This is a special year-end edition of Doorstep Postings, the periodic political commentary column written by Josh Lieblein for The CJN.
How do anti-Zionist Jews celebrate Chanukah, a holiday that commemorates the Jews of Judea, who rebelled against an enemy who wished to erase the Jewish identity of the land of the Israelites? How do they reconcile celebrating Chanukah while aligning themselves with people who…
— Yardena Schwartz (@yardenas) December 22, 2024
You all know the story that we tell this time of year: a group of Jews decided they were done with Jewish particularism and said, “Let us go an make a covenant with the nations around us” (1 Maccabees 1:11) and decided to gaslight the rest of the community into seeing things their way—and it ended very, very badly for them.
As such, Hannukah is a time for the revealing of secrets, the banishing of shadows, and the airing of grievances. Having recently reached a milestone age associated with acquiring Jewish wisdom, my own personal miracle is that after enduring 40 years of threats/promises of the imminent collapse of society and sweeping revolution, 40 years of lectures about the moral and physical decay of the West, 40 years of the most obnoxiously self-righteous folks walking the planet breathlessly informing us all of the latest irreconcilable contradiction within capitalism, I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can’t muster anything more than an eye roll anymore.
THEY ARE MAKING FAN EDITS ON TIKTOK pic.twitter.com/vZlIt8TUDn
— tooth 🔆🇵🇸🇮🇪 (@toothbrushlord) December 7, 2024This is because, just like every year before it, 2024 was a year of unmitigated disaster for our self-appointed reformers. I’m not just talking about Trump’s resurgence, Ukraine’s persistence, the overthrow in Syria, Hamas’s withering away, proclamations that we have reached ‘peak wokeness’, the rise of artificial intelligence and the tech bros, and the failure of centrist electoral projects everywhere but here in Canada. This was the year where the left willingly and gleefully discarded the one thing they had going for them: their tenuously held moral authority.
Protesters celebrate customer who says she is about to close her Scotiabank account.
— Caryma Sa'd – Lawyer + Political Satirist (@CarymaRules) December 21, 2024
Scotiabank has been targeted for divestment due to its asset management subsidiary’s investment in Israeli military technology company Elbit Systems.#cdnpoli #Brampton #Palestine #Israel #Gaza… pic.twitter.com/UtWFphlMRQ
The success of any left-wing project hinges on successfully convincing a critical mass of undecideds that they are not like the amoral and callous right who wants you to die for their profit motive. They’ve got your best interests at heart. They’re going to sit down and hear you out and govern with joy and hope and kindness, which are alien concepts to those weird, cruel, genocidal and greedy conservatives.
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) December 20, 2024
Now those of us who have been on this merry-go-round for a few turns know that it’s not that simple. Plenty of left-folks want to actively harm the rich and those they deem to be colonizers, bigots, and other associated ruling class bootlickers. The violence perpetrated by those in power justifies violence in return. This is a somewhat difficult platform to get elected on, however, because people have a bad habit of hardening their hearts in response to being threatened. And so we need suitable empty vessels to try and convince the voters that the radicals are just that: loud angry voices on the margins. The political operatives charged with laundering the baser left-wing impulses must carefully use language to make it seem that there is some daylight between them and the ends-justify-the-means crowd.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau extends his warm wishes to everyone celebrating today. #MerryChristmas! pic.twitter.com/Fb0zsCyQaC
— CanadianPM (@CanadianPM) December 25, 2024
This is a difficult task to perform because it involves not only fooling a plurality of people, if not all of the time, then for as long as the particular political project lasts. First, the operatives must trick themselves into believing in their own unimpeachable moral authority. Only once they have convinced themselves that they are the most empathic and equity-minded folks to ever draw breath can they engineer the rise of someone like Justin Trudeau. Anyone who was paying attention a decade ago could see the parallel rise of two movements: lifelong Liberals working on earned media pieces announcing the return of the Trudeau dynasty, and mostly anonymous lunatics on Tumblr who were still licking their wounds from the failure of the Occupy Movement, claiming that it was literally impossible to be racist against white people because ‘racism’ against white people wasn’t systematic.
'Trudeau’s refusal to admit to his disastrous defeat — and his party’s unwillingness to force him out — is seriously hurting innocent Canadians'https://t.co/yB6igTKD0s
— National Post (@nationalpost) December 25, 2024
And as it happened, a lot of the self-proclaimed radicals bought the hype, because they saw in Trudeau something they know all too well in themselves. The desire to be loved and celebrated and told they are good, kind and moral despite, and in many cases because of, their own desire to commit and justify violence in the name of creating a better and more equal world. The Trudeau of 2015 was no less authoritarian than the figure clinging to power at the end of 2024. All that’s changed is that the radicals can no longer excuse Trudeau’s narcissism while holding out for him to bring about a world that is more equal—which is to say, a world where they have the power to do harm to their enemies. These days, Mr. Grow the Economy From the Heart Outward seems more interested in trying and failing to implement GST holidays while forcing Canada Post workers back to actual work.
Canada faces the biggest existential threat since 1865. It is time we acted like this country means something and worth fighting for. https://t.co/bklhzcwckJ
— Dr. Mark Bourrie (@MarkBourrie) December 24, 2024
Still even as the Liberals try to envision a future without Trudeau, they remain engaged in other muddled projects, such as trying to sell the idea that Canada is engaged in an ongoing genocide but must somehow endure lest we be absorbed into the sucking Trumpist hellhole directly below us. Clearly, the Liberal Party is no longer a place for voters who are into sexy CEO-murderers, or who think Oct. 7 was an act of righteous resistance to oppression, or take China’s claims of imminent world domination seriously while denouncing Elon Musk’s similarly ridiculous pronouncements.
PADDYSTINIAN AND PROUD
— 🇮🇪 Brònzy Paddystinian 🇮🇪 (@BronzyGuevara) December 19, 2024
🇮🇪🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/uotv3QfoGpBut even though both the more and less radical wings of the progressive movement have had an off year and are barely speaking to one another again, we can rest assured that so long as they have to convince themselves of their own goodness they will continue to try and split this atom. Attempts to reject binaries will lead to more black and white thinking. Progressive governments will fall back into the status quo. Tumblrs will give way to Blueskys. Trudeau will fall out of favour for a few years only to be asked back after a few years of Poilievre—or some other Liberal saviour will rescue the brand. They will cast about for a new podcast hero or a leftist version of the Hawk Tuah Girl. They will insist that senile politicians are fit as fiddles, anoint barely literate fan-fiction writers as cultural arbiters, and cast lawbreakers as secular saints while vilifying anyone who’s afraid of being attacked on the street or public transit.
It’s fine. Listen to your music and stay a little alert and don’t make too much eye-contact. Try being homeless in a city that will acquit your murderer. https://t.co/CQbpeoXMeg
— JB (@UPTOWNBUF) December 12, 2024If the past 40 years are anything to go by, they will be as confused as ever as to why capitalism persists, why people don’t accept carbon taxes, why the world fails to condemn Israel to their liking, why poor and rural folks don’t “vote their interests”, why voters fall for Poilievre’s slogans, and why there are attempts to draw an equivalence between CEOs who condemn people to death and the people who kill those CEOs. The answer to all these questions are the same, and it’s that impure oil just burns differently—and trying to pass it off as holy can only come off as gaslighting.
Josh Lieblein can be reached at [email protected] for your response to Doorstep Postings.
