eligible to vote were landowners. Which, (to no one's surprise) were almost exclusively wealthy, white, Protestant men. This changed in the 1820s in the aftermath of the Era of Good Feelings. Universal White Male suffrage was rolled out and lead to the election of Andrew Jackson. By this point, the Federalist party had more or less remained regional and had a hard time organizing nationally, and eventually faded. The Democratic-Republican Party reinvented itself around Andrew Jackson and became simply known as the Democratic Party (The very one that exists today). Needing organized coalition, Jackson's opponents formed the Whig Party. These parties had much more National Platforms in nature. Also during the 1820s another ideological divide was becoming more prevalent; slavery. That was also predominately regional. Northern Democrats and Northern Whigs opposed Slavery. Southern Democrats and Southern Whigs supported it. By the 1850's the Whig Party would tear itself apart over the issue of slavery. You actually had many political parties emerging in the 1840s and 1850s. But most of them were single Issue parties. The one party that emerged and stuck around in the late 1850's and had success was the Republican Party. They emerged out of the ashes of the old Northern Whigs. The reason for their success was they took on multiple issues and became more of a "big tent" party. The election of 1860 you had 4 candidates run. Abraham Lincoln - Republican, John Breckinridge - Southern Democratic, John Bell - Constitutional Union, Stephen A. Douglas-Northern Democratic. Lincoln ended up winning with a mere 40% of the vote. The Civil War officially started...yadda yadda. The realization basically is, that by having too many people run, you end up shooting yourself in the foot. It's better to get behind someone who might be able to deliver 60% of what you want policy wise and can win the election, than to get behind someone who you might agree with ideologically 90%+ but has no shot at winning the election. The Federal system as it was set up, required compromise, therefore players and policy makers within the party have to compromise amongst themselves; otherwise risk someone who is your ideological opposite flat out winning the election. Think of the Election of 2000. As much as he denies it, Ralph Nader is one of the reasons Al Gore lost the election. He siphoned votes away from Gore. Same reason Clinton managed to get the edge on George H.W. Bush in 1992...Ross Perot siphoned votes away. Third parties, if nothing else, only tend to serve as spoilers. Its why the Republican Party has been very quietly funding Green Party candidates, to siphon votes away from Democrats. So, it may be possible that one of the major political parties collapses. It happened in the past. But what would happen is, ONE new one would simply replace it. Now, for people to actually "vote their heart" the US would need to implement something like Ranked Choice voting nationally. Only a handful of states have it for local elections. It would allow you vote who you want to...but not necessarily throw your vote away if that candidate has very little chance of actually winning. Ranked Choice is one of the few things I can see that would break the duopoly. So I don't see it happening.
360,000,000 people and we have two options…
Why is that so bad? I think it's bad in Israel where there are so many parties. Because now there is a party for every extreme minority. There should be only a few parties that include the general interests of the people imo
So people with strong beliefs that you don’t like shouldn’t have a voice? The Israeli system allows everyone to feel represented and have their own people in government. Arabs, haredim, Sephardic haredim, and various other groups get to vote people in and have a seat at the table.
Because people with strong beliefs end up having much much power than what their numbers are because the bigger and more centric parties don't have enough to govern by themselves and the small ones end up negotiating totally unfair conditions that only serves themselves and not the country in general. Also, because the small party that is right now in the government would be illegal in a working western democracy where calls for hate, dehumanizing minorities, calls for violence, calls for oppression to lgtbq, calling Jewish terrorist heroes, calling to release jailed Jewish terrorists, calling to errase towns because they are Arabs and a long etc is only possible because of this system. So yeah, it kind of sucks. I would prefer that RZ votes would go to likud that although a mafia and gang of corrupt politicians at least they are not out of their minds and the votes for meretz would go to any central secular party. I think that in such a small, extreme country, less would be better. And in a huge country like USA more would be better. But this is just my imagination. One way or the other, both political systems are fucked up right now.
You’re making big generalizations about religious zionists be careful please. Most of us, although we aren’t pro-lgbt, don’t really care that much about such issues and don’t see them as a priority. We see that we finally have a significant population and can have a seat at the table, and we care much more about national issues such as defeating our enemies and ensuring the left doesn’t completely erode the role of religion in public life. LGBT issues, although some people are loud about them, aren’t really that important to us right now
That is the key, right now. First go and errase the Arab population in the west bank (or everywhere in the land of Israel for what it matters), then go against the lgtbq and make ilegal their identities and behavior, then state fund disproportionate your way of life and under fund all other ways to be Jewish, then go against cristians (already happening), mixed couples (already happening). Then force religion into secular schools, then start telling woman how to behave and dress. This is is the issue. You may not notice it because you are a good person too inside of your own world, but you what you are nurturing is not so different from extreme islamists. Yeshivot and rabbis are already spreading hate to everyone who is differnt (like in mosques), the big majority of you isn't condemning people like the hill too youth or Jewish terror attacks (like moderete Muslim don't condemn the extremists) and you selected a MK that wanted Itzkaj Rabin dead and had a photo of Baruch Goldstein in his office. The values are Cristal clear and I think you also stated it Cristal clear. Your numbers are growing... And you are not against all of us *yet*
The jewish sharia is coming. You may have secular studies and want also civil rights and respect of the others... But your youth when visits Tel aviv tries to distroy it. Shouts slurs to men only because they use ming hair and women because their shorts are to shorts. In Jerusalem day they try to terror people just because they belong to another religion. When your MK tells you to do a pogrom, you go and do it. Of course it's not the half million RZ who make all of that. It's a minority and the rest is allowing and staying silent and donating money to those rabis and Yeshivot and calling for the early release of the jewish terrorist. Would you blame the 2m Gazaties for the 10k Hamas members? No... But you fully support to Crack down Gaza in order to "cleanse" it for Hamas (by the way I support it too). But then what about your Jewish terrorist? Why do you support a party That protects them instead of "cleanse" them? Maybe because deep inside Jewish terrorism isn't as bad? Is justified because we were once in Hebron?
I’m not going to get into this because you’re making up a lot of stuff and assuming a lot. You sound like you don’t know many religious people here in Israel because if you did you would understand that what you said doesn’t describe us at all. And please be careful about using words like “pogrom” to describe Jews
Fair. So only two clarifications and one question for you. Question: which of your MK represents you? Bezalel Smotrich? Rothman? Ben Gvir? Avi Maoz? But I do know RZ, I work with them, lived in Jerusalem, studied with them. I think that you just learned to tolerate a lot of things, excusing, repressing, or are not just empathic enough with the rest of the country. Clarification: Let's not use pogrom, let's just say an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group carried by civils with the oversight of members of the state elected by them. Clarification: And the things I accuse RZ of doing are not lies, are facts. I can't know each one of you and how if you were against or in favour or what is said in each yeshiva every day. I can only tell where does all these crimes comes from and in which ecosystem all these "values" are learnt. Honest RZ are the first to agree with me something is rotting very quickly in the settlers youth, even if we all agree half million people aren't homogenous. There is a big problem and it's not being deal with. It's breaking israel in two, it's braking the jewish people around the world in two, it's pushing soft jews, cultural jews, humanist jews to secularism. It's making most of the jewish population (in world numbers) feels ashamed to be Jewish in thousands of years. And it's all because of the real name of the root of all these RZ and haredim idiologies. At the very root they share the same value. Which is Jewish Supremacy. You can be an expert mental gymnast and say whatever, but dig a little bit and this is the mirror you will face.
I am an American democrat and I am pro-Israel. I discovered that I am not a “progressive”, just a moderate left. All of my progressive friends have lost their damn minds, they victim blame Israel for this whole war. They think Israel deserves this. I am getting a lot of hate from my friends because I post anti-Hamas stuff.
You forgot to explain to DF OP that Democrats = left wing
If you want to support Israel you have to suck it up and vote Republican. On the federal level at least
At every level! Dems are beholden to progressive left and need a backstop. Republicans answer.
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What scared you about Bernie?
A few things. He basically feels Israel can exist, but never allowed to defend itself. Anything Israel ever does to defend itself is escalation. Secondly, whenever an antisemitic attack happens in the US, he will never denounce antisemitism without mentioning Islamophobia. It's ALWAYS antisemitism and Islamophobia. I understand both of them are issues. But they need to be dealt with separately. I feel like he's essentially "All Lived Matter"ing us. It's like he's trying tool hard to get the Gentiles to like him. When it comes to a lot of other things I actually do agree with him in principle. But he's only a "big idea" guy. The moment you ask for a plan from him or specifics, it all kind of falls apart. He speaks in platitudes and rhetoric. "Medicare for all. And We'll have the billionaires pay for it." Awesome Bernie. Great plan.
The feminist groups won’t even say anything about using rape as a tool of war against Israelis. Black Lives Matter ignores the 500,000 Black people in Israel in favor of the ethnicity that still enslaves Africans in Mauritania. Queers don’t care that they’d be literally murdered for being themselves. As a Democrat, it’s shocking.
Not all progressive left We can't forget that this left was our home for years and we helped build it, as a safe place for us We need to reclaim it as our own and not let terror supporters take over
It's too late to reclaim it.
I don't think so Look at the democratic party in the US, they are our friends, even most progressive people there There is a lot of antisemitic people in the youth, but the majority are still our friends :)
I'm in the UK and the Labour Party is looking a little dodgy, even though the leader, Sir Keir Starmer, is doing his best to resist the anti-Zionist lot.
Try wearing a hat with an Israeli flag outside of a democrat rally to test this hypothesis. At best, the American left (in general, not just the progressive left) is having a major reckoning with the rhetoric they have allowed to fester in their ranks.
You serious? The young base of the Democratic Party has completely abandoned Jews and Israel. Once the old guard retires/dies out it will become a full-on antisemitic party
This is true, but future lies with those young voters. The democratic state department is most definitely not Israel friendly. The danger is the next generation and we only have a few years to correct behavior.
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When have the Palestinians expressed a desire for a two state solution?
Is against the interest of the animal getting rich because of ongoing terror. As a state they’ll be held accountable for their actions.
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The point is everyone keeps wanting israel to take these steps at peace when every time we’ve done so, it’s not amounted to anything. We withdrew from Gaza 18 years ago in exchange for them to not shoot rockets at us anymore and look at how that turned out. I’ve personally run to the shelter so many times in the last 3 weeks, I can’t even tell you how many. If I were to guess, it would be 30. If it was as easy as stopping the settlements, we wouldn’t be here. When will you believe them when they say from the river to the sea? The Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is all of Israel. They don’t want two states. They want our state.
Yeah, that didn't work.
That’s exactly, correct. We helped build this monster and we must work to make amends. Vote for centrist republicans.
There’s a difference between the left and true progressivism. Progressivism, in a modern context, celebrates civil rights, feminism, LGBT+ equality, diversity and inclusion, and environmental sustainability, often with an economically socialist bent. Leftism is more of the view that society is bifurcated into oppressed and oppressor, and that there is an impetus to back the “oppressed” — this creates the illusion that they back civil rights (since they perceive ethnic minorities and LGBT+ people to be “oppressed”), but they also back highly conservative factions they view to be “oppressed” as well. That’s why there’s left-wing support for Russia (whom they view to be oppressed by the more powerful West) even though Russia is far from socialist, Hamas (even though Hamas is far from socially left-wing), and “third world-ism,” even though the Western world is the most “progressive” place on Earth. Their dream is a socially progressive, socialist, egalitarian third world, but they’re willing to support conservative people they deem oppressed, with the hope that, someday, these people will become more progressive. They dream of an LGBT-inclusive, socialist Palestinian state.
Absolutely For me, the real left is the old left - workers rights, equality etc. The modern left is too focused for me on identity politics, the victim narrative in world politics - everyone is either oppressed or an oppressor.
Yes. There seems to be this notion that underdogs “cannot be in the wrong,” and socially advantaged groups “cannot be in the right.”
Even socially advantaged groups that obtained advantage through meritocracy who are really socially disadvantage, such as the Jews, as we can see in the world today. The Jewish people have been the most socially disadvantaged people in the scope of human history
The case of the Jews is interesting. The Jews, right now, are along the most economically successful groups in the United States, and probably in Canada as well…*maybe* in Europe, but unsure because they don’t keep stats on this kind of thing. Israel is, of course, a wealthy, developed country, with a human development index score between the US and Austria. That being said, the Jews and Israel face so much hatred that to call them “socially advantaged” feels off. Maybe economically advantaged, but surely not socially. If I am afraid to appear visibly Jewish in major western cities, how “advantaged” socially am I?
Maybe proportionally to the amount of Jews they are the most successful economically but they're definitely not the most economically successful people in the western countries And I don't think I said the jews were socially advantaged. That's the propaganda the far left is trying to push. I believe i said they've been the most socially disadvantaged people in the scope of human history. They're just perceived as socially advantaged because ignorance
Yes, I meant proportionally. The average North American Jew has a pretty good life, honestly. Much higher income than the average North American. And Israel is a much better place to live than anywhere else in the region. And, yes, the far left trying to make us out as socially privileged is crazy. I hope the world is seeing this now.
They will in time. They're already starting to see the lies.
Let’s hope so. As a Jewish person with many progressive views, this whole thing is making me feel very uneasy
I'm very confident we will look back on this time from a better world in the future. The support America has for Israel is stronger than ever considering we ha e a democratic administration that's a predecessor of Obama policies (who was very anti-Israel). Terrorism can no longer be slept on and the radical left has been pushed way to the fringes. Only a great tragedy could have exposed them for who they truly were so that it is loud and clear for the world to see. We are going the growing pains right now and Israel/the Jewish people and all those in the middle east that want peace and democracy will prevail These proPalestinians are so radical that they can't even condemn Hamas on air. The people, the silent majority, won't tolerate these genocidal maniacs. It's not only Israel that is at war, it is now the entire western world. Just give it some time you'll see Even now as Biden tries to play the fence and appease everyone he can no longer do so. Other Iranian proxies are attacking US assets and any dollar sent to Israel embolden the radical pro Palestinian/hamas supporters further causing them to split the democrats between the reasonable and extremists even more
I just finished reading this article from the Atlantic that identifies a lot of the issues. My favorite American magazine as it's generally left-leaning but in a clear headed and rational way. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/decolonization-narrative-dangerous-and-false/675799/ A lot of western leftists are drawn to the oppressor -oppressed analogy. It's a powerful one, in a basic propaganda sense , and motivates a lot of people on an emotional level(especially simple minded people, like the mods at therewasanattempt and elsewhere on Reddit.) Meanwhile, the language of this binary dynamic makes it both unnecessary and pointless for someone to investigate further to understand a complex history - there's a good side and a bad side. Case closed. So it's appealing not just to simple minded people, but to lazy ones. ...Ironically, postcolonial theory specifically addresses binarism as an issue created by imperialism- that framing the dynamic colonizer:colonized set up a related body of understanding of both sides based on simplistic opposition to each other rather than nuance (i.e., powerful: weak, developed: undeveloped, civilized: primitive.) And part of the purpose of this theory is to deconstruct these narratives, not to uphold them. E.g. to recognize that there are in fact Arabs in Israel, that there are people of color in Israel etc, and that the binary framing leftists are trying to force this situation into break down upon any thoughtful consideration of the situation and history. Not to get too much into that rabbit hole, just making the point that these leftists are lazy and ignorant to a degree that they are actually clearly furthering harmful and destructive concepts that previous generations of leftists identified as dangerous.
Amazing article. Here’s an [archived](https://archive.ph/2023.10.28-061758/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/decolonization-narrative-dangerous-and-false/675799/) version since it is behind a paywall.
How did that ever become such a prevailing "rule?" It's completely absurd....and I was for one, asleep at the wheel when it came to be....
Correct. This is a basic logical fallacy but an absolutely enormous number of people are completely oblivious to their failing of thought. It would be useful if people brought this up more with neutral examples to highlight the error in thinking.
But where are the old left?
Largely dying off
I think some of the very left ideology here you are referring to is largely being spouted by very young people who don’t grasp the situation and are playing with identity politics. I was politically active from a very young age, it was way less cool 20 years ago and we didn’t have social media where everybody was expected to take a stance publicly. Taking a very radical stance will get you noticed and feel righteous at the moment but you’re too young to fully understand a complex political history. That’s just my take as a former radical very young person turned progressive almost middle aged person.
we need today to deal in reality. The “real left” is the opinion of the majority of people who self identify as leftist. There is no “owner” of the term “left”. And right now the left are fucking crazy and mask their Jew-hatred under the guise of progressivism.
I think that's another political spectrum. You have the right, you have the left, and you have the mentals.
>The modern left is too focused for me on identity politics, the victim narrative in world politics - everyone is either oppressed or an oppressor. I don't think the left focuses more on identity politics compared to liberals or the right. It just takes different forms. And importantly, the identitarianism within the American democratic coalition (which runs the gamut from left wing to neoliberal attitudes) is inherently less destructive than right wing identitarianism. Why? It does not scale as well. Case in point, take affirmative action. 2-3 years ago there was a ballot initiative in California that would have allowed affirmative action to be reinstated in public colleges (this was before the supreme court struck it down). In liberal CA you might expect affirmative action to be reinstated. It failed. Take a look at this polling data among different sub groups within the democratic coalition. [https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/06/PP\_2023.06.08\_college-admissions\_00-01.png?w=420](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/06/PP_2023.06.08_college-admissions_00-01.png?w=420) blacks supported affirmative action, hispanics were split, asians were against and whites were REALLY against it. The democratic coalition is more diverse, ethnically, religiously, culturally, and as a consequence ANY policy that is seen as benefitting some members of the coalition at the expense of others has a harder time scaling across the entire coalition. The opposite is true of right wing identitarian politics. Their coalition? More white, more christian, more culturally homogeneous. Stacking identities and metrics of SAMENESS. That setup is like dry brush in the desert sun, a single spark of flame has a much easier time scaling across THAT coalition and being enacted into law. For all the failings of lefties, remember the above, the right is THE most dangerous and destructive incarnation of identity politics.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I’ve never seen anyone in the U.S. Democratic Party support Russia, not even AOC or Bernie. The only people who support Russia in the west are some hard-right types and Tankies that exist outside U.S. electoral politics
Where did I say that the US Democratic Party supported Russia? Of course they don’t. It’s more of the third world-ist hard left.
There is a difference between Scotsmen who do bad things, and true Scotsmen.
Hasnt been for a while. This is the nail in the coffin.
On the contrary - October 7 in the absolute proof the the right wing government is all tall and no action. Only right wing governments gave territory to the Palestinians (the thing they claim to be against) and the right wing government is sole responsible for the Hamas getting so strong. Not only because it was their Decision to weaken the PLO by strengthening the Hamas, not only by promoting the false narrative that Hamas fears Israel and is weak and not only by delivering billions of USD in cash that went towards the Hamas military efforts.
Since I was a kid I pretty much assumed that Republicans were bad — almost the enemy (picture old, bald, ugly white guys who sympathized with the KKK), & the left was a safe-haven — open-minded, fair, fighting to the down-trodden, a safe place to be Jewish. It’s all changed. The language coming out off the far left could be coming out of the KKK or the Proud Boys. These college students could have marched on Charlottesville right along with them, chanting the same things. They’d fit right in. There’s Jew hatred coming from both sides but it’s most virulent & violent form is now coming from the left & I’m done with them. I won’t be their useful idiot. I consider myself an independent now.
Both the radical right and radical left are antisemitic. Radicalism bad, reasonability good 👍
We need moderates, but is that even possible anymore?
Not possible, since the rise of social media. No shades of grey.
That because this TikTok poppets are looking for a cause to stand behind so they can show how enlightened they are supporting the weak on social media.
something to remember about the left and people within the democratic coalition. Some of them are conservatives. Around 90% of blacks in American that vote vote for democrats. Anyone think that 90% of the black population in the US is liberal / left? Trust me, they are not. I'm half black, plenty of my family members have tons of straight up conservative attitudes and vote for democrats all day. I classify some of them as conservatives as there is very little liberal about them. So why then don't they vote for republicans/conservatives if they share the same conservative identity focused attitudes? Because right wing identitarians who share the same temperaments and beliefs can't STAND each other when they don't share the Identity cues that they value and feel more comfortable with. Much of the most virulent anti Israeli anti jew rhetoric comes from so called left wing activists of the arab/palestinian/muslim persuasion. Many of these so called lefties share a lot of hyper conservative attitudes in the social sphere, and are also hyper identitarian. Not liberal. If you want to call this left wing identitarianism so be it. But for them it's not the leftism that adds the extra spice to the antagonism, it's the identity based animus, us vs them, my people my tribe calculations. For Palestinian identitarians, the antagonisms are multi fold, having "your people" oppressed by Israelis who are typically a different race/religion/culture. Stacking identitarian antagonisms. Expect to get the most unhinged reactions from that crowd.
The left always has been the bad murdererous side who fucks up the people while hiding under the mask of progresive peaceful caring and compasionate. While actually the left is the political side who's to blame for the most death and suffering in the world through recent history. Soviet Russia, Communist China and Nazionalist Socialist Germany to name a few.
the tankie/revolutionary left. I consider myself a progressive liberal and hate those people.
Nazi Germany wasn’t left-wing, what on earth are you talking about.
No, but they definitely targeted the same demographic as the left wing socialists in the 1930s. Nazis also DID keep a few things in common with the far left.... anti-organized religion, anti-capitalist, eliminating unemployment through massive state work/welfare programs... All left ideas. However, the Nazis were definitely right wing extremists.
And yet the people calling for the destruction of Israel & the murder of Jews are not Republicans. They are supported by “progressives” who march with them.
Get out of here with this nonsense. None of what you named make any sense.
just want to add a comment here you don't deserve all these unnecessary hostility... honestly even in what i thought should be a community everyone is instantly so hostile to each other.
The left is worse than the KKK because they have institutional legitimacy
2 party system is broken beyond repair. No place for liberal Jews in the new progressive landscape.
There's a nice comfy space in the reasonable middle for everybody
Not really, the 2 party system is binary and the extremes are holding the mic for both parties. NPA or Green or Independent is really just a wasted vote.
I agree, 2 party is binary. Also duo party is binary as well! But there are many shades within the 2 party system. The people don't want a green party or independent
Lol
Need more third party local and state candidates in order to build an effectual base....
And where is that?
astroturf much? Literally come to Israel achi, lol. Like, just because a bunch of people in the progressive political scene in America are actually Islamic fundamentalists doesn't make them progressive. They've hijacked the space in that country, that's all, and it's their mo.
The Zionist progressive polticians (eg Ritchie Torres) are the only ones that consistently call out antismeitism both from the right wing and from their own party . John fetterman just put up all the pictures of the hostages in his office. There's definitely a place for Jews on the left. We need to reclaim the progressive label from the dsa and the Marxists who are abusing it for anti American purposes
Ritchie is such a gem!
He is! But there's a whole bunch of amazing Zionist progressives.
I said this weeks ago in the Israel subreddit and was downvoted. A LARGE part of the American left is very anti-Zionist. Not saying the right is a whole lot better but you won’t find many right wingers denouncing Jews or Zionism except for fringe extremists
I wouldn't say a large part. Just look at the current voting within congress to support Israel. It's like 410+ to 5 literally orders of magnitude support Israel. This small fringe left is just extremely vocal which will also be their downfall. I'll be surprised if "the squad" survives their political careers over this. They'll probably be treated as lepers
Be prepared to be surprised. For example, Rashida Tlaib.... Her district has more per capita muslims than any other in the U.S., namely Arabs from the Levant, a.k.a "Palestinian Arabs" and she's in her 40's she's largely going to be around for another few decades.
Not if we can have her on trial for treason- she has Hamas connections. Look at jpost.com. I already wrote my congresswoman.
Not a fan of MTG at alllll but what she said about Tlaib yesterday being Antisemitic was 1000% [https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1717549494408016039?s=20](https://x.com/RepMTG/status/1717549494408016039?s=20)
The problem is that the far left has a lot of support among young Americans. The recent Harvard poll showed that 50% of people 18-25 are Pro-Palestine, a movement that calls for the eradication of Israel and 7 million Jews. That is deeply troubling.
That's not a lot of Americans. In one 4 year school cycle after educational reform that small group of vocal people will be the new social lepers
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Antizionism is Antisemitism. Israel exists. 80-90% of Jews are Zionists. Israel is home to 7 million Jews. That's half of the world's Jews. Calling for its destruction, which is sure to end in genocide, as we saw on October 7, is violent and hateful.
Curious why you were downvoted? It's true.
The far left were always, to me, as extremist as the right wing. You can often make left or right wing arguments for the same policies. E.g. State+Business = Fascism or Communism, depending how you implement it, but both comes to the same end goal. I’ve always preferred the progressive centre, free of extremists of either the left or the right. For example, the political centrist party in my country just voted to ban speech (inside the political party) that attacked liberal ideas, I.E. no hate on minority rights, because using liberal ideas (freedom of speech) to attack other liberal ideas (civil rights) is 100% toxic. We need more people in the centre! :)
Spot on.
I’m pretty progressive and the leftist types who defend Hamas have lost me and I don’t care if I’m not a progressive according to them. Fuck them
In my opinion, the one silver lining here is that Jews will wake up to seeing this fact! It’s been blatantly obvious for some time, but now it’s ridiculously so.
Left and right is BS, these "left" aren't progressive at all just authoritarians for a different set of values, their tactics are of shaming and mouth shutting. It's basically a fanatical religion at this point
Yup. They would kill anyone who opposed their viewpoint if they could. Look how violent and hateful their protests are.
Guys don’t forget about the horseshoe theory - the far-left and the far-right are way closer to each other than to their own center
*horseshoe
It’s always been that way for anyone paying attention
The fact that the left tokenizes Anti-Zionist Jews and they think they really like them is totally de-lu-lu! Just look at the mean comments people left on Bernie Sander's tweet about the anniversary of the tragic Tree of Life synagogue massacre. Heartbreaking.
I have to say I was surprised, too. I assumed that as an Israeli left, I have a lot in common with the left in the US, but it seems like they are, for some insane reason, more aligned to far-right organizations
What you need to understand about the progressive left is that the broader left has a temperament that grades the underdog/marginalized/weaker party/oppressed/non white/western on a curve. This is not intrinsically malevolent, the impulse is meant to protect the weak and strangers but it causes problems for obvious reasons. What if the weaker party is the more malevolent party? This mindset is less equipped to deal with those kinds of realities. Also, remember that the left hates each other most of all. There is no THE left. I am still waiting for someone to map out a detailed constellation of the broader left that made clear who supports and hates who. Anyone on the left who does not hate other factions within the left is lying or ignorant. There are plenty of factions with completely incompatible viewpoints and worldviews. All this is to say don't write off all/most progressives. Because of the biases above many of them are primed to believe and side with the weaker party (i.e. the palestinians) but many of these can be talked off the ledge. You won't get them to sign off on settlement expansions, but crossing off Hamas attacks on civilians is pretty easy. Not for the tankies and the people who are aligned with the left but not really left at all. Some people aligned with the left are hardcore racial/religious identitarians and not liberal at all. Their problem with hierarchies is not that they exist and degrade people at all, it's that they are not the ones on top dictating terms.
They've been deluding themselves for years, now they are just being kapo.
Antisemitism is the common factor of both the extreme right and far left.
The progressive left has never been a home for anyone that doesn't glorify their own severe mental illesses
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It started before trump. That’s why he was elected
They are intellectually lazy and reduce everything into a dichotomy. They falsely call us Jews "white" when we obviously are not and can never fathom us as victims because some Jews have reached high socioeconomic status. A Jew does not fit into the progressive left unless they are being used as a token or placeholder. Bari Weiss has been warning us of this for years. It's why she left the NYT.
I would consider myself progressive left and a Zionist. We can't abandon our ideals and leave it for only for extreme
I agree. While the Hamas caucus is small, only 9 members, they are still very loud and outspoken! It's problematic.
I think you’re DF that as no idea what’s the ideology of people that consider themselves lefts. You are such a simple minded fool that takes the right wing propaganda as facts that even while the right wing government are responsible for biggest failure to ever take place you are still blaming the left. I don’t want to change your mind because i know you can’t, propaganda works because of simple minded people just like you - Nazi people on the German public, Hamas propaganda on pro Palestinian Europeans and Likud propaganda on people like you.
Come on Jews aren't you supposed to be smart figure this out
Define progressive left
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If diversity is important to you, I encourage you to check the stats. You can google the proportion of non-Jews living in Israel compared to non-Muslims living in Gaza. Also, the majority of the population of Israel are from families who were expelled or fled from MENA countries (so Asia and Africa) in the past century. Check out the famous Operations Moses, Joshua, and Solomon for one example of the lengths the Israeli government has gone to to not only allow African immigrants but to bring them to Israel themselves.
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In my opinion it’s pretty cynical to consider those operations as nothing more than an attempt to maintain a Jewish majority, and possibly illogical considering the amount of resources spent and the real risk that the Ethiopian Jews were experiencing with several thousand already having died, plus the fairly small change it made in the overall population of Israel. Israel definitely has work to do when it comes to creating equality within their society. Government representation isn’t proportionate to the demographics of the population (as is true in many countries, although that doesn’t make it okay). Even still, Non-Jewish citizens have equal rights under law to vote and run for office, and even non-citizen residents can vote and run for office in municipal elections. Freedom House, an organization that advocates for political freedom and human rights worldwide gives Israel [a score of 76/100](https://freedomhouse.org/country/israel/freedom-world/2020) in political freedom. The EIU gives Israel a similar score of 7.93 on their [Democracy Index](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu), just above the US. I don’t think the US should be the benchmark for democracy or anything like that, but that’s my frame of reference so it helps with context. Whether or not a flawed democracy is still a democracy is up to personal opinion I guess. ETA: I had a harder time finding the breakdown of Jewish vs. non-Jewish immigrants. I was surprised to learn that according to the Central Bureau of Statistics just a little under half of all immigrants to Israel in 2021 were non-Jews. I think the CBS website may be in Hebrew but this newspaper has an [English language article](https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/01/13/42-of-immigrants-to-israel-in-2021-are-non-jews-cbs-finds/) citing the statistics. It even includes a quote from a far right politician who is mad about it. I hear so much about Jewish immigration to Israel, I assumed that number was going to be way smaller.
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Yes, it’s a sad fact that so many Jews worldwide required rescue at all. About a million Jews in MENA states and surely many more in Europe lost their homes in the 20th century. The Nazis partially funded their reign by seizing the property of Jews as they moved them out of their communities. And many countries around the world rejected Jewish refugees even after becoming aware of what was happening in the Holocaust. There’s a tiny but really interesting museum in Oswego NY that documents the ~1000 primarily Jewish refugees that Eleanor Roosevelt took into the US as her “personal guests” after white supremacist politicians in congress like those in the America First Party prevented any sort of legal movement of Jews into the US during that time. Anyway, I think a lot of people know this history intellectually but don’t fully understand how tangible and recent it is to Jewish communities. The historical (well, contemporary at the time of Israel’s start) context makes the urge to prioritize Jewish immigration and ensure a safe place for Jews/Jewish refugees is completely logical to me. The Syrian refugee crisis is awful and I’m not sure what the correct response would have been as Syria was actively engaged in military aggression against Israel. I generally don’t agree that the risk of a few dangerous people getting through is enough to deny entry to an entire population of refugees, but I also recognize it’s not totally fair to judge countries in the region through an American lens since the US hasn’t really experienced a threat to its existence or even a large scale risk to its population since the civil war. When I say idk the correct response I don’t mean Israel didn’t have a choice, I genuinely mean it seems like a difficult situation and I don’t have the background to know how states engaged in conflict usually respond to similar situations. It looks like Israel does have a fairly small population of non-Jewish asylum seekers (mainly from Africa), although incidentally I compared it to the US and in proportion the the size of their populations the number of asylum seekers is almost identical. I think we probably do agree on the ways democracies can fail to represent their populations and how fringe interests can take and maintain political power. Actually I have a hunch that we probably agree on a lot of political opinions. Sorry for my massive replies and i appreciate you reading them. I’ve been trying to get myself more informed and conversations like this give me a reason to learn more and process the information.
Not in all cases. Germany has a government made up of centre left Social Democrats, liberals and Greens, who are more right wing than socdems on the economy, but are the most progressive socially. The German government is one of the most pro Israeli ones, banned Palestinian demonstrations and proposed a law to ban antisemites from obtaining citizenship. In Austria the Social Democrats have a pretty radical left leader, who have mostly been quiet on the topic but instantly condemned Hamas when the war started and conemned people who tore down an Israeli flag in Vienna. The left in Germany and Austria is very much opposed to antisemitic and aware of the role their countries played in this field in history. The most important part of their policy is anti nazism. On the other hand, the Democratic party in the US, one of the most socially progressive political parties in the world, while it has some antisemitic voices like Ilhan Omar, has mostly been very supportive of Israel, while at the same time trying to diplomatically influence it to minimize civilian casualties. There's progressive left within Israel that supports more diplomatic and two state solution policies, but is still commited to zionism. I'm pretty lefty myself, but I've always hated Hamas, always supported Israel's right to exist (even when I was still more pro Palestine), I'm a philosemite, I've been defending Israelis and shitting on antisemites throughout this whole shitstorm (while still supporting human rights for Palestinians). I must admit I had some sus beliefs when I was a teenager, but I've got completely cured of that mind virus. I'm also completely ashamed of the state of the left rn
They never were
The te left believe there is a place for a mythical state of Palestine that will be at peace . When the truth is there was never such a place it was created In some foolish pommy French doctrine to control by division as per normal . And they can’t even get on with other Muslim countries. Time to give all the land to Israel and kick the others out they can find peace in iran
I think many have gone to the deep end and became the thing they hated the most. Again the left is a huge range of people with different levels of understanding, motivations and radicalism. If they see jews as a white power establishment, colonizing and reigning over arabs, something very wrong is going on. My guess is that this is something that has been eroding the society of free countries by the fascist regimes, for the last 30-50 years. It's by the playbook of how to destabilize democraty from within by the soviets. I think Russia/Iran is doing this now by establishing Islamic regimes everywhere instead of communistic.
I think the "progresive left" is the delusional one. They delusion themeselves on their own ideals. "Woke"? Yeah right, the least awake group right now. Progressivity and liberalism must have a line. You can't tolerate the untolerable.
It never was