Thomas Sowell once wrote: “Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly, and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence.”

That line fits modern punditry almost too well. Today, I’m only speaking about what I refer to as the “regressive left,” an intolerant new form of left politics.

One of the clearest examples is how outlets like The Nation treat Black conservatives versus antizionist Jews. When Black people identify as conservative, the reaction is immediate condescension: they must be manipulated, confused, performing for white approval, or serving as tokens to justify racism. When Jews identify as Zionist, the script hardly changes: they must be tribal, brainwashed, morally compromised. So when a tiny minority of antizionist Jews says what the regressive press wants to hear, that same press suddenly treats them as brave truth-tellers.

The message is not subtle. It is a (often white-) savior message. It says: we know minorities better than they know themselves.

It is a revolt against self-identification. It is the belief that minorities are free to speak for themselves only when they arrive at approved conclusions. If they do not, their beliefs are explained away as manipulation.

The Nation has made this pattern especially obvious. On one hand, it has run attacks on Republicans for using Black conservatives as cover, including pieces that frame Black MAGA supporters as having made peace with racism or acting as props for a rotten movement. On the other hand, it has published sympathetic pieces elevating antizionist Jewish dissent as morally clarifying, as though the tiny Jewish minority that rejects Zionism is somehow more revealing than the overwhelming Jewish majority that does not. [Note: I found about a dozen examples of each framing in my research of The Nation, not one example of the paper asking why Black conservative numbers are rising or why Zionism is so integral to Jewish identity.]

The numbers make this double standard uglier. Pew found that about one in ten Black adults identify with or lean Republican, and the US Black population was 49.2 million in 2024. Even allowing for the adult-versus-total-population distinction, that means Black conservatism represents millions of people. Pew also estimated the US Jewish adult population at 5.8 million, and a 2026 Jewish Federations survey reported by JTA found that only 7% of American Jews identify as antizionist. That works out to roughly 406,000 people.

In rough raw terms: there are around ten times more Black conservatives than antizionist Jews. Yet The Nation treats the larger group as suspicious and the much smaller one as profound, worthy of repeatedly elevating as the “good Jews.”

That is ideological favoritism, not journalism. It is deciding in advance which minorities are allowed agency and which ones must be rejected.

Black conservatism is visible in public life, including among writers, commentators, and entertainers outright ignored by regressives. You do not have to agree with Thomas Sowell to recognize that he is one of the most influential US intellectuals. You do not have to agree with Coleman Hughes to admit that he has spent years describing, with remarkable patience, how white regressives often presume they know what minorities ought to think. David Christopher Kaufman, both Black and Jewish, makes The Nation‘s lazy sorting mechanisms harder to maintain. And you do not have to read Complex 2024 article on hip-hop figures backing Trump–Lil Wayne, DaBaby, Kodak Black, Chief Keef, Benny the Butcher, and Waka Flocka Flame to name a few–to know that Black conservatism is not going away.

Even listing these figures feels like the repeated regressive tactic of desperately pointing to Neturei Karta–a homophobic and highly sexist group championed by regressive Subway Takes and Humans of New York as the “good Jews.” It ignores arguments to insist a person is right or wrong based on their identity alone.

The rise in black conservatives needs to be recognized in a non-condescending way, even by papers that blatantly detest the idea. And the background of why Jews are overwhelmingly supportive of a safe state to live in should also be recognized.

I am not a Republican. But I have long admired many Black thinkers whose work is often dismissed less on the merits than for the crime of ideological disobedience. Too many self-appointed enlightened people do not actually want minorities to think freely. They want minorities to arrive at their answers, then call that liberation.

The healthier principle is much simpler: let people identify. Let Black people be conservative without acting as if they have betrayed their race. Let Jews be Zionist without being told they have failed some elite left moral exam. For that matter, let antizionist Jews speak too, just stop pretending they represent the mainstream.

You do not have to agree with every viewpoint. You do have to let people define themselves.

To close with Sowell: “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)