The Ideological Fuel of a New Left: Everything Leftism’s Rise

The Ideological Fuel of a New Left (full series)
Three Axes | Everything Leftism’s Rise | Revealed by Hamas
The People of Everything Leftism | Cross-Pressures

Everything Leftism’s Rise

Everything Leftism is less a policy manifesto than a radical approach to issue analysis. It surged during the “Great Awokening” after the 2016 election and was given a nitrous-oxide boost by the 2020 COVID lockdowns, the death of George Floyd and ensuing demonstrations and rioting, and the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

For progressives, Donald Trump was (and remains) a prototypical oppressor. The 45th president is a white man with a reputation for womanizing, was born well-off and became a billionaire landlord, serially employed callous language toward ethnic minorities and other “oppressed” groups and people, and ran as a Republican. Then, he was elected by the Electoral College (a product of dead, white slaveholders—obviously oppressors) over a Democratic woman (oppressed twice over) with (in their minds, at least) help from Russia (white, allegedly Christian, not Communist anymore—sounds oppressive).

His election threatened all oppressed identities. For progressives, it became time to march in defense of all oppressed identities everywhere, all at once. The largest rallying event and institution became the national Women’s March, which focused on “women’s issues” (in practice, first and foremost meaning abortion access as it so often does in progressive activism) but also supported broad causes on the oppressor/oppressed matrix. The Women’s March was forcefully “intersectional” and proposed identity-politics based “Unity Principles,” which included this mouthful, as quoted in Tablet magazine:

We must create a society in which women, in particular women—in particular Black women, Native women, poor women, immigrant women, Muslim women, and queer and trans women—are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments.

The Women’s March remained a primary motive force of opposition to the Trump administration until late 2018, when Tablet magazine and later the New York Times reported on the ties between Women’s March’s national leadership and anti-Semitic groups like the Nation of Islam and on the anti-Jewish views of Women’s March leaders. Those leaders—most notably Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour—had become public political celebrities and faces of the new Democratic-aligned political movements despite their and their group’s ties to radical groups like Gathering for Justice and anti-Semites like Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Radical leaders camouflaging themselves as a mass movement and rampant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments would in the subsequent years become calling cards of Everything Leftism.

President Trump’s election and the identity-politics based reaction to it on the left congealed into a “Great Awokening.” In late May 2020, the Awokening, which had percolated through left-of-center activism, was given a burst of rocket fuel when a Black suspect, George Floyd, died on videotape at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. The “Summer of Love” was about to begin.

The COVID-19 pandemic then occurring had broken social relations at the urging of the “community” of government public health officials, who confined most Americans to their homes before revealing their commitment to Everything Leftism. After the initial outbreak of protests, an open letter signed by a reported “over 1,000 health professionals” demanded that governments not interfere with Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations that followed Floyd’s death, despite standing government orders closing businesses, limiting public gatherings, and restricting social interaction. The letter stated, “However, as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health.” In the Everything Leftist ruling regime, rallying for Everything Leftism was praised; sporting events, other political assemblies, and going to work, religious services, school, or restaurants was condemned or forbidden by law.

Arising alongside lockdowns, masks, and ideological double-standards for public gatherings was the “defund the police” movement, and the activists behind it meant precisely that. A New York Times op-ed headline declared, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.” Corporations promised and purchased hundreds of millions of dollars in indulgences from left-wing radicals like the Movement for Black Lives, which endorsed socialist economics and racial reparations among other radical-left ideals, and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, which rapidly devolved into a multi-million-dollar grift.

Numerous cities cut funding for their police departments, and the left-wing “progressive prosecutor project” and network of supporting nonprofits backed by mega-donors like George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskowitz, and Cari Tuna supercharged their non-prosecuting approach to prosecution. Combined with the social devastation of lockdowns, these policy changes resulted in a crime surge.

The Summer of Love and the lockdowns brought a change in party control of the federal government, and with the Biden-Harris Transition came Everything Leftism as formal government policy. The Biden administration announced “whole of government” approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—effectively BLM as practiced by corporate consultants; climate change; and union organizing.

In the next installment, Everything Leftism as an ideology jumped into the forefront after the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023.