How the Left Created a Generation of Pro-Hamas Sympathizers

Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel has forced a reckoning in America’s elite institutions. America’s campuses have been revealed as dens of not just antisemitic beliefs (which can culminate in violence, as witnessed recently at Cornell) but generally anti-human attitudes.

The idea that the normal rules of human morality—such as that one should not just avoid killing non-combatants, but especially babies, can be set aside if the victims represent a concept as abstract as a “settler colonial project” —is not even Marxism of the Leninist variety, but the nihilism of Pol Pot. Coming from American students, who also view the United States itself as an illegitimate colonizer nation constructed on the backs of Native Americans and African slaves, this idea is self-negating as well. It expresses not a hatred of an “other” such as Jews, but rather a hatred of themselves, which explains why even many youth of Jewish descent can be infected with the virus.

The distinction between leftism, even of a Marxist-Leninist variety, and nihilism is key to understanding why, suddenly, there has been pushback from elites in otherwise woke corporations, universities, and even the Democrat Party to the support for Hamas. It is not a turn against leftism, or even against the Marxist vision of Critical Race Theory. Rather, it is a horrifying realization that the project designed to instill an ideological commitment to hierarchy accomplished the opposite. Instead of an army of ideological warriors, it produced an uncontrollable mob.

Marxism, whether in its original, class-focused form or the more modern, identity-politics-driven manifestation of Critical Race Theory, is not and has never been about opposing hierarchy. Marx, birthed from the same secular post-religious tradition as Darwin and Nietzsche, sought to build a scientific replacement for the metaphysical divine right of kings or mandate of heaven.

Marx was not seriously concerned with the idea of abolishing class. The classless society of True Communism was a concept he never bothered to define, had no idea how to bring about, and postponed to an indefinite future when human nature, if not the laws of physics themselves, would be suspended.

Instead, Marx was concerned about how economic classes replaced each other.

For Marx, classes were objective. The idea of individuals who straddled or passed between them was uncomfortable for him. Much as segregationists and modern woke academics resolved the problem of interracial children by declaring “mulatoes” to be new races in and of themselves, Marx had terms for anyone who did not fit into their class.

Through terms like “petit bourgeois” for those in the middle class who aimed above their station, and “lumpenproletariat” for the working class who dared to vote for the Right, Marx abused those who did not fit in a manner that black, Muslim or gay conservatives would find familiar when it comes to the Democrat Party in the 2020s.

The idea that conflict between classes was intrinsic is therefore only half of Marxism. The other half is that if every individual is defined by objective membership in a class, then all conflicts are class conflicts. A professor and a small business owner do not merely get into a fight over cutting in-line at a check-out lane. Rather, their conflict represents a class conflict.

When Critical Race Theorists adopted Marx’s ideas and replaced class with race, they adopted both parts of his dogma. Not only does everyone fit into a neatly defined category of race, but all conflicts between individuals are actually conflicts between the races to which they belong. Even if the individuals involved deny it.

The idea that a conflict between Hamas and Israel is a conflict between Jews and Arabs is right in line with this belief. For the Critical Race Theorists, any action undertaken by an Israeli settler on the West Bank or Palestinian can never be just an individual act, but rather is the product of the existence of the state of Israel or Palestine. Jews cannot be separated from Israel. For Palestinian students, they are told what is happening in Gaza is an attack on them by Jews.

While we can never know what the intentions were behind Critical Race Theory, we should distinguish between the academics who developed it, and the corporate executives who pushed it. In the former case, they may well have been true believers.

In the latter case, there is another motive. A world in which everyone is part of a class and race, all of which are ordered hierarchically, is one in which not only do individuals have no agency, but anyone who tries to assert agency is behaving poorly.

If anyone who refuses to be defined by their race or class is selfish, stupid, or both, then this provides enormous social power to whoever is in a position to define the “correct” way to behave as a gay man or black woman. The advantage of Critical Race Theory to elites is that there are an infinite number of racial categories to which to assign individuals, and those categories could then be used as means of control and issuing orders.

“Wokeness” in this sense became a test of elite loyalty. Imagine what the ideal social media profile of an aspiring BlackRock employee would look like. In 2017, it would be filled with #resistance mentions. In early 2020, it would have admonitions to support nurses and wear a mask, along with mocking those who opposed lockdowns. That summer, it would be filled with images of solidarity with BLM and demands for “justice” for George Floyd.

In 2021, this would have begun to shift. The ideal employee would suddenly begin to express concern over the length of school closings, and how minorities were the greatest victims of high urban crime rates. In 2022, they would begin raising the alarm about whether there had been enough research into childhood gender transitions and the situation on the border while filling their profiles with Ukrainian flags.

Then, in October of 2023, they would have been expected to express concern about rising antisemitism on college campuses while praising Biden for defying ignorant young staffers pushing for a too-early ceasefire.

Superficially, this sounds like the concept of the “current thing,” but the idea has always been less relevant than its means of transition.

There are two ways young Americans especially identify the “current thing.” The first is horizontal, from peers. These young people adopt the views designed to maximize their social capital in the short run. The second is vertically. This involves calculating what views and positions will please those in a position to advance you, whether it is teachers, professors, or future employers.

Until 2021, the distinction made little difference. The same signals such as being opposed to Donald Trump, supportive of trans rights, and in favor of BLM were desired both by future employers and popular with peers.

Gradually, a divergence began to build, and the limited backlash against wokeness was not a sudden repentance, but a calculation by millions of young Americans whose leftism was always a product more of personal ambition than conviction that the winds were shifting and they should shift with them. They were not suddenly rejecting these woke concepts – they had never believed in them.

The war in Gaza has transformed that gradual divergence into a schism. Those at the top of the vertical, whether it is billionaire donors or the President of the United States, have made clear that support for Israel, or at least condemnation of Hamas, is a test of loyalty to the hierarchy.

When people in power threaten to punish anyone who disagrees, it is not because they find pro-Hamas views abhorrent, even if they do. It is because they find the very concept that someone could believe in such things so strongly and maintain that position when ordered to drop it even more terrifying.

What we are now witnessing is not a war between Critical Race Theory and some sort of older, more noble liberalism. Rather, it is between Critical Race Theory the idea, and Critical Race Theory the mechanism. The ideas of Critical Race Theory and those who believe in them are warring with the purpose of Critical Race Theory and the goals of those who promoted it. Not to improve the lives of any race or class, but to entrench their own social power.

Without a doubt, the existence of young Americans who believe genocide is justified is a mortal threat to the future of the country. But we need to recognize that those pushing back and defending Israel are not repentant sinners, but rather arsonists who found that the fires they set got out of control.

The immediate task should be to put those fires out, and just as we would work with arsonists to fight a fire that threatens to consume us all, tactical cooperation with the liberal backlash against pro-Hamas forces is justified.

In the longer term, we should recognize that the reason this problem exists is precisely because the corporate donors leading the backlash against pro-Hamas sentiment nurtured the ideology behind these ideas for decades, knowing it was at least untrue, if not outright dangerous.

As a matter of national self-defense, we cannot allow them to avoid responsibility, not least because if they do, the moment the current fire is out they will go right back to preparing kindling for the next one. 

That means instilling values of genuine free speech and inquiry, not theories designed to maintain social control. First, because social control is un-American. Secondly, it is now clear the elites who wish to exercise control are too stupid to do so without endangering themselves and everyone else.

Walter Samuel is the pseudonym of a prolific international affairs writer and academic. He has worked in Washington as well as in London and Asia, and holds a Doctorate in International History.