What does progressive mean?

This post is partly another addendum to my series of posts on the Gilad Atzmon affair (main post, first follow up, postscripts). 

I already mentioned Jon Wight's attack on Harry's Place, in which he lists some of the "progressive voices" who’ve come in for attack by Harry’s Place over recent months and years. Wight includes Baroness Jenny Tonge, a member of the centre-right party that props up the Tory government and who speaks in Parliament only on the Israel/Palestine and Female Genital Mutilation; Mehdi Hasan, an apologist for the Ahmadinejad regime; Seamas Milne, an unrepentant public school Stalinist; and the far right Muslim Association of Britain. I blogged a while ago about the complete meaningless of the word "progressive" in the mouths of these sorts of people, but this confirmed it.

I think this way of thinking - "progressive" meaning fellow travellers for Stalinism - is a good indicator of Socialist Unity's Stalinist drift. For more on this, see Shiraz Socialist, Louis Proyect (1, 2), Poumista, Coatesy (1, 2). More evidence: John Wight's applause of China and Russa's blocking of action against the Assad regime's brutal suppression of dissent; Andy Newman's notion that Islamist Salma Yaqoob and Stalinists Andrew Murray and Kate Hudson are "great"; publication of the Morning Star's applause for China's progress; etc etc.