Who are progressive?

A progressive is a politician or political party the reporter and editor admire. It’s a stamp of approval, a code word for good guys. It doesn’t matter if far-leftists, anarchists, socialists, communists, Marxists, Maoists, dictators, liberals, tree-huggers, Greenpeace pirates or wild revolutionaries — they all claim to be progressive. They are never labelled in the media as ultra-progressive or hard line progressive. Those labels are restricted to conservatives or nationalists whom the reporters and editors dislike. A quick web search produced 18,000 hits for ultra-progressive (most of them for a type of eyeglass lens) and 114,000 for ultra-conservative (mostly political).

Media’s acceptance of the progressive accolade was illustrated in the Washington Post, Jan. 25, 2017, in a story out of Milan, headlined in the Boston Globe: “Italy may require asylum seekers to do community service.” The story identifies a source, as “a columnist at progressive newspaper Il Fatto,” and that the leader of “the right wing, anti-immigration Northern League party, falsely accused Italy’s progressive government …”.

So there you have it: A progressive Italian newspaper and a progressive Italian government, according to the Washington Post, and readers have no idea if either is liberal, center, Marxist, slightly left, or so far right it’s near left. Maybe we should label the Washington Post as progressive.