Our political class likes euphemisms. One of its favorites is “democracy”; democracy sounds better than “a systemic agenda of censorship, economic irresponsibility, increasing surrender of foreign interests abroad, an almost totally open policy on the border, inability to control crime and drug waves, and a recruiting and morale crisis in our armed forces which hasn’t been witnessed in over a decade.” Of course, concision may have something to do with word choice, but in reflecting on our ruling class’ fondness for sleight-of-mouth, and on the fact that I’m to graduate in less than a year and am looking for a career, I thought I’d try to come up with a few of my own. How ‘bout HarvardAndHamas? Like it? Me too. It’s easier than saying “transnational collaboration between institutions to destroy Western Civilization.”

It also allows us to sum up the absurdity of Leftist inter-sectionalism. Inter-sectionalism is the idea that all oppressed identities are idioms of the same meta-identity, some sort of neo-Marxist, Neo-Platonic proletariat. The proletariat, in this meta-sense, is not simply the economically oppressed; for the New Left, there are gender proletariats, race proletariats, physical disability proletariats, and the list goes on. If you are oppressed, you are a proletariat of some sort, and therefore have a common interest in the cause of all other proletariats.

Which brings me back to “Free Palestine.” I live in Chicago (it is an activity which is rarer and rarer in that city), and every two weeks, thousands of people gather and chant genocide to the Jews (“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”). A good chunk of the crowd are young men; then there are the families, the people who turn out because they have relatives in Gaza or those who are simply loyal to the Gazans because of shared religion or ethnicity (yes, this sort of loyalty is stupid, but it is very common). Then there’s the rest of the Leftist coalition, the LGBTQ oddities, for example, who are happy to show up and support their fellow proletariats. Incidentally, about a week ago, a gay Palestinian was beheaded in the West Bank. But not by the Jews. At least he was killed by his fellow Proletariat.

Oh, no? That was the wrong thing to say? Well, I’m sorry, but I think it’s incredibly hilarious how the same Left which says we ought to discard the Constitution and Declaration because they were written by slave owners, is now weeping over a letter penned by Osama bin Laden and actively advocating the importation of a culture which is anti-women, anti-LGBTQ, anti-individual rights, anti-individual expression, and anti-separation of Church and State (yea, that would be what Sharia means).

What we can take comfort in is that, because of the instability, the in-fighting, and in-hatreds of the Leftist inter-sectional coalition, the Left is doomed to failure.

What we cannot take comfort in is that the Left’s failure may be ultimate, but not immediate. In case you want to imagine what I mean by that, consider: the Nazis ultimately failed. They also conducted one of the greatest mass murder schemes in History before they did.

But perhaps my euphemism is too long. Perhaps I need only one of the words. Perhaps Harvard is a euphemism for Hamas, or vice versa. Have I gone too far? I don’t think so. College students are more capable of spreading their beliefs through violence and/or intimidation than through careful thought or argumentation. This is partly what I mean. To me, in some sense, Harvard is a euphemism for the intellectual structure of Leftism, and Hamas is a euphemism for what Leftist activism will eventually degenerate into: a bloody war against those they hate and disagree with. Even now, Leftists are becoming more violent in the streets, on marches, and attending activist events. The Hamasification of the Left, in its activist mode, is beginning.

For years, Harvard (in its euphemistic sense) has been refining the Neo-Marxian leftist framework. The idea of a meta-proletariat, for example, was an invention over time of the feminists, the gender theorists, the sociologists, the psychologists, the political philosophers, the artists—all those who have made their home at Harvard and similar institutions. This idea of a meta-proletariat laid the basis for the giant, increasingly violent, tenuous enterprise known as inter-sectional activism.

Let me draw one more distinction: the students at Harvard are much more part of the Hamas sect than the Harvard sect, in the euphemistic senses I have established above. How can this be? Because American youth have been raised exclusively in the activist mode, or at least modes that encourage non-rational ways of presenting one’s own beliefs. Technology, for example, has had some effect (I imagine) on the rise of slogans as a replacement for arguments. After all, slogans are easier to tweet than arguments. They are easier to understand, and more importantly, they can be shouted and screamed in a way that nuanced arguments cannot, because arguments are not made to be screamed and shouted, they are meant to be explained. They take time. They are not part of the activist mode.

One way (or maybe the only way, I don’t know) in which humans are rational is that we give reasons for our beliefs. When we give reasons for our beliefs, we not only acknowledge our own humanity, we acknowledge the humanity of the person we give reasons to; we admit that, as a fellow rational being, another human has the right to ask a reason for why we believe this or that. The less rational one is, the less likely one is to give reasons for one’s belief. Ironically, the less rational one becomes about one’s beliefs, the more one looks at others as being irrational for their beliefs. Or, put another way, you are less likely to see others as rational, and therefore deserving of a reason for your actions/beliefs.

Case in point: when somebody starts screaming at you, they are dehumanizing you. When we in society ask for reasons, and they scream slogans, they are dehumanizing both us and themselves. The less one reasons, the more one screams, the more irrationality becomes the basis for one’s entire worldview. This is the Activist Leftist in 2023: he cannot give reasons for his belief. The very premise of his worldview is non-rationality.