The Return of the Progressive Atrocity

In the 1960s, the oxymoronic and ethically repellent idea of ‘progressive atrocities’ emerged as parts of the Left celebrated attacks on unarmed civilians perpetrated by the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Irish Republican Army, and, especially, the Palestine Liberation Organization. In recent decades, this enthusiasm has waned; you won’t find many defenders of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, or Boko Haram. But with Hamas’s massacres of October 7, the concept made a startling return. Large parts of the western Left and cultural elite - writers, artists, and professors - either celebrated the attacks or chose to quickly ‘disappear’ them, thus downplaying, ignoring, or rationalizing Hamas’s murders, rapes, tortures, and kidnappings. Jewish Lives Matter is, clearly, not a clarion call for today’s so-called anti-colonial Left.