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If we were to fairly apply the progressive criteria of "disparate impact", then we would have to conclude that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
If a meritocratic hiring process results in a disproportionately low number of blacks getting hired, then the process is racist, regardless of the intentions behind the process or its alleged fairness. Similarly if anti-Zionism ends up materially hurting Jews, then it's anti-Semitic.
Of course no one on the progressive left will actually buy this argument, they'll just say "no we're doing anti-racism, and anti-racism can't be racist, duh" and leave it at that.
Far be it from me to pass for an idpol-progressive under ITT conditions, but if I had to steel-man the progressive position here, I would say that disparate impact that harms an oppressed group is sufficient to define an act as racist (intention notwithstanding, as you say). Actions to redress oppression, to equalize the conditions of oppressor and oppressed are definitionally not racist; “when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression” and all that.
But, seeing as it is functionally a non-universal principle that must be adjudicated based on arbitrary definitions of oppressed and oppressor, isn't it just post-hoc rationalization? (Adolf Hitler, great advocate of social justice: taking from the Jewish bourgoise oppressors and giving to the German proletariat.)
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Less flippantly, my imagined progressive would say that there's no avoiding (at least some) zero-sum games in this world. Thus, the only question is who must win at the expense of whom. And since there must always be an oppressor and an oppressed in every such game, the only political question is how to decide who is oppressing whom in a given situation: to do so clear-sightedly, taking into account the relevant history and particular context, or to bury our heads in the sand and cling to the fiction of "universal principles" -- which is to say, to side with the oppressor?
I think it is uncontroversial that societies at similar tech levels can have vastly different amounts of inequality.
There is inequality ("oppression" in modern parlance) both in ancient fucking Sparta and modern day Sweden, but the amount of inequality matters.
Despite coming from the traditional left, I believe some inequality is actually beneficial: if Elon Musk collected the same UBI as everyone, this would not make the world a worse place (except for Twitter, perhaps). On the flip side, taking the land away from aristocrats and redistributing it to the peasants may likewise stimulate the economy as well as lowering the Gini coefficient.
Who is on top and who on the bottom only matters to me as far as their economic policy might differ due to their background.
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Just because there is a winner and loser doesn’t make the loser oppressed or the winner the oppressor.
Moreover it is pretty clear there are numerous positive sum games.
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