El Akkad:
One of the hallmarks of Western liberalism is an assumption, in hindsight, of virtuous resistance as the only polite expectation of people on the receiving end of colonialism. While the terrible thing is happening - while the land is still being stolen and the natives still being killed-any form of opposition is terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilization. But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight. I tell stories for a living, and there's a thick thread of narrative by well-meaning white Westerners that exalts the native populations in so many parts of the world for standing up to the occupiers, makes of their narrative a neat reflexive arc in which it was always understood, by the colonized and (this part implied) the descendants of the colonizer, that what happened was wrong.
The most direct application of this, of course, is Palestinians being expected to just stand there and get bombed while a force is explicitly eliminating them.
But he’s right about it being applied broadly. I think it goes beyond the left. Right now, you can be a chud that condemns the Gestapo or the NKVD or similar from History, while shrugging right now at ICE smashing in car windows to abduct people. Categorizing what’s in History and what’s not is powerful tool. Condemning historical actions is nearly costless.