Well progressivism self-identifies as "being on the right side of history".

Indeed it does. It sees itself as the stream and the tide, not dead flotsam. At least, when it is not casting its enemies as the stream and itself as the living thing valiantly fighting against oppression. Chesterton, progressivism, and neoreaction all have that equivocation in common, casting their favoured ideology as either the tide or as fighting against the tide, as it suits their rhetoric.