O‘Sullivan’s First Law, coined by conservative writer John O’Sullivan nearly three decades ago, holds that “all organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.” A corollary we might call Mandel’s Law is that all left-wing organizations eventually become indistinguishably so.
In the past I’ve referred to this as the “radical blob.” Left-of-center pressure groups branch out from their raison d’etre to embrace any and all liberal causes that are in fashion. One liberal cause that is not only in fashion but fast becoming a membership requirement is blind opposition to Israel and a concomitant willingness to tolerate vehement anti-Semitism.
The latest example came when Tablet magazine in December ran a massive expose on the deep and abiding anti-Semitism of the leaders of the Women’s March. Randi Weingarten, president of the powerful American Federation of Teachers, tweeted her support for the supposed “warriors for justice” and insisted she was “honored to know them and work with them.” With the tweet was a picture of Weingarten with the two most controversial Women’s March leaders, Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory.
Of course, Sarsour’s and Mallory’s anti-Semitism was not secret. Sarsour adamantly believes the Jewish state should not exist, and both count themselves as superfans of Louis Farrakhan. But not only did the Tablet story break new ground with testimony from Women’s March whistleblowers, it also elicited an on-the-record response from Mallory in which she accused Jews of being the authors of their own destruction because they “uphold white supremacy.”
Why would Weingarten stand with Sarsour and Mallory and support them so publicly? For her part, she has internalized the anti-Zionism flowing through the arteries of the Left. In July 2018, Israel’s Knesset passed the so-called “nation-state law,” which defined Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Critics hollered, without any factual basis, that this was “racist.” Weingarten was one of them. In an unhinged statement, the teachers union president called the bill “despicable” and said it was “anti-Arab and anti-minority, and it embodies a bigotry and authoritarianism that I fear was energized and emboldened by the current U.S. president.”
Nonsense, all of it. But it’s precisely the type of nonsense you hear on the Left, and Weingarten is simply repeating the ignorance of her fellow activists. How it helps the mission of the teachers unions to give such an unequivocal endorsement to organized anti-Semitism is anybody’s guess. But that assumes Weingarten has the interests of educators and students in mind, when in reality she’s merely become ever more absorbed into the radical blob.
