The left is driving itself off a cliff.
(JNS) One of the ways to tell apart moderates and extremists is checking the brakes. The other is the constant infighting. And the two are connected. Extremists have no brakes so their movement is always going to new extremes. Tomorrow’s radicals cannibalize yesterday’s.
In my book “Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against The Left,” I quote a telling line about the French Revolution.
“‘As the revolution becomes radical, the Right disappears, and the Left of one assembly becomes the Right of the succeeding assembly,’ Mignet explained, describing how each new political incarnation became more radical than the last. ‘The Left of the national assembly became the Right of the legislative assembly,’ he wrote, and then ‘the Left of the legislative assembly became the Right of the convention.’
“Finally, he concluded, ‘the Left of the convention were those red terrorists known as the Mountain party.’ These ‘red terrorists,’ including Robespierre, were the worst of the Jacobins and would cover France in blood as they purged not only conservatives, but fellow leftists.”
On that note, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders recently showed up at a rally to save Rep. Jamaal Bowman. This is a big deal because saving Bowman has become a litmus test for the left’s electoral strength and that of the anti-Israel crowd in Congress. If they can save Bowman, they will claim that the Squad’s power is growing and AIPAC has been beaten. So the left has a lot invested in it. Or so you would think. But when you have no brakes, this happens:
“Pro-Hamas protestors disrupted a joint rally between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) on Saturday,” The Hill reported.
“The protest was organized by Within Our Lives, a self-described Palestinian-led, New York pro-terrorist organization.
“‘Endorsing Biden is endorsing the ongoing genocide in Gaza,’ Within Our Lifetime wrote in a thread on X promoting the demonstration at the rally.”
WOL was furious that AOC, trying to prop up Bowman and conduct outreach to some Jewish leftists, had condemned the antisemitism at one of its more deranged rallies, during which the group got a mob to cheer claims that Jews at the Nova musical festival had it coming on Oct. 7 while protesting a commemoration of the victims.
So WOL came to protest the Save Bowman rally. And how do you respond to that?
“I’m not supposed to fight back? We’re gonna show them who the f–k we are!” Bowman told the crowd as pro-Palestine protesters attempted to disrupt the rally with chants in a video uploaded to X. He proceeded to lead the crowd in a “cease-fire now” chant.
Classic Mensheviks vs. Bolsheviks. But the only way to break the cycle is for the Bolshies to take over and purge everyone else. Until the Left can do that, it’s a machine for spitting out even worse versions of itself.