Fort Collins is a long way from Israel and Gaza. That little geographical truism was not enough to dissuade several dozen Hamas supporters to chew up a couple of hours of the City Council’s time last Tuesday night calling for the northern Colorado city to adopt some resolution calling for a “ceasefire” in Gaza — meaning, of course, calling for Israel to stop its defensive war (which it’s winning — so Hamas can regroup, rearm and go back and torture and murder another few thousand Jews.

One after another they paraded in front of the city council, waiting to do its business, spouting variations of the same antisemitic propaganda, historically ignorant moralizing and just plain farcical nonsense we’ve been hearing ad nauseum everywhere since Israel struck back following the Oct. 7 massacre; displays which more than anything bring to mind the “banality of evil” Hannah Arendt wrote about following the Eichman trial in Israel 60 years ago.

Such episodes are annoying, but usually end up not really doing much harm. But there is cause for heightened concern when the militancy breaches the normal order and begins to leave scars on the institutional organs of government.

If one pauses to think back on the special session last fall, or the opening days of the current legislative session, what first springs to mind? I wager for most it was not a policy discussion by either side at the well, or the de rigeur opening day speeches… more likely it was the drama that ensued from the rafters, as the anti-Israel militants disrupted the proceedings, joined, unconscionably, by a member of that ostensibly august body, state Rep. Elisabeth Epps, and supported by a handful of other, far-left extremists burrowing into the Democratic caucus.

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As I’ve noted before, most of the Democrats in the Capitol, even quite liberal ones with whom I disagree vehemently on policy, are not ideological revolutionaries — they don’t view the world, or our society, as Marx did: as a cleverly designed, all-encompassing system of oppression, one which needs to be torn down in the name of liberation. At the end of the day most liberal Democrats, like most conservative Republicans, want roughly the same thing: a peaceful, liberal market democracy. They may want to rearrange the furniture, haphazardly and slightly dangerously, and replace the good artwork with hideous displays of abstract nonsense, but they don’t want to tear the house down.

Not so with the far left. To that element, order and institution are merely part of the oppressive superstructure — obstacles to liberation. And this is an ascendent element within the Western political Left, as memories of the ideological terrors of the mid to late 20th century recede. This is creating a problem for responsible Democratic leadership.

Which brings us to the events of earlier this week. A contingent of Israeli officials and families of victims of Hamas’ violence from Oct. 7 were invited by Rep. Ron Weinberg, a Jewish Republican member, to the state Capitol. Shortly before entering, however, Rep. Weinberg was informed by Speaker Julie McCluskie they would not be allowed to enter the House chamber, and, though the details surrounding the circumstances that followed remain murky, the delegation from Israel was directed instead to the Senate. The speaker has absorbed a great deal of opprobrium for the episode, and, my fondness for the speaker notwithstanding, not all of it is entirely unwarranted.

But consider the position into which she was forced; had she allowed the Israeli families into the House chamber the chance was real, very real, of the somber moment devolving into a chaotic display of hate-filled invective hurled by the far left at these poor people. Epps, Hernandez and their revolutionary ilk would not be able to resist the temptation to unleash on the “oppressors.” The speaker is not only the nominal head of the party in power, but the titular custodian of the institution of the House of Representatives. Speaker McCluskie was aware of this. Besides, I know her to be a genuinely compassionate person, and such a display on her watch would have wounded her soul in a way few of us can understand.

So, she made her decision, with the political requisite of stating it was out of concern that members of “both parties” would “fail to rise to the occasion”; but no one was under any illusion of what she meant — the post-conservative, populist Trumpian wing of the GOP has many, many faults, but on this issue they are lockstep with the traditional Republicans. No, it was the red thorn in her party’s side that drove the speaker to that unfortunate point.

She joined the House Republicans and the adults in her caucus, and both Senate caucuses in the Senate chamber, where the bipartisan ceremonial proceedings were befitting the heaviness of the moment. Could McCluskie have handled things differently? Perhaps. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, but it wears it nonetheless, and leadership comes with hard decisions. But I reserve my anger, not for a genuinely good woman who did what she felt she had to, right or wrong — but for the extremists infiltrating her ranks whose insecure grasp of history and disdain for civilization compel them to hurl accusations of creatively-redefined “genocide” at people who not so long ago were victims of the real kind.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.