[Ro] Khanna came face to face with the lunacy of the mob that he’s been trying to please with tweets, speeches, stunts. And he let Scahill down by refusing to speak the monstrous words that would have admitted him into the esteemed ranks of the radicals. Khanna instead called October 7 a terrorist attack, denied Hamas’s right to kill Israelis, and offered some mush about nonviolent resistance.
Here’s the thing: If you genuinely believe the terrorists’ narrative about apartheid, genocidal Zionists, and the righteous Palestinian resistance, then Scahill has the more “logical” argument. If you buy into an insane premise, you will necessarily arrive at an equally insane conclusion.
Khanna, like Scott Wiener before him, wants credit for agreeing to the radicals’ premise without having to pay the price of following through. He’s now learning that the radicals, like the terrorists they support, will not be pacified by anything short of lawless violence. There’s some hope in this. Because as the radicals reject Democrat after simpering Democrat, the liberal establishment will be forced to rethink its calculated acceptance of leftist anti-Semitism. Hey, Gavin Newsom, Rahm Emanuel, hope you’re watching.
But how did the 21st century left arrive at this stance?
I agree with @jpodhoretz that antisemitism is a bigger problem on the left than the right, and I agree that that's surprising.
Just as important is why.
In the postwar era, the right mostly abandoned its intellectual commitment to Jew hate. The conservatism championed by…
— Peter Savodnik (@petersavodnik) July 14, 2026