In 2014, John Pilger was invited to the annual Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, a conference of free thought and debate. His discussion was titled Breaking Australia’s Silence, and he spoke about our “secret” history, our colonial sins, and our collusion with Western imperialism and its depredations. Standard fare, really. The moderator invited questions from the audience. Here is the text of the first question and answer:

Audience member: Do you think that the West should ever get involved in wars overseas … ?

Because it feels despite our misadventures in the 2003 Iraq war and despite the problems that we’ve caused … it feels like you’re saying … we should just let ISIS kill whoever they want to kill and commit genocide however they wish to … don’t we still have a moral responsibility to help the people who have been beheaded, killed and crucified on the streets of Syria and Iraq right now?

Pilger: It’s interesting about this hideous beheading, isn’t it? … How much do you know about the beheading of Aboriginal people in the early days of this country?

Can the reader imagine the reaction? Of course you can. The audience broke into rapturous applause. The questioner was berated for being “very selective”, but the irony, like everything else, was at Pilger’s expense.

I think this interaction between Pilger and the audience is a perfect example of the regressive left’s cast of mind: A tragedy is at work in the present, but we will ransack the past to find an inexpiable sin; we can hold that sin against us, and in doing so, we rid ourselves of moral authority and moral responsibility; remind us of our colonial guilt, and we offer applause, but what we’re really doing is offering ourselves up for flagellation.

The regressive left is sinister and ahistorical; it is led by masochists who defend sadists; it is an attempt to make the world safe for fascism. It must be resisted and discredited.

Take, for example, the Islamic State’s burning of a Jordanian pilot in February, 2015. At the very least, one might expect condemnation. Not New Matilda, which published an article by Chauncey Devega titled: “Yes, ISIS Burned A Man Alive: White America Did The Same To Black People By The Thousands.”

Here, in a title and a nutshell, is New Matilda’s foreign and editorial policy.