Miguel Afonso Caetano<p>"The record goes back centuries, and in every case, the pattern is the same. As recently as 2010, Barack Obama was “unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage,” considering it a bridge too far. Only when it became politically safe did he side with the LGBTQ activists who had been fighting for their rights all along. Before that, it was leftists who led the charge to end apartheid in South Africa through a boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, similar to the one they propose against Israel today, while everyone from Ronald Reagan to the editors of the National Review opposed them and defended the apartheid. Likewise, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was considered far too radical by the American mainstream, with 61 percent of Gallup poll respondents saying they disapproved of the Freedom Riders. Today, despite Republican attempts to rewrite history, we know the protesters were in the right. So were the supporters of women’s suffrage, who were condemned for breaking windows and chaining themselves to things using language strikingly similar to what’s currently used to condemn Black Lives Matter or Palestine Action. </p><p>It’s the same with the protests against invading Vietnam: condemned at the time, now valorized in hindsight. Even earlier, the abolition of slavery was the territory of wild-eyed radicals like John Brown, who warned America that “the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with blood”—and of Karl Marx, who wrote that “Labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded.” The Civil War that followed bore that prophecy out. Even the most obvious propositions in the world, like ending child labor in factories, had to be dragged into the mainstream by socialists and trade unionists."</p><p><a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-left-is-always-right-too-early" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">currentaffairs.org/news/the-le</span><span class="invisible">ft-is-always-right-too-early</span></a></p><p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Left" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Left</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Socialism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Socialism</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Progressivism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Progressivism</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Liberalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Liberalism</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/History" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>History</span></a></p>