I’m not sure why so many people miss this.

It is in the nature of “progressivism” to “progress,” according to the lights of the ideology.  By definition, there is no destination short of perfection.  Moreover, there can’t even be a pause for evaluation as “progress” is made.  Wherever a new generation finds itself as a starting point, it has to push for more, and adherents take evidence that the prior step didn’t destroy the universe as evidence that their demands won’t, either (and if they do, it was probably deserved… racist universe!).

And so, you get old-school leftist NYU professor of propaganda Mark Crispin saying:

“When I look back on what we then believed in [during the ’60s], I can’t help but be shocked—repelled by what the so-called left has become today. The two lefts have nothing in common,” Crispin told The Epoch Times, “today’s left is the far-right.”

“When I was a kid, the far-right really kind of distrusted and feared the working class. They wanted them to stay away from politics, they didn’t like labor unions. Well, who are the deplorables? That’s the working class. The constant demonization of Trump’s base is essentially an attack—an elite attack–on the working class and its refusal to follow the script dictated to them by the liberal media.” …

“The fact is that, putting aside the weird attitude of the so-called left toward black people, they have no use for the working class, they have nothing for contempt for them, and that strikes me as another symptom of their being on the far-right.”

Left, right… whatever.  Those labels don’t really matter in this context.  It used to be that the political debate was about how to structure society and achieve tangible objectives.  The ’60s radicals and their offspring made it all about who has power.

If the workers want to take power away from progressives, then the workers must be part of the problem.  Deplorables, clinging to God and guns!  As minorities conclude that their interests are no longer being served by the Democrat Party, which is increasingly radical, they’ll come in for the same treatment.

This is how tyranny and atrocities happen.  Paint the excuses with whatever political color you want; what it comes down to is a small minority insisting that it must get its way and using any means it must to ensure that it holds on to power.

If it makes Crispin more comfortable to understand events by concluding that the left became the right, that’s fine, as long as he defines his terms and they’re not just a way to shift blame away from people who agree with him on this or that issue.  I’d suggest, however, that society makes more sense if we acknowledge that the excesses that used to be ascribed to the conservative point of view were not characteristic of “the right,” but rather characteristic of a certain psychology that will latch on to whatever platform promises power at the time.

Featured image by Herrald of Landsberg on WikiArt.