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tl;dr: the left is in an existential crisis because of Israel.
I wanted to write a post on the recent shifts in lefty rhetoric. The big one is 'This isn't Woke 1.0 anymore'
To define a few terms for convenience sake. The 'base' is the politically active far left portion. The 'establishment' is the more 'moderate' one. Popular examples of viewpoint representatives of the 'base' online are Vaush and BadEmpanada. Popular examples of the establishment are Contrapoints, PhilosophyTube and Destiny.
The big shift from the base can be described thusly: Performative woke stuff is out. You can no longer signal that you are in favor of soft social causes that are otherwise irrelevant to broader critiques of capitalism and colonialism or similar lefty theology. This might hold interesting connotations for transgenders as an untouchable priestly class in leftism. But in practice this just means that there have been some genuine changes at the grass roots level. And they are putting Palestine first as a purity test. The base is making this adjustment due to a series of genuinely devastating political losses.
You can say it begins with the Biden admin not standing up to Israel after Oct.7. The base got to feel what it's like when their representatives and institutions don't go along with them. This was a thing the base really cared about. But the establishment ignored for, at the time, seemingly no good reason. Come election season, Harris doubled down on this 'don't ask don't tell' position on Israeli overreach. This made the base even madder. If folks remember a few weeks back, the infamous 'Election Autopsy Report' that the DNC didn't want to release, the base was projecting whole heartedly that they lost because Harris was soft on Israel-Palestine. So not only was the base getting ignored, they also believed they were losing because of it.
To make matters worse, Trump started doing things this term. DOGE, along with the USAID thing happened. It was the first sign that the left as a whole was starting to lose grasp on just what was going on. The first symbolic defeat they've felt in a long time. The right was genuinely running a victory lap waving around all the ridiculous lefty causes that had been receiving millions of dollars. Hating Musk and lighting Teslas on fire was, as far as political activism goes, ineffective at actually achieving anything, even if just rhetorically or cathartically. Alongside this ran legislative defeats like the passing of the OBBBA and the ICE apocalypse alongside Trump admin actions against colleges and campuses. Those were principally establishment defeats, but the base got to pay the price.
Lets put ourselves in the shoes of the base. After having been gassed up through propaganda that Trump was going to make the sky fall down, there are now people from their ranks that are dead. Some jailed for a long time, and others permanently damaged, either physically, mentally or professionally from participating in lefty activism, with nothing to show for it. At the same time the base has not just been losing internally to the establishment, but they've also been watching the establishment lose externally to the right.
What's worse, they're now competing for space online against the likes of Theo Von, Tucker Carlson and similar, who have been filling the moderate 'I like healthcare and dislike Israel' void on the right/center. At the same time they have no leverage over the more extreme right wingers that occupy X and alternative streaming sites. This is a far cry from the 2017-2020 years where the left could exert pressure on the media landscape at will. A clear example of their loss of power.
Now, why can't the establishment just mend things with the base? Why are they huffing and puffing about the extremists in their own backyard? Why can't they give them institutional cover like they once did? Outside of the right genuinely becoming stronger due to a lack of censorship, there is a one word answer: Israel. The establishment can't compromise any more on Israel. They have to vote yes when Israel asks for arms. They have to stand up and clap for Netanyahu. And the base is redefining itself around the singular cause of Israel bombing children in Gaza being a bad thing.
There's no more intersectionalism. There no more 'sit down a black woman is speaking'. The base has slowly realized that organizing around words and ideas is stupid. You need something concrete as a barometer. And they are slowly enforcing that the actual program is not gay sex, protesting for black criminals or men in womens sports, but dead children in Gaza. And if you don't get with the program, regardless of who you are or identify as, you can be dismissed on those terms.
Will this last? I don't know. The establishment has usually managed to reign everything in come election year. But it might be that with changing demographics on the ground, and the reckless actions of Israel, that the American left is genuinely swirling down the drain of a third world communist toilet because they can't say no to infinity immigration and Israel.
Why?
I’m also curious. The establishment has chosen to do this but I haven’t seen any particular reason why they would have to do it. They just seem to really want to do it.
If you don't know why, it's probably old and complicated and involves real national interest, which is why you don't know about it.
So, for instance, as to why we "have" to sell Israel weapons, it's because that was part of the deal Carter brokered for peace between Egypt and Israel, a peace that has lasted nearly fifty years now. We also "have" to sell Egypt like 80% of what we sell Israel. That's the deal, from the Realpolitik '70s. Egypt leaves the Soviet Union as main sponsor, Israel leaves France as main military sponsor, and they buy American and agree not to use the US guns on each other.
So, we don't have to do shit. We can withold weapons from the Israelis, but that scotches the peace deal with Egypt which puts the Suez in play (and so on down the line of international consequences). Also, the weapons we provide tend to be the most targeted and high-tech. The Israelis make much of their own hardware, and are plenty rich enough to get reasonable options from elsewhere except for our best stuff. The idea that the US military hardware is the only thing between Israel and defeat is ridiculous and ahistorical. US military hardware is what stands between the Palestinians and an Israel that doesn't have Patriot missiles, but can build their own artillery. Not sure that's better for anyone.
Which is why we keep voting to do it.
I think a lot of people don't realize (or don't want to acknowledge) that if Israel were to be unable to effectively defend its population from terrorist rockets and mortars and missles, their reponse wouldn't be capitulation or negotiation. It would be annihilation. As it would be for pretty much any polity in existence whose civilians are being relentlessly targeted and killed by a militarily inferior opponent.
As it stands, Israel has the breathing room to be more judicious in their attacks, even if it really doesn't look that way to the uninformed, who call use of more than one JDAM "indiscriminate and unproportional carpet bombing". But without the Iron Dome, I think we'd be reminded what carpet bombing really looks like, and I wouldn't blame them (or anyone else) in their operational situation.
Israel has a population equivalent to the population of Denmark if we subtract Palestinians and ultra orthodox. Israel's natural resources are meager. If Israel was subjected to the same sanctions as Russia they would fold like a house of cards. There is no way Israel can be sustained while having hostile relations to all its neighbours and while being sanctioned by the west.
So if they know they are going to fall apart when sanctioned why wouldn't they stop being judicious and cause as much table flipping as possible before they run out of juice?
Isn't this what they have done going full genocidal for the past 2.5 years and starting a war with Iran?
That was kind of the point of my post: that they have been keeping the gloves on thanks to having the Iron Dome to allow them to be moderate, rather than full "ignore civilian casualties & make it a parking lot" war, let alone actively targeting civilians and intending genocide.
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