Progressivism’s Self-Defeating Contradictions

President Joe Biden delivers remarks at a Pride celebration, Saturday, June 10, 2023, on the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

At The Spectator, Lewis Andrews discusses how progressivism’s self-defeating contradictions are tearing the Democratic Party apart. He writes:

For decades the American left has attempted to build a winning political coalition by convincing as many factions as possible that they have somehow been victimized by a white power structure — more particularly, by an American and European white male power structure. The goal has been to provide the Democratic Party with a large base of aggrieved voters while simultaneously giving its traditional allies in the media, academia and government a persuasive social justice (or more recently “anti-colonial”) narrative. But ever since Joe Biden’s inauguration as America’s forty-sixth president, when his promise to be the country’s conciliator quickly disappeared behind a sharp left turn, progressivism’s self-defeating internal contradictions have become increasingly apparent.

Of all these contradictions, the most obvious is the fact that extending special consideration to one supposedly oppressed group does not necessarily go down well with all the others. It turns out, for example, that the Biden administration’s willingness to let an estimated eight-million migrants enter the US illegally has not been very popular with naturalized Americans from the same countries. It is not a coincidence that the Spanish-language TV network Univision, which holds a large share of the US Spanish-speaking audience, recently ran an interview with Donald Trump, letting him go on for an hour about unrestricted immigration and how, if elected in 2024, he would immediately close the border.

Similarly, the tendency of illegal aliens to want to settle in Boston, Chicago, New York, Seattle and other large cities has not pleased the traditionally liberal voters in these areas. Not only has the cost of sheltering urban migrants forced deep cuts in local public-school budgets, but the coming of winter has prompted city mayors to begin trimming other basic services. In an attempt to deal with the growing backlash from his own constituents, New York’s Eric Adams is offering illegals one-way plane tickets to go as far away as Morocco.

The second self-defeating contradiction of progressivism, which has just recently been made clear to American Jews, is that when any left-wing faction achieves too much success relative to the others — or even dares to have a contrary opinion on foreign policy — it is automatically deemed an ally of the white power structure. And, as a result, is entitled to the same kind of discrimination, hostility and even violence that left had once promised to help shield it from. This is true even if the now demonized group has had a long record of generously supporting progressive causes.

Read more here.