Outrage used to require invention; now it runs on autopilot.

The episode involving Michele Gamba should not be dismissed as a moment of excess. A local official of the Italian Democratic Party (PD) in Monza, Lombardy, Gamba has publicly called for the “annihilation” of Israel. Gamba’s wording carries weight. It is charged. It is revealing. It belongs to the grammar of eliminationist movements, not to democratic politics. Once such terms enter ordinary circulation, the boundary between argument and incitement begins to erode.

The trajectory is visible. Parts of the PD’s youth milieu have drifted into a militant anti-Zionism that borrows tone and cadence from Islamist propaganda. The progression has been gradual but consistent: from........

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