2023's Biggest Losers? The Clinically Disordered Left

Terrorists, criminals, psychopaths, and fantasists from every part of the globe have grafted themselves on to the Palestinian cause because the most basic laws of nature have been revised to accommodate it. The Palestinian cause gives hope to each of these groups—hope that their own nihilistic and murderous ambitions could win world favor as well. And they have.”— Lee Smith, Tablet Magazine 

Acceptance. Compliance. Subservience. Three words that describe the radical takeover of the liberal West in 2023. (Also known by their fancy acronyms DEI, ESG, CSR, and LGBTQ+2.) As U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramswamy has noted, this is the takeover by a “group of aristocratic elites who don’t believe in people’s ability to govern themselves”. Here’s how they co-opted liberal thought in the past 12 months. 

Acceptance: The first phase of co-opting gullible liberals was appealing to their vanity. (Narcissism is big on the Left.) This was done by progressive media framing gay marriage, alien migration, equity hiring and unlimited abortion as virtuous acts. By painting sympathetic portraits of these radical issues to DINKS, single women, Hollywood actors and overeducated elites, a breach was made in longstanding societal opposition.

In the Acceptance phase, such transformative leaps were easily sold, because they rarely impacted those who normalized them. PM Justin Trudeau carrying teddy bears in cemeteries is prime detachment theatre. What, me worry? So we now had Disney flogging gay marriage, millions flooding the U.S. border with Mexico and abortion until birth (mitigated only slightly by the Roe v. Wade decision). Unthinkable a decade ago.

In 2023 progressives identified new targets. They used benign terms to normalize trans hysteria, hate speech against whites and Hamas sympathy. The idea was to stigmatize unbelievers. How did it go? By year’s end the comfy middle was moving leftward at warp speed, making the tiny trans demographic into a cuddly media puppy. Trudeau’s Insanity Central responded by mandating menstrual products in men’s washrooms.

Meanwhile, Israel was branded a bloodthirsty colonizer for responding to attack in Gaza— while the same critics urged Ukraine to fight to the last man against Russia. Anyone who pointed out this contradiction was made a non-person.. Which led to:

Coercion: The Robespierres of radicalism then used their media operation to convert their new patsies from bystanders into active participations in the latest craze. No longer was it enough to simply mouth platitudes about gay parades. Now, to keep their standing, the hapless were obliged to walk (like grinning monkey Trudeau) in the libidinous parades. Or bake cakes for gay weddings. Or pander to the 32-genders whiners. All done on pain of excommunication from The Movement.

The long-protected arbiters of culture and fashion were now mobilized to to slap their DEI flippers like trained seals when blacks, gays and mixed-race couples flooded commercials and TV at a ratio far beyond their numbers in real society. White men— when they appeared— were figures of derision or pity. The new bank executives were clever, witty and black/brown. Whiteness was now a disease that white people needed to confess. Hurray!

This meant ostracizing old friends and family who didn’t take the oath by voicing enthusiastic support for this arc of history. Having blithely bought into reparations, gender dysphoria and colonization the compromised were required to participate in the re-casting of Western society— as well as their families.  A re-casting, they suddenly discovered, that increasingly did not include them.

Subservience:  Having trapped the tender hearts of Western culture, the forces of radical chic now closed the trap door on their reluctant followers. After the unspeakable, unprovoked Hamas violence of Oct. 7, Western elites found themselves obliged to demand that Israel practice restraint and agree to cease fire with people who have sworn to kill them. And, despite deep misgivings, to go mute in the face of this Orwellian contradiction.

From Hollywood hipsters to leftist Jews, they were stunned to find themselves in a Gaza bubble of their own making, pals of Palestine’s murderers. One that subsidized terror against their friends and co-religionists using $120 million a month from UNRWA. And $50 million a month from the European Union. And $30 million a month from U.S. And $25 million from Trudeau’s Canada.

By year’s end the feckless friends of Hamas found themselves compelled to voice support around the Xmas table for the heinous Oct. 7 massacre. “Hey, how about a little equivalence, IDL?” Where they saw a face staring at them, but not the one they expected.

Subservience has also been extended to the shameless Greta Thunbergs of the Green Empire. Despite the failures of climate doom (there has been no appreciable warming since 2005), hapless climate fetishists cheerfully applauded the Canadian government’s costly “climate crisis” media fantasy where El Niño becomes Shiva. And ignored the priests of posturing flying their private jets to COP brainwashing rallies. 

None of which could have happened without the gated minds of liberalism (who still think it’s Suez in 1956.) . And so Woke World became 2023’s Losers of the Year. Instead of Obama’s virtuous rhetoric from 2008 they’re now in a far darker place. They are joined to the civilizational suicide of White Fragility promoter Robin DiAngelo. Or Ibrahim X. Kenji’s bilious racism. Or Hamas’ death cult. With no escape. 

Unwitting victims of Acceptance. Coercion. Subservience. Congratulations.

“Climate millenarianism, the mass replacement of native populations, the government-sanctioned sterilization of children—everywhere you look the mark of civilizational suicide is on the horizon as Western elites assemble under the imperial banner. Flown in European capitals and university campuses, it represents the longings of a powerful faction within the West of those exhausted by life and wanting one last time to feel something like life coursing through their veins as they await the cleansing fire, redemption culminating in the coup de grace.” Lee Smith

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.