Progressive-Left "Humanitarian" Racism

(Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives)

Mike L

The most racist political movement in the West today, aside from radical Islam, is the progressive-left.  I come out of that movement and I am here to tell you that it is absolutely crawling with a kind of insipid racial condescension that you will not find anywhere else within the American political scene.

Those of us who come out of the progressive movement in the United States tend to assume that racism is a malicious right-wing conservative tendency, whereas the truth is that the American conservative-right has done a much better job of marginalizing its racists than has the progressive-left.  It will make me few friends to say so, but it happens to be the case, and I give considerable credit to William F. Buckley.

People are now beginning to awaken to the situation and this article by Manfred Gerstenfeld, entitled "Beware the humanitarian racist," is one that is worthy of attention.  The reason for this, of course, is that Gerstenfeld is right.  Contemporary progressive-left racism is different from the more traditional forms of racism, but it is the prominent form in the twenty-first century west.

Progressive-left racism, which is to say contemporary western racism, when it is not directed at Jews takes the form of "humanitarian racism."  That is, it is <i>well-meaning</i> racism and therefore not even generally acknowledged as racism.  Its primary form of expression is that of condescension.  Among many people on the progressive-left non-white people are considered so inferior that they should never be held responsible for their own behavior.  Consider it a kindly form of racism. Thus when a French Muslim Jihadi kills some French soldiers, a rabbi and 3 little Jewish girls, out of love for Allah and because they tell one another that Jews are mean, progressives refuse to acknowledge radical Islam as the source of hatred.  Instead they blame Americans, or the West more generally,… and the Jews.

The United States and the West are to blame, or so they tell themselves, because of our racist and militarist and colonialist and imperialist pasts and present.  The Jews are to blame because we, both diaspora and Israeli, tend to support the Jewish state.  Among anti-Semitic progressives, Israel is considered (contradictorily enough) as an imperial puppet of the West, as well as the nefarious power behind the scenes, pulling the strings, over western media and governments.

In this way humanitarian racism lends support to radical Islam because it agrees with certain fundamental premises of that genocidal movement.  The convergence of radical Islam with the western Left is a phenomenon that I refused to face until the Mavi Marmara incident.  This was a case of “well-meaning” progressives joining forces with actual genocidal Jihadis in order to confront Jews on the open seas.  When Israel sought to detain this ship so that it would not be allowed to break the blockade of Gaza, Israeli soldiers were clubbed and knifed by Muslims seeking martyrdom in an effort to murder Jews.

They were then lionized as “peace activists” throughout the progressive left.

Progressives, in effect, told the world that Koranically-based genocide of the Jews, a little project that has been ongoing for 1,400 years, was actually a matter of “resistence” and thereby something to be supported.

It should be noted, however, that there are distinct differences between progressive-left humanitarian racism and progressive-left anti-Semitic anti-Zionism.  The first thing to acknowledge is that the former is very widespread throughout the progressive movement, while the latter is not.  The former is encouraged, while the latter is tolerated.  Humanitarian racism is the primary form of racism in the West today, while anti-Semitism cloaked under the banner of anti-Zionism is accepted by the progressive-left under the alleged umbrella of “human rights” and “social justice.”

Why any Jewish person would continue to support a political movement that stands directly against our own well-being is beyond me.  Why any Jewish person would support a president of the United States who tells the world that the rise of radical Islam, under the misnomer “Arab Spring,” is something akin to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, is also beyond me.

The time to stand up is now.