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Today’s leftists are possessed by the spirit of France’s 18th-century guillotine-loving revolutionaries

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Trump and MAGA did not operate in a vacuum in the decade between 2015 and his re-election in 2024. His formal opposition was no longer the liberal Democrats of old but rather a new, far more radical manifestation. In their mission to fundamentally change the nation, they were more suited to 18th-century revolutionary France than 21st-century America. 

The nature of the two-party system, of course, is to find ways to counter and even discredit the opposite party. Yet since the end of the Civil War, these disagreements had played out within accepted boundaries. But the decade of Trump, from 2015 to 2025, unleashed a hysteria unseen in over 160 years, one in which Democrats sought to destroy — not merely defeat — the candidate, then president, then ex-president, then candidate again, and finally re-elected President Trump.

What were the ideologies and motives that inspired their uniquely fanatical opposition? 

One characteristic of the new radical Democratic Party was its pivot from solidarity with the middle classes to a movement of the wealthy and professional cadres as self-appointed protectors of the subsidized poor — a movement that reflected the 21st-century sources of influence and wealth within the Democratic Party.

Yet like the Jacobin movement of old, the new elites of the radicalized Democratic Party rarely felt that they should themselves be subject to the consequences of their own radical ideologies — whether climate-change taboos on personal energy use, open borders, defunding the police, etc.

Take, for example, the most radical firebrands of the new Democrats — Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Mayor Mamdani. They were all either children of the upper-middle classes or had claimed to be multimillionaires while in Congress or had arrived as immigrants from the ruling elite of their prior, usually illiberal, homelands — all in ways impossible for ordinary citizens. 

Leftist elites proved ecstatic supporters of fringe issues — reparations to African Americans, transgendered athletes competing in women’s sports, and banning natural gas appliances. Such boutique obsessions either were of little relevance to or actively alienated the middle class and minorities. 

The radical transformations started as early as the 2016 campaign. In their rhetoric, Democrats under once-moderate Hillary Clinton had become veritable Jacobins — the modern counterparts of French Revolutionary fanatics, as they substituted........

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