Invoice Maher on his HBO discuss present this week mentioned that pro-Palestinian scholar protests on faculty campuses are what occurs when “activism merges with narcissism.”
The Atlantic columnist David Frum referred to protesters just like the UCLA college students who have been violently attacked Wednesday by a mob of counterprotesters as “banana-allergy revolutionaries.”
Throughout Tuesday night time’s tactical police response to Columbia College college students’ taking up a constructing on campus, writer Judith Miller tweeted: “Hey Columbia protesters! When you’re so happy with what you’re doing, why are you overlaying your faces?”
Mocking scholar protesters has turn out to be a enjoyable and simple pastime since they started marching and tenting out in opposition to Israel’s ongoing navy incursions in Gaza following the Oct. 7 assault by Hamas in Israel. All critics and jeering outdated of us want is a platform (cable TV, Instagram, a tattered cleaning soap field) to discredit the motion because the performative act of feckless snowflakes and spoiled youngsters.
The protecting gear of the “gluten-free warriors” is a type of dress-up. Their security measures — encampment barricades and self-manned medical tents — are seen as ploys for consideration. They’re known as cowards for overlaying their faces with masks and goggles.
However these actions weren’t only for present. UCLA’s pro-Palestinian demonstrators did have to defend and defend themselves when a violent mob of pro-Israeli counterprotesters attacked their encampment.
Video shot by The Occasions, different media retailers and witnesses on the scene present counterdemonstrators in black apparel and white masks ripping down barricades, beating individuals with batons and poles and screaming racial epithets. Campers have been dragged, kicked and pummeled by the predominantly male mob Tuesday night time and Wednesday morning whereas police and campus safety stood by for 3 hours earlier than responding.
Legislation enforcement ultimately cleared the counterprotesters, who reportedly included non-student organizations. No arrests have been made.
However 24 hours later, greater than 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been arrested when UCLA known as in an enormous police presence to clear the coed encampment.
“What we’ve simply witnessed was the darkest day in my 32 years at UCLA,” David Myers, a professor of Jewish historical past at UCLA who’s engaged on initiatives to bridge variations on campus, informed The Occasions. “Why didn’t the police, UCPD and LAPD, present up? These within the encampment have been defenseless within the face of a violent band of thugs. And nobody, wherever they stand politically, is safer as we speak.”
The optics, at finest, discourage free speech on campus and encourage violent reprisal from those that disagree with the message. Latest weeks have seen police summoned by universities similar to USC, UCLA and Columbia to quash largely peaceable scholar rallies and clear encampments, whereas racial slurs, verbal threats and violent assaults perpetrated in opposition to antiwar protesters haven’t been handled with the identical seriousness or urgency.
Fox Information naturally took the “Good vs. Evil” theme a step additional when describing the protest motion as a Malicious program for nefarious, anti-American operations.
“A variety of them appear to be the identical kind of protester we noticed throughout the George Floyd protest,” anchor Hint Gallagher mentioned in response to the tactical response of the NYPD at Columbia this week. “They’ve modified the chants. It’s a brand new location and lots of the identical crowd that strikes into this stuff.”
His visitor went on to say that the protesters are “concentrating on the American system and utilizing the Palestinian trigger to piggyback their nonsensical, glazed-over beliefs so as to begin mass anarchy.”
Delegitimization is a basic tactic within the debate over who has the upper ethical floor. However it shouldn’t matter: All peaceable protesters — on and off campus — should be protected, no matter the place their members stand on the struggle.
Watching footage of the violence at UCLA this week is chilling, and there’s positive to be extra harmful clashes if the security of protesting college students is mocked as pointless, or faculties proceed to deal with them because the menace. Their proper to securely train free speech must be protected.
Cynical agitators like Maher will all the time leverage incendiary moments for scores and clicks. However tucking one’s opposition to the protest motion right into a flippant screed in opposition to Gen Z isn’t simply obnoxious, it’s harmful. It feeds a dangerous narrative that their want for defense is make-believe, that they’re a whining, pampered era we must always ignore, or worse, enable others to focus on whereas we watch from the sidelines.
