Historian and commentator Victor Davis Hanson has once again delivered a sharp and uncomfortable analysis of modern Western politics in his recent video, The New Middle East Narrative. His central argument is simple but profound: much of the modern Left has constructed a political alliance built on contradictions so glaring that previous generations would have considered them impossible.
For decades, the Left presented itself as the defender of women’s rights, free speech, tolerance, minority protection, secular liberal democracy, and peace. Yet after the October 7 Hamas atrocities in Israel, large sections of the progressive movement across the United States, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere suddenly found themselves marching in lockstep with Islamist movements that stand opposed to almost every one of those values.
That contradiction is now impossible to ignore.
Hanson points out the extraordinary spectacle of progressive activists — many of whom loudly condemn Western colonialism, racism, sexism, and intolerance — openly supporting or excusing groups whose governing philosophies include the oppression of women, persecution of homosexuals, religious intolerance, and political violence.
The sheer barbarity of the October 7 attacks should have made moral clarity easy. Civilians were slaughtered, raped, kidnapped, and terrorised in scenes that shocked much of the world. Yet instead of universal condemnation, parts of the activist Left immediately shifted focus to condemning Israel’s response rather than Hamas’ actions.
And this is where Hanson believes something even darker emerged.
Criticism of the Israeli government rapidly morphed into something broader and uglier: open antisemitism. Around the world we saw Jewish students intimidated on university campuses, synagogues attacked, Jewish businesses vandalised, and ordinary Jews harassed despite having absolutely nothing to do with decisions made by the Israeli government thousands of kilometres away.
That is the critical distinction increasingly being blurred.
One can criticise Israeli policy — just as one can criticise any government — without targeting Jewish people as a whole. But much of the modern protest movement has crossed that line repeatedly. Hanson argues that identity politics and “oppressor versus oppressed” ideology have created a simplistic worldview where Israel is automatically cast as the “colonial oppressor” while Islamist groups are recast as “victims,” regardless of their actions or beliefs.
That framework collapses the moment reality intrudes.
After all, Israel is a liberal democracy where women vote, gay people live openly, religious minorities sit in parliament, and political opposition is legal. Hamas, by contrast, is an authoritarian Islamist organisation that suppresses dissent, glorifies violence, and openly calls for Israel’s destruction.
Yet somehow, large sections of the Western Left now treat Hamas-aligned activism as morally fashionable.
Hanson’s broader warning is that this alliance is not sustainable because it is based not on shared principles, but on shared hostility toward Western civilisation itself. Anti-Americanism, anti-Western sentiment, anti-capitalism, and anti-Israel activism have fused into a strange coalition where incompatible groups temporarily unite around a common enemy.
The irony is extraordinary. Movements that claim to defend tolerance increasingly excuse intolerance. Movements that claim to champion women’s rights align with ideologies that systematically oppress women. Movements that claim to oppose hate have become disturbingly comfortable with antisemitism.
And ordinary people are beginning to notice.
Across much of the West, voters are increasingly rejecting the moral confusion, selective outrage, and ideological double standards that dominate modern progressive politics. The more activists attempt to justify the unjustifiable, the more they expose the contradictions at the heart of the movement.
Victor Davis Hanson’s video is worth watching not because everyone will agree with every point he makes, but because he identifies something many people instinctively feel: the political realignment occurring across the West is no longer based on coherent values, but on tribal ideological alliances that often defy logic itself.
Video:
Victor Davis Hanson – The New Middle East Narrative
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