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| House member and progressive, Rashida Tlaib (Progressive Caucus members) |
“Israel’s apartheid government” is incompatible with “progressive values.”
“I want you all to know that among progressives, it’s become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values, yet back Israel’s apartheid government, and we will continue to push back and not accept that you are progressive except for Palestine...
Her statement was immediately condemned as antisemitic by the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt as well as her fellow mostly Jewish progressive Democrats in the House.
The question remains, however, is she right, anyway? The word ‘progressive’ is bandied about without many of us knowing exactly what it means. Here in part is what Wikipedia says about it:
Immanuel Kant identified progress as being a movement away from barbarism toward civilization 18th-century philosopher and political scientist Marquis de Condorcet predicted that political progress would involve the disappearance of slavery, the rise of literacy, the lessening of sex inequality, prison reforms which at the time were harsh and the decline of poverty.
If this is what progressivism is all about, than we should all be progressives, Right? It’s not that simple.
In the late 19th century, a political view rose in popularity in the Western world that progress was being stifled by vast economic inequality between the rich and the poor, minimally regulated laissez-faire capitalism with out-of-control monopolistic corporations, intense and often violent conflict between capitalists and workers, with a need for measures to address these problems. Progressivism has influenced various political movements.
I think it’s safe to say that in our world today, Progressivism is viewed as a function Social liberalism. Defined by Wikipedia in part as:
...a political philosophy and variety of liberalism that endorses a social market economy and the expansion of civil and political rights. Social liberalism views the common good as harmonious with the individual's freedom... In the United States, progressivism began as an intellectual rebellion against the political philosophy of Constitutionalism as expressed by John Locke and the founders of the American Republic, whereby the authority of government depends on observing limitations on its just powers.
A social market economy? Sounds a bit like communism. Be that as it may, in short a true progressive does not let something like the constitution stand in the way of social justice as they understand it. If the ultimate goal of progressives is justice for the individual, governments derived of documents conceived of and executed by racists ought to be rejected out of hand. Freedom can never be fully achieved when such documents are seen as inviolable.
Nor can any nation derived of a specific religion (e.g Judaism) be seen as progressive. Let alone when such governments deny equal rights to people seen as the non Jewish indigenous population under occupation by a people using its military might to do so.
Israel is therefore seen by Tlaib as an Apartheid state because of all that. Which in her mind justifies armed struggle against their Israeli occupiers. Those who support a government that does that cannot be called true progressives. And yet so many progressive Democrats do support Israel.
I realize of course that her views are devoid of context and do not reflect the full reality of life on both sides the divide. Her views are clearly one sided to the point of being antisemitic. Views that fuel all of the left wing antisemitism found mostly on collage campuses theses disguised as antizionism.
But still that Jewish Progressives have to explain why supporting Israel still allows them to be progressive makes progressivism a dubious distinction. Why for example should context matter to a progressive when human rights are being currently denied? Context is irrelevant to perceived injustices that are current.
Taking this a step further, the Constitution which was derived of a political philosophy conceived by racist founding fathers who did not consider black people equal human beings. It ought to be discarded and replaced by a document that reflects the greater good that progressivism promises.
I don’t see how any US official can call themselves a true progressive if they support the Constitution..