The Queering of the Purge

By Abe Greenwald

If you haven’t seen the clip of the California state senator Scott Wiener being chased out of San Francisco’s annual trans march on Friday, I suggest you watch it before reading on. It’s only two minutes and can be found here.

Ok, what did you just watch? If this Felliniesque nightmare were a scripted work of art involving actors, costumes, storyboard, and a director’s vision, it would be a triumph—one of those high-wire, extended-shot scenes that auteurs occasionally pull together to show off their mastery of the form.

Tragically, it’s real life captured on a camera phone.

Wiener is the Democratic front-runner looking to replace Nancy Pelosi in the House. He’s also a gay, pro-trans leftist who’s described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide and called for the U.S. to stop giving military aid to Israel. 

So he attended the trans march, as he does every year, to stand with those he thought of as his people. 

But Wiener is Jewish, and he took a bit too long in deciding that he needed to mimic faithfully the hardcore anti-Israel monomaniacs. So they’re now teaching him an important lesson: A Jew who shows any ambivalence about destroying the Jewish state will not be tolerated by the left. 

What was supposed to be a festive stop along the way to a Pride Shabbat with a trans rabbi became something else. 

Wiener’s chief harasser at the march was one Dimitry Yakoushkin, whom the New York Times describes as a “49-year-old sex and intimacy coach.” (The Times also generously provides a link to Yakoushkin’s website, where we learn that he is “a Sexological Bodyworker and trained in the Hakomi Method – a body-based, mindful experiential therapy method that helps clients get in touch with and live from their deepest self.”)

As the clip opens, Yakoushkin begins by telling Wiener how much he admires the latter’s stance on trans issues. And then he gives voice to his deepest self, yelling that Wiener is “terrible on Gaza” and does “not belong here.” An aggressive crowd—including one individual in keffiyeh and gold hotpants—steadily gathers and contributes to the abuse. They call Wiener a “genocidal piece of shit” who’s under the control of “Zionist handlers,” and so on. Within a minute, Wiener—and by extension Israel—has become the focus of the gathering. 

“Scott, I want to support someone who’s so positive on trans rights,” Yakoushkin pleads toward the clip’s end. “But you’re a piece of shit on Gaza. How could you do that? How could you do that? How could you betray queers?” Another sees Wiener off with this: “You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel, you piece of shit.”

We’re long past pointing out that gay and trans anti-Israel activists would be killed on the spot were they to sashay around Gaza in gold lamé shorts—keffiyehs notwithstanding. And I doubt that the “Hakomi Method” would be much of a hit there either. What we’re dealing with here is the queer Klan. Their Jew-hatred has swallowed up all other activist concerns. 

In this, they’re representative of the larger left. Socialists are now more committed to boycotting Israel than they are to equity and expanding public goods. Environmentalists hop aboard flotillas to Gaza. And anti-colonialists have narrowed down their target list to one (non-colonialist) country. 

The clip captures the last three years of the left and condenses it into two minutes. What starts out as a single voice condemning Israel turns into a maniacal hatefest. And there’s the Jewish leftist, glum and defeated, trying to navigate a path through the enemies he’s gathered around him.

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.