A popular cause begins to gather steam. Originating from leftist activists, it attacks its target with unremitting focus and ferocity. The movement runs contrary to all available evidence when analyzed rationally, but it attains a sharp emotional resonance. It gains steam from social media algorithms juiced by foreign actors eager to promote division and advance their own preferred policies. It begins to break containment by attracting support in the center and even on parts of the Right. And it suddenly becomes mainstream, turning conventional wisdom on its head.

Sound like the “Free Palestine” movement? Yes, but also the increasingly vicious backlash against data centers. While the turn against Israel — rooted in the libel that early Zionists were ruthless settler-colonialists displacing an indigenous people and, more recently, in the calumny that the Jewish state supposedly committed a genocide in Gaza — has taken years, even decades, to outgrow its origins on the far Left, the resistance to the facilities powering the artificial intelligence revolution has reached escape velocity in record time.