A Progressive Cat Fight Looms on the Horizon

Victor Davis Hanson writes in the Hoover Institution about the rise of the New Old Left.

...Today’s hip billionaire class is well aware of the rise of the New Old Left. In fact, it is terrified that New Old Leftists are directing their class warfare fury at them, despite techies’ lavish support for progressive and trendy causes. Both the Silicon Valley rich and Wall Street elites have deliberately acted cool. They have dressed in sneakers and T-shirts, and they often talked in Sixties Woodstock lingo of “cool” and “nice”, lacing their speech with the “ya-know” and “like”.

Being hip so far, and giving lavishly to progressive causes, had provided some insurance to the Masters of the Universe against class warfare. Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon billionaires may be the wealthiest capitalists and most cutthroat monopolists in world history. Yet their cool high-tech products and their casual lifestyles and progressive worldviews so far had provided them exemption from scrutiny from Old-style Left revolutionaries.

Now not so much. The New Old Left youthful cadres see wealthy high-tech hipness and cool as a façade. They are growing as angry at Silicon Valley corporate octopuses as the Old Left once was with railroads, steel, and mine companies.

What looms on the horizon is a progressive cat fight. Trump-hating cool multimillionaires in flip-flops and jeans will fight it out with street theater socialists, eager to trust-bust, nationalize, and redistribute—all indistinguishable from one another in look and talk.

In the shadows sits Donald Trump. For his part, he has created his own New Old Right answer: a populist, workers’ party that directs its culturally conservative ire beyond progressives to include corporations and globalists.

Add it all up, and the primaries and general election of 2020 may prove to be the most confusing, contradictory, and bitter election in memory.

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