Seth Mandel
Commentary, Aug. 22, 2024
“In the left-wing world of representative factionalism, “authentic” usually means “maximalist” if not, at the very least, “strident.” The only meek representative in progressive activism will be the Jewish one.”
After the parents of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin were given a gracious reception at the Democratic National Convention last night, demands that a Palestinian-American speaker be added to the program went into overdrive. The Uncommitted movement—which has been pushing voters to punish the Democrats for being too friendly toward Israel—is especially agitated, though it remains unclear why they think they should be rewarded by a party for trying to sabotage that party.
Chutzpah and hypocrisy aside, though, there’s a very clear reason such a speech hasn’t happened: The Democrats don’t cultivate relationships with Palestinians whom they trust to handle a prime-time convention speech.
This gets at one of the more harmful but least-understood facets of progressive identity politics: the concept of “authenticity.”
Take, for example, the most recent illustration of this. Kamala Harris designated one of her political advisers to be the campaign’s official liaison to Muslim and Arab voters, and another of her advisers to lead outreach to Jewish voters. In so doing, the campaign made a statement about who it sees as an authentic Muslim/Arab American and who it considers an authentic Jewish American. … [To read the full article, click here]
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