How did this happen? It’s an urgent question consuming the minds of college administrators, Democratic political leaders, American Jews, and just about everyone else possessed of the requisite decency. What were the conditions that contributed to the eruption of not just antisemitism but the rank illiberalism that so often accompanies the oldest hate? It’s a complex phenomenon in some ways. In others, it’s deplorably unsophisticated. But while a general sense of confusion may be understandable, the surprise so many have expressed at this public outpouring of malice is not. Such rage has been encouraged and inculcated by the fashionable movements that overtook the culture in recent years. Many of those movements formed, nobly enough, around opposition to genuine injustice. But too often, their preferred remedy was the selective application of even more injustice.
MeToo was one such movement. It took on the abusive men ensconced in positions of power and the institutions that shielded them from the consequences of their actions, and it was a success: It left a more just social compact in its wake. But its members often tolerated — indeed, prescribed — illiberalism to rectify the injustices it targeted.
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