Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the super-progressive congresswoman, was leaving the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn with her fiancé when she was confronted by pro-Palestinian activists. Their charge, essentially, was that the vociferously anti-Israel congresswoman wasn’t quite anti-Israel enough.

In a video apparently posted by the activists, AOC can be seen telling them: ‘I need you to understand that this is not okay.’ One of her accosters replies: ‘It’s not okay that there’s a genocide happening and you’re not actively against it.’

‘You’re lying,’ she shoots back.

The protestors accuse her of failing to describe Israel’s military operation against Hamas in Gaza as a ‘genocide’. As they continue to follow and record her, AOC says: ‘I already said that it was and y’all are just gonna pretend that it wasn’t over and over again. It’s fucked up, man. And you’re not helping these people, and you’re not helping them, you’re not helping them.’

The congresswoman led a group of House Democrats in calling for a ceasefire in November. Her hostility towards the Jewish state is so deep-seated that she once withdrew from a memorial to murdered Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Anti-Zionism is a modish stance among millennial and Gen-Z progressives. It has seen AOC accused of a ‘fundamental disrespect for Israel’ by the liberal pro-Israel group Democratic Majority for Israel, but it has also led the pro-Palestine lobby outfit Americans for Justice in Palestine to give her an A grade in its congressional scorecard.

Whatever her views on Israel, following her around a movie theatre on a night out with her partner is crossing the line, right? I think so, but not everyone agrees.

In July 2022, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which held that the US constitution does not contain a right to procure an abortion, a mob gathered outside a DC steakhouse where Trump-appointed justice Brett Kavanaugh was eating dinner. The activists demanded the manager kick Kavanaugh out of the eatery and the jurist was forced to leave early via a back door. In response, one member of Congress tweeted:

Poor guy. He left before his soufflé because he decided half the country should risk death if they have an ectopic pregnancy within the wrong state lines. It’s all very unfair to him. The least they could do is let him eat cake.

When Barack Obama objected to the ‘defund the police’ movement, the same member of Congress tweeted:

The whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable. Activists take that discomfort w/ the status quo & advocate for concrete policy changes. Popular support often starts small & grows. To folks who complain protest demands make others uncomfortable… that’s the point.

The liberal establishment has contracted en masse the middle-class parenting disease: the inability to say No

I probably don’t have to tell you who that member of Congress was. In fairness to her, AOC is hardly the only Democrat to downplay intimidation of her political opponents. In October 2021, centrist Democrat (now independent) senator Kyrsten Sinema was targeted by progressive activists. Angered by her refusal to vote for a $3.5 trillion spending bill or to back repeal of deportation laws, they followed Sinema into a public bathroom at Arizona State University and denounced her while filming the occasion. Asked about the incident, Joe Biden said such behaviour was ‘part of the process’.

PJ O’Rourke once said: ‘At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child – miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless.’ One of the most destructive consequences of the Great Awokening has been the abdication of responsibility by serious, grown-up political leaders in favour of impatient brats with diverse grievances and a common sense of entitlement. Instead of showing leadership, politicians, university deans, legacy media editors, publishing houses and corporate executives have given in and tried to placate the little tantrum-throwers in their institutions, whether by embracing radical race and gender politics or looking the other way while ever-evolving, identity-based victimhood wrecks their brands and reputations. Across the western world, the liberal establishment has contracted en masse the middle-class parenting disease: the inability to say No.

Yet the more the sensibles have given in to the foot-stomping progressives, the more miserable and demanding those progressives have become. Unchecked, they seek out new boundaries in the hateful and the self-righteous. Observe their embrace of Hamas, denial of atrocities against Israeli women on 7 October, and wilful redefinition of ‘genocide’ to include a targeted campaign against terrorists in a dense urban theatre. And now, having been so successful in dragging political life to the left, they are turning on one another for not being left enough. Progressivism thrives on having people to hate and people to blame, but since so many in positions and power and responsibility got out of the way for an easy life, progressives have to seek out people to hate and blame among their own.

They rose in rage and certainty and in rage and certainty they are beginning to tear one another down.