From Intersectionality to “It’s All One Thing”

The protests of the 60’s were anti-war.  Today’s protests are anti-war in their opposition to Israel’s attack against Hamas in Gaza due to its October 7 terrorist attack that killed over a thousand Israelis and U.S. support for Israel.  But the protests are also pro-war in calling for wiping out Israel and its population.  I recognize the distinction between opposition to “Zionism“–the movement to restore a Jewish homeland in Palestine–and “anti-semitism,” the hatred of Jews.  But these protests, at least in large measure, are anti-semitic, characterized by physical assaults on Jews, racist slurs, and calls for their extermination (e.g., “We will have 10 thousand October 7’s!”).

Some protesters are even using swastikas!  Ryan Zickgraf of the UK Telegraph tells about an anti-Israel activist who defends the use of that Nazi symbol:

Earlier this month on X, [Malcolm] Harris responded to CNN’s Jake Tapper’s report that the Pennsylvania synagogue he had bar mitzphaed at had been vandalised with a swastika. Harris didn’t condemn the anti-Semitic graffiti but indirectly praised it. The meaning of the Nazi symbol had been reversed from bad to good, Harris said, “from a Nazi threat to a condemnation of genocide.”

In this rhetorical jiu jitsu, members of Hamas, not Jews, are the victims of genocide! As Zickgraf says, “swastikas are now woke.”

In his article entitled Meet the new Left, who think Hamas are good and that Swastikas are woke,  Zickgraf said that he sees a new development on the left, a movement from “intersectionality”–which focuses on multiple spheres of oppression– to “it’s all one thing.”  He cites a number of activists who are saying as much:

“Palestine is every single issue in one issue,” wrote Scarlett Rabe, a singer-songwriter who describes herself as an anti-racist mother and an abolition feminist/womanist, in a viral tweet in February. “It’s reproductive justice. It’s social justice. It’s climate crisis… It’s not just one issue; it’s all the issues in one.”

All One Thingism explains why a group of a few hundred masked protestors who chanted “Death to America” and “Hands off Iran” this week also employed the relatively meaningless slogan “From Chicago to Palestine.” Or that another viral post on Instagram by a person wearing a “Fatties for a Free Palestine” T-shirt insisted that “Palestinian solidarity is not a niche issue. Fat liberation and Palestinian liberation go hand in hand.”

During the Trans Day of Visibility, a Palestine flag flew above the Trans flag during some marches, with one sign explaining that “Liberations are linked.”. . .

It’s narcissistic identity politics on steroids, one where specific conditions and geography melt away completely. It’s no longer enough to have solidarity with the people of Palestinians in their time of plight; you must be them. Are you fat, trans, and live in, say, Evanston, Illinois? You are somehow in a shared position with starved and bombed-out citizens of Gaza.

Maybe this signals the deconstruction of the left, as the general public realizes what is being taught in their universities and as the movement melts down in its own contradictions.

We’ve blogged about Fergie Chambers, an heir to the Cox Cable fortune who sports tattoos of Mao and Stalin, who uses his $250 million fortune to fund hard left causes, including bailing out and paying the fines of protesters who get arrested.  Zickgraf says he has recently shown his solidarity with the Palestinians by converting to Islam!

When the dust settles and if Palestine ever spreads from the Jordan river to Lake Michigan, we’ll see how American leftists fare with Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Iran, and the Taliban.  How well will gays, trans, and feminists get along with Islam, Fergie’s new religion?

Photo:  Queers for Palestine by Montecruz Foto, Creative Commons: Attribution Share Alike.