Progressives are Extremists. True Liberals Need to Stop Them.

Gabe Zichermann
5 min readNov 17, 2023
Sign cc Alec Perkins

This is a message to true liberals (Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike).

The failure of the progressive movement after the Hamas terror attacks of October 7th now renders the entire enterprise moot. If the idea was to advocate for progress, justice and equality, but to exclude Jews from this calculus, it is inherently illegitimate. What has been made clear is that it is not a coalition of noble idealists trying to make the world a better place, but a deeply anti-intellectual hodgepodge of marxists captured by amateurish anti-colonial and racial justice thinking.

In short, it’s a hot mess and needs to die in its current form. If the number of essays on the value of true liberalism written this past week is any clue (1,2), I’m not alone.

Let’s be honest though, we knew this was coming. Every one of us has been getting progressively more uncomfortable with the thought dogma of the left over the last decade. Liberals were supposed to champion free speech and to be able to use humor, intellect and facts to make the world a better place. Slowly we’ve seen these ideas pushed back by extreme leftists co-opting our values:

White is now an epithet. Terrorism can sometimes be justified. Misgendering is a punishable offense. No, I won’t explain why you’re wrong…

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Gabe Zichermann

Author and Public Speaker on Gamification, The 4th Industrial Revolution, the Future of Work and Failure. More about me: https://gabezichermann.com