Re: Why the ‘Be Kind’ brigade are so ho rrible

On 8/19/2026 5:24 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:32:12 +0100, Julian <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> 
> Why the "be an asshole" is brigade so horrible
>
Top Poster Alert!
 >

>> 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