Re: Why the ‘Be Kind’ brigade are so horrible (was: Why the ???Be Kind??? brigade are so horrible)

On Aug 19, 2026 at 5:32:12 AM EDT, "Julian" <[email protected]> wrote:

> The Green Party came to prominence earlier this year by forever
> promising ‘hope not hate’. Indeed, that dreamy yearning played a key
> part in securing an unprecedented mandate in the May local elections,
> when a callow cohort of progressive twenty-somethings, wooed by these
> nice-sounding words, helped to put the Greens into power in many
> inner-city councils. This is the same demographic who are also receptive
> to similar utopian platitudes about abolishing borders, housing
> immigrants, and free bus travel, free university education and free
> childcare. Free everything, if possible, courtesy of ‘the billionaires’,
> who in the Green Party’s ethereal vision will obligingly pay for it all.
> 
> Yet such charmingly naïve sentiments seems to jar with Green Party
> rhetoric in regard to Israel and the Jews. When it comes to this matter,
> their members are rather lacking in compassion, somewhat short on soppy
> inanities. On this subject, they are hate-mongers of the first order.
> 
> Some Green Party activists now speak of British Jews being a ‘weapon’ of
> Israel, describe hostility towards Jews as ‘understandable’, and talk of
> ‘violent resistance’ and ‘armed struggle’ by Palestinians. Messages in a
> private WhatsApp group used by Green members also referred to ‘killing
> Zionists’. One participant in the group chat described the majority of
> Israeli Jews as ‘genociders’, another referred to Iran’s Islamic
> Revolutionary Guard Corps as ‘part of a national liberation movement’,
> while one Green Party parish councillor on the Isle of Wight, asked if
> their comment ‘Zionism has to go’ meant that they would like Israel
> ‘wiped off the map, in essence?,’ replied: ‘Yes, I would like that.’
> 
> For a party that likes to preach pacifism, this is fighting talk indeed.
> Yet far from representing a contradiction or an aberration, such
> bellicose sentiment is wholly consistent with the worldview of the
> idealistic, progressive left.
> 
>  From the Jacobins to the Bolsheviks to the Khmer Rouge, those who have
> combined idealistic utopianism, unassailable righteousness, the pursuit
> of absolute egalitarianism, and a quasi-religious sense of mission have
> always spoken with belligerence – and usually acted upon it. The
> inevitable catastrophic and bloody fate of utopian movements partly
> stems from the necessary payoff between liberty and equality – you can
> have more of one only at the expense of having less of the other, so the
> pursuit of complete equality must entail the complete elimination of
> liberty – but it’s also the consequence of people being beholden to
> unshakeable convictions.
> 
> To paraphrase Yeats, those possessed with convictions and passionate
> intensity are the worst types. Those who present themselves as
> unquestionably caring and good and on the ‘right side of history’ always
> feel at licence to behave as they please, because they see their
> opponents as being on the side of evil.
> 
> This is why many will also recognise another related, longer-standing
> and similarly ostensible contradiction in politics: the propensity of
> those who profess to ‘Be Kind’ to act abhorrently online. They feel at
> liberty to be as vile and personal in their insults because all is
> forgiven if you have right on your side. In the minds of the elect,
> those who hold opposite opinions are already dehumanised.
> 
> What makes the self-righteous fury of the hard-left today all the more
> toxic is that it has been enabled by a culture that valorises victimhood
> and equates it with moral superiority. Those who present themselves as
> victims of political oppression, or ally themselves to others in that
> position (in this case, the Palestinians) are even more likely to have
> recourse to bellicose language. The wrath of ideologues with good on
> their side is even harder to gainsay when they add to their argument
> that they are victims, and that the pain they feel is your fault – as a
> straight white man, or as someone who is ‘right wing’, or as a Jew.
> 
> This noxious admixture of ideological certitude, victimhood and
> infantile sentimentality helps to explain the recent rise of ultra-left
> violence. The return to the headlines last week of Luigi Mangione is a
> reminder of how this combination works. It was not merely Mangione’s
> actions that are telling – he shot and killed the CEO of a private
> healthcare provider in December 2024 – but the manner in which he was
> subsequently feted by those who think some people deserve to die for
> being capitalists, for not being caring.
> 
> Mangione’s actions can be seen in context with the murder of Charlie
> Kirk, or in this country, the emergence of the militant transgender
> rights group Bash Back, and indeed Palestine Action, an outfit which
> also has no qualms about using violence if it’s for a ‘good cause’.
> 
> One can therefore be shocked, but not confused, at what we are hearing
> today from the mouths of some Greens. The boastfully compassionate,
> those brimming with convictions, are often those who are also full of hate.
> 
> 
> Patrick West

Moral mandate - be kind or we'll make ya be