Why Are We Surprised That Mobs of Hamas Supporters Disrupt Our Lives and Spread Hate?

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Epoch Times on March 12, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission.

As mobs rampage through American and Canadian streets celebrating and championing Hamas and its genocidal anti-Semitism, disrupting university campuses and blocking access to Jewish-owned stores, restaurants, and houses of worship, most citizens and political figures look on in surprise and dismay.

Some North American pro-Hamas advocates, including some teachers and others in responsible positions, have torn down the posters of the hundreds of Jewish hostages held by Hamas, and applauded the torture and murder of 1,200 Israeli Jews and some foreigners in the most brutal ways imaginable, including beheading and burning alive of children and families and gang-raping women to death. Pro-Hamas mobs chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free [of Jews],” and “globalize the intifada,” and although they may not be able to identify which river and which sea, they know full well that these chants mean “destroy Israel” and “annihilate the Jews.”

The Arab-Israel conflict is another excuse for North American far-leftists to virtue signal by advocating and justifying hatred and violence toward an “oppressor,” more specifically a “colonial settler” state that engages in “genocide” against an “indigenous” population. In the case of Israel, this is a fairy story, framing the indigenous Jews of Israel as invaders and the historical invading Arabs as “indigenous.” As for the alleged “genocide,” “Palestinian” Arabs have increased tenfold since the re-establishment of Israel in 1948. Importing another malicious accusation from elsewhere, Israel is accused of “apartheid,” which would mean a separation and exclusion of Israeli Arabs from Israeli society and institutions, which blatantly does not exist.

But all of these accusations that convey hate and recommend death for Israeli Jews seem quite reasonable to North Americans, because they parallel the central tenets of a progressive culture that dominates the educational system, media, government, and public culture of both the United States and Canada. As mentioned, all society in this view is easily divided into oppressors and victims: whites and men, particularly heterosexuals as oppressors, and people of colour, females, and LGBTQ2S++ as victims. Consequently, in progressive morality, heterosexual whites and men should be hated and subject to discrimination.

Central to the progressive argument is the alleged “unearned success of privilege” that whites and men benefit from, which come about, so the story goes, because of oppressive discrimination against people of colour and women. Progressives take differences in success between census categories of people as prima facie evidence and final proof of racial and gender discrimination. Successful North American racial minority groups—Asians and Jews—who on average do better than majority whites in education and economic achievement, are a bit of an embarrassment for progressive hate categories. But never mind the facts, progressives just classify Asians and Jews with whites as “white adjacent” or “hyper white,” and can thus be regarded as oppressors.

Progressives, including those controlling governments, have imported the Marxist oppressor-victim class conflict model of society into all North American institutions through the ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). This phrase of nice-sounding terms is deceptive because what it means in practice is, first, the elimination of merit as a criterion of success, with racial balancing and imposed equal results, and second, achieving this balance by discriminating against whites (and Asians and Jews), males, and heterosexuals.

DEI bureaucracies and consultants have multiplied and spread in every sector of North American society: education, media, industry, government, military, and arts. The job of DEI commissars is to police policy, speech, and thought so that no ideas contrary to DEI are expressed or publicized, hate is directed at the appropriate categories of people, and benefits are directed to the appropriate “marginalized minorities.”

DEI policies have had great “success” at erasing merit from consideration and sidelining majority whites and the half of the population who are male. (The only males who are favoured in North America by the authorities are those pretending they are females.) In both the United States and Canada, both whites and males are underrepresented in “higher education.” It is typical that advertisements for university posts specify exclusive preference for blacks, people of colour, females, LBGTQ2S++, or disabled. Whites, Asians, and Jews would not be considered. In every sector, the same categories of “victimized” candidates are preferred, and the same categories of “oppressors” are excluded.

But whites and males are not just “privileged,” they are deemed to be evil by progressives and other race activists. “Whiteness,” consisting of expectations of punctuality, hard work, logic, courtesy, science, and correct answers, is considered by progressives a detrimental and prejudicial blot on the culture that needs to be expunged, wiped out forever. Maleness, including the urge to achieve and to protect, is regarded as “toxic” and should be replaced by feminism. Thus whites and males should, from the progressive point of view, be hated, not just for their oppressive actions, but for their essences.

How easy it was to slip the Arab-Israel conflict into the progressive model of Jewish oppressor and Arab victim, to make signs, and take to the streets with glib slogans. Absolute ignorance of the history of the Middle East, of Palestinian-Nazi collaboration, and of the facts on the ground in Israel was also big help. As were the old anti-Semitic stereotypes and blood libels. The pro-Hamas mobs managed to combine intense fervour with extreme callousness.

The upshot of progressiveness is that the entirety of Western culture is oppressive and must be swept aside, and its carriers should be legitimately hated. The progressive model for vilifying and sidelining majorities and selected minorities of the population has been remarkably successful so far. The silent majority of the North American population does not sympathize with these extreme progressive views, as is shown clearly by opinion polls. It seems likely that political parties that advocate these approaches may soon be out of power, and the institutions that have implemented them may be due for a backlash, as has begun in some states and provinces.

That our highest political office-holders advocate hate and discrimination is an indication how far we have fallen.

Photo by Joe Catron on Flickr