Black Lives Matter Chicago is sending out graphics of Hamas paratroopers with Palestinian flags claiming to support them. Hamas parachuted into a music festival in Israel and killed over 200.

Progressive reporters at mainstream institutions like The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times are circulating Hamas propaganda while questioning any report of atrocities by Hamas. Progressive student groups are siding with Hamas and blaming Israel. Democratic Socialists of America are cheering on the terrorists.

Hamas decapitated babies, and a Los Angeles Times “investigative reporter” questioned the accuracy of the reports from other journalists because it defied his pro-Hamas narrative. After the confirmed reports of the beheadings, student leaders at law schools came out in support of Hamas, claiming Israel brought it on themselves.

The Progressive Caucus has become the Hamas Caucus, and its pro-abortion members are unfazed by dead babies. You should be. The antisemitism of the progressive movement is extreme and disgusting. Pay attention to that.

But also pay attention to how silent people like Candace Owens have been. She’s routinely dabbled in questionable views of both Israel and Jews. She’s mostly resorted to just retweeting others who themselves want Israeli restraint. For a woman of strong opinions, those of you on the Right should note just how quiet she is, always needing “research” before offering an opinion on Israel, then never doing so.

Look at Andrew Tate, who is fully pro-Hamas and anti-Israel. Consider that this is not a new view of his, but it is now more notable given Hamas’s atrocities. Remember who platformed him, who elevated him and who thought he was a voice of reason and sanity, and you should walk away from them and him.

Consider Nick Fuentes and how many in the conservative movement once embraced him and how some still do.

The Left’s antisemitism is loud and proud at this moment. What is equally loud is the silence of some on the Right who are antisemites and silent now. Their silence is damning. It’s not just those above, but many others.

They can question wars, the military-industrial complex, isolationism and warmongering evangelicals but cannot even muster a word of support for Israel or condemn Hamas. They are engaged in performance — tweeting, writing and speaking of distractions to avoid even offering sympathy to the parents of decapitated children. Americans are dead, killed by Hamas. They are silent there too, blasting everyone else as a neocon warmonger. They say, “We’re not antisemites, just isolationists,” but have strong views nonetheless on all the world’s affairs except dead Americans and dead babies in Israel.

It is all a ruse of ill intent. They know their views are abhorrent to the conservative movement in which they have embedded. They play three-card monte with their views to distract from their silence. They see evil and do not recognize it as such because it looks vague to them. Evil is always obtuse to its apologists.

The president of the United States, for all his faults, foibles and frailties, spoke clearly and without nuance about Hamas’s evil. Some on the Right just keep hiding behind silence and/or obfuscation to avoid exposing their noxious beliefs.

There are no abstractions here. There are dead people, decapitated babies and mutilated bodies. This must be a clarifying moment for the conservative movement. We must stop pretending we are kindred spirits with those who cannot defend Israel and cannot condemn Hamas.

Their silence is deafening. And conservatives’ embrace of them is damning.

If we do not clean up our side, it will continue to fester and spill out like it is on the Left. That should be unacceptable to every conservative. We must take notice of the Left’s antisemites and work to purge those of similar minds on the right.

Babies were decapitated. Grandmothers had their Facebook livestreams activated so their executions could be broadcast. Innocents were murdered. The silent and the silence stand with the monsters. Do not aid or abet them.

There are no “both sides” and “but” here. There are the Israeli dead. There are the monsters who killed them. There is good. There is evil. There is no third party, third way or road less traveled on which to walk. Pick your side.

Erick Erickson on October 15, 2023