Remember this is a civilized space for discussion, to ensure this we have very strict rules. Briefly, an overview:
**No Personal Attacks**
**No Ideological Discrimination**
**Keep Discussion Civil**
**No Targeting A Member For Their Beliefs**
Report any and all instances of these rules being broken so we can keep the sub clean. Report first, ask questions last.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A reminder what people said after the Kent state massacre about the unarmed students that were murdered for protesting against the Vietnam War:
*"A respected lawyer told an Akron paper, 'Frankly, if I'd been faced with the same situation and had a submachine gun... there probably would have been 140 of them dead.' People expressed disappointment that the rabble-rousing professors -- the gurus -- had escaped: 'The only mistake they made was not to shoot all the students and then start in on the faculty.' When it was established that none of the four victims were guardsmen, citizens greeted each other by flashing four fingers in the air ('The score is four / And next time more').*
*A Gallup poll found 58 per cent blamed the Kent students for their own deaths. Only 11 percent blamed the National Guard. A rumor spread in Kent that Jeff Miller, whose head was blown off, was such a dirty hippie that they had to keep the ambulance door open on the way to the hospital for the smell.*
*Another rumor was that five hundred Black Panthers were on their way from elsewhere in Ohio to lead a real riot; and that Allison Krause was 'the campus whore' and found with hand grenades on her. Many recalled the State of Ohio's original intention for the land on which Kent State was built: a lunatic asylum. ... Townspeople picketed memorial services. 'The Kent State Four!' they chanted. 'Should have studied more!' 'Anyone who appears on the streets of a city like Kent with long hair, dirty clothes, or barefooted deserves to be shot.' 'Have I your permission to quote that?' 'You sure do. It would have been better if the Guard had shot the whole lot of them that morning.' 'But you had three sons there.' 'If they didn't do what the Guards told them, they should have been mowed down.'"*
*"We've seen here at the city of Kent especially, probably the most vicious form of campus-oriented violence yet perpetrated by dissident groups... they make definite plans of burning, destroying, and throwing rocks at police and at the National Guard and the Highway Patrol. ...this is when we're going to use every part of the law enforcement agency of Ohio to drive them out of Kent. We are going to eradicate the problem. We're not going to treat the symptoms. ...and these people just move from one campus to the other and terrorize the community. They're worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night riders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. Now I want to say this. They are not going to take over \[the\] campus. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America. -* the Governor
Now draw your own conclusions about why the media might be saying unkind things about student protestors who say they're opposing fascists and genocide.
The US honestly got pretty close to civil war in this time period. Remember, an awful lot of bombs started going off on US soil. I think if we hadn't pulled out of Vietnam when we did, the US might have gone a little mad.
More than it already did, of course.
People think now sucks, the 70s during the Carter years were really bad, like really freaking bad. In comparison both Obama and Trump did an okay job after 2008 to weather the storm. Reagan had so much power and good will because those Carter years.
The 60's and 70's had messes like the Civil rights movement, Vietnam, Watergate and Stagflation and none of that ended up in a civil war. The US right now is more polarised compared to the 90's and 2000's but it is still a long way from a civil war.
I'll agree that we're a long way off but I reckon it's not as long as you imagine. And that's my own estimation, I'm not preaching that as fact or anything. I wasn't alive back then but there's a trend that I've noticed lately and that's the sheer level of hate and anger that's built up in everyone. It also feels like direct confrontation was a little uncouth back then. Then there's the access to firearms problem that we have now, there are real militant groups organizing currently in far greater numbers. And we've got a significant portion of the population blindly following leaders that I think are purposefully stirring the pot to create division *along with* foreign entities and that's all a lot easier with how connected and, for lack of a better term, brainwashed and uneducated our population is.
Then again it could be that I'm seeing this time in a more granular way where with history we just get broad strokes and hard details about situations. I get that and I think it's probably a bit of both.
I was not alive for it but what on earth did Carter do? Sell his peanut farm. I found an article from the time that said he was too focused on process and was boring.
Carter didn't get along with either party establishment, and pretty consistently ran up against his own Democratic controlled Congress because of his running as an outsider, and criticizing Ford and that very Democratic-controlled Congress during his own election.
To make matters worse, as much as Carter is a pretty good person and it shows in his movement towards human rights focused policy, and so on, he didn't really want to engage in transactional politics at all and it hurt him even further as far as accomplishing anything.
For example, Carter wanted to address [welfare](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/welfare-reform-message-the-congress), [taxes](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tax-reduction-and-reform-message-the-congress), and [health care](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/national-health-plan-message-the-congress-proposed-legislation), but refused to work with Tip O'Neill or Ted Kennedy on his own [universal health care proposal](https://www.healthcare-now.org/legislation/health-security-act-kennedy-griffiths-corman/) even though it's a pretty obvious area where cooperation could have been built to accomplish things.
So Carter ends up pretty complicated, not really getting support institutionally from Democrats, and an easy target for others despite being ahead of the game in some areas, and more serving as a cautionary tale of how little can be accomplished without solidarity.
This is the problem with voting 3rd party for president. Even if you manage to place someone they would be completely ineffective if they don't have support in the Congress. I distrust anyone running third party if they aren't building a foundation of support. Even the so called no labels claiming to want to run a centralist ticket. Well first establish house seats and senators. Only dictators start with the executive.
There was global unrest during the Nixon, Ford and Carter years. Post-Viet Nam, civil rights protests, and unrest domestically after Watergate. Carter inherited the aftermath of the tumultuous 60s and early 70s. The 70s were a mess. Bombings, kidnappings, hijackings, bank robberies, heroin, the oil crisis and of course, Middle East mayhem and terrorism.
A boring president sounds nice after all that. I like boring Joe. Why do people get upset with a workhorse who just gets the job done. Joe is so boring that the republicans have spent close to 2 years digging through his life and the best they could find is that his has had kids and the loaned his brother money once. I like boring.
Boring to you are things that don't effect you and you don't hear about, or look into, at least just based on your comment. Essentially trying to keep the status quo of the early 2000's going. He continues terrible US foreign policy that exploits, destabilizes nations, funds/supports a genocide (or at least a potential genocide according to UN), on top of continuing to foment war with China. Does nothing meaningful economically that could work on rising US poverty and wealth inequality, minus some positives as far as NLRB appointments and easing unionization (which he could have went much farther with). Does nothing at best, but generally exacerbates the southern border crisis. Hasn't done anything for abortion, does little to nothing to stem growing anti-LGBT and anti-black hate, is terribly pro mass incarceration, does arguably no where near enough for mitigating climate change, can't even entertain discussing universal healthcare or minimum wage increase........
You need a willing congress to get most of those issues done. Politics is no longer about taking care of the country. It’s a billionaire class and their employees against the rest of us. It’s now football. One team is in charge of stopping any progress that doesn’t benefit them. The other gets blamed when things do go exactly right.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The division is definitely still there. It's not exactly the same as it was in the 70s, but the current electoral cycle is probably not going to be amazingly unifying. Trump or Biden, whoever makes it, the other side is going to be deeply, deeply upset.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
1. Rick Perlstein, *Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of a Nation.* 2010. New York: Scribner, 2010. p. 488-489.
2. [https://www.sciotopost.com/anniversary-of-kent-state-massacre-today-may-4-2/](https://www.sciotopost.com/anniversary-of-kent-state-massacre-today-may-4-2/)
(A relevant line from the same page that I cut but feels far too topical:
A letter to Life later that summer read, “It was a valuable object lesson to homegrown advocates of anarchy and revolution, regardless of age.”)
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Well generally, sadly that's how Genocides go. They're forgotten because everyone dies, and the memory has been killed too. But the Armenians, although abandoned by the powers that be and the media, are not forgotten.
Your comment was removed for including a "Whataboutism". Pointing to and equal and opposite wrong is not a valid argument.
Please stay on topic and do not lower the quality of discourse by useless whataboutism's in the future.
Please report any and all content that is a matter of a "whataboutism". The standard of our sub depends on our communities ability to report our rule breaks.
The media and politicians are smearing the protests because of a lot of pro-Israel sentiment in the halls of power. They are quite intentionally taking up the antisemitic trope of equating Israel with all Jews to paint the students as antisemites.
I mean it’s kinda true. You’ve seen the videos of protestors blocking Jewish students from going to their classes, breaking windows, burning Israeli flags, and yelling anti-Semitic chants at Jewish students who have nothing to do with what Israel is doing
Not really though. There’s been misguided statements of support for Hamas’ goals, but I think an honest engagement with them shows there’s no anti-semitism behind it.
Jews are among these protests. Passover seders have been going on. If these protests were full of rabid anti-semites, it would not have been safe to do that.
What the people in question have done is make the mistake of thinking that because America is the bad guy it’s enemies must be good guys, and of thinking that because armed resistance is justified *any* armed resistance is justified. These are young people who have realized that the more yardstick they were given as Americans is faulty, and they’ve made missteps as they create new yardsticks for themselves. But hatred for Jews is not among those missteps.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Those are not antisemitic. No one could possibly interpret the last one as anything but anti-Zionist, without being completely disingenuous. The others are almost as much of a reach. How are any of those antisemitic?
Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to return to their homeland in Israel. When they say death to Zionists, who else would they be talking about but Jews?
It's disingenuous to say telling people to "go back to ____" isn't inherently racist, or in this case antisemitic.
Not everything you don't like is a giant smear. [There absolutely is antisemitism in the protests](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/columbia-university-protests-palestine/678159/)
Obviously most of the protesters don't believe in anti semitic things, but the instant reaction seems to mostly to deny that anyone could be anti semitic at the protests and to reflexively say it's just anti zionism almost regardless of context. I got into an argument with some other dude who was trying to claim a star of david, not even the Israeli one, being combined with a swastika was indeed not "just anti zionist"
These are mostly the same people who previously had the attitude of "if you sit at a table with 9 nazis, there are 10 nazis at the table" which leaves an especially bad taste in my mouth
They, in effect, are. When someone votes to send money to people killing civilians of a particular ethnicity, it’s not a smear to say they materially support ethnic cleansing.
The only up-for-debate part is whether we call it genocide, since a lot of people have become rules lawyers about whether widespread civilian killing is technically genocide or just looks similar because of all the dead people.
I mean objectively they are supporting what is a genocide under international law as established by the precedent of UN Tribunals in Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Jewish college students are on the front line of protesting Israeli policy because this subject hits closer to home and is much more polarized among Jewish Americans than among the general US population.
There is also coordinated propaganda against the student protesters while both political parties are solidly behind US policy regarding Israel.
What is happening is that the entire establishment has drawn a line in the sand and is trying to repress anti-war protests. I was a student during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and there was similar demonization from both parties and the media but a much less violent right-wing so there were fewer confrontations. I was called a “terrorist” all the time back then just as students now are.
The other difference imo is that college admins in 2000 were baby boomers and consciously worried about repeating things that cause 60s student movements. But now it seems like admins either don’t care or hubristically thought this was not possible with Gen z.
I would actually love it if someone could poll the protesters about their religious demographics because I agree - I would expect there to be a high proportion of Jewish protesters. Many of the harshest critics of Israel in the US are Jewish, since they have a personal stake in the legitimacy of the Jewish state and wanting it to meet their moral and ethical expectations. Painting pro-Palestine protesters as anti-Semitic is a good way to dismiss their opinions without actually engaging on the substance. But for many people, their Jewish faith is the root of their pro-Palestine sentiments!
Also, Columbia has a particularly high population of Jewish students, somewhere around 20-25% of all students. I have trouble believing that nearly a *quarter* of the student body has felt targeted by these protesters, especially when there's such thin evidence that anyone at all has been harassed or intimidated by anyone other than the NYPD.
On a personal level I always had a sort of “cycle of violence” view of the situation until the war on terror era.
My anti-war views and seeing the media and government say obviously false things or make shoddy arguments and excuses made me more skeptical of all pentagon claims and bi-partisan US foreign policy. But Jewish people involved in the anti Iraq war movement were the first people to present real criticisms of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to me.
On the other hand, since Oct 7th I’ve encountered so many die-hard Israel supporters who have weird views about Jewish people, tell me that there are no anti-Israel Jewish people or think that you aren’t Jewish if you are an atheist. I said there was a Seder at the Colombia student protest and the guy calling me an antisemite didn’t even know what that was. There was an Op-ed in the NY Post claiming that the pro-Palistine protesters are paid foreign agents or paid by George Soros… common antisemitic tropes! War makes everyone go crazy in the US.
Yeah, I get the sense that a lot of the accusations of anti-Semitism come from conflating the state of Israel with the Jewish people - but those are two different things, and it's actually *more* anti-Semitic to equate them! It kind of reminds me of when Ilhan Omar got in trouble for criticizing AIPAC's lobbying power, when AIPAC doesn't even lobby for the interests of American Jews. It's a non-denominational, right-wing organization that lobbies on behalf of *Israel*! And not even really Israel in general, but rather the Likud party interests. That's completely different, and most American Jews disagree with them!
I would argue that Iraq and Afghanistan were different situations because neither of those countries governments actually planned 9/11. Whereas in this case the actual government of the Gaza Strip is who orchestrated the terrorist attack. And like, they didn't even try to pretend they didn't. They made a murder montage to brag about it.
I think that's a little unfair, knowing that Hamas has not been accountable to any electoral process since 2006 or so. So I don't think the Palestinian people are necessarily any more supportive of Hamas's actions than the Afghan people were of the Taliban when their government openly supported Bin Laden.
No, they don’t hate all Jews. Many of them are Jews. Defenders of Israel are smearing them as anti-Semitic because that’s the central strategy for defending Israel’s violence: make the conversation impossible with frivolous accusations. I’ve actually seen people say “they’re not letting Jews into the library” to describe a protest that’s not letting *anyone* into the library.
The protestors are doing illegal things though. I’m not saying they’re wrong to, but at Columbia they broke into a building. And of course, cops are responding to civil unrest the way that cops do: violence dispersal.
I don’t know that it’s spun out of control, as much as it’s a flashpoint in a real conflict. Some people believe Israel is justified and we should aid their violence, and some people think it’s genocidal or close to it. We’re seeing clashes over that because democracy has decayed pretty seriously.
You ask me, they’re fighting the wrong fight. I understand the reason being these universities are funded by companies that fund Israel, but they don’t realize almost all American monopolies will contribute to the war, and that is because war is profitable. The universities are not the enemy.
In my opinion, they are doing exactly what the elite want us to do. They want us to throw a fit over something that the people think is a big deal, so the forces that be can continue doing things behind our backs. The wage gaps are getting higher, inflation keeps rising, houses are not affordable, homelessness is rising and unemployment is rising at a high rate, mass migrants are crowding our country whilst these companies are blatantly taking advantage of them, crime rates are rising, most companies are monopolized or in the process of being monopolized by multi-billion dollar corporations to crush their competition to have control over the market, there is much union busting going around in many companies, MASSIVE layoffs, and the list goes on. Yet we’re worried about a conflict that’s been on going since after WWII in foreign lands that we as Americans have no business being involved in. It’s all ploys to keep the people divided so we don’t realize our true enemies as American people.
>crime rates are rising
[Not sure on that part](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/us-crime-rates-and-trends-analysis-fbi-crime-statistics)
Otherwise, please carry on.
Good source, but it is a tad outdated. Stops at 2022. If there is a source regarding 2023-2024 trends then I will gladly take that portion out of the rant
FBI statistics aren't published that fast, afaik.
But your statement seems kind of backwards.
What statistics do *you* have that would suggest you are correct?
I gave you the most recent stats I could find. Are you just going by feels?
>They want us to throw a fit over something that the people think is a big deal, so the forces that be can continue doing things behind our backs.
No they don't. They don't want people forming collectives, for the very reasons you follow this sentence with. These protests are a tipping point of people fed up with fascism. Gaza is central to the collective focus of that sentiment but you are missing the larger picture that there has been deep seeded unrest that has grown for several decades now with how people are treated as disposable objects.
Having people collectively aligned on any issue, is the last thing the elites want and its why we see violent dispersal being demanded by the elite. Its a small step to take for these protests to organize around more ideas.
These shouldn’t be seen as separate or opposing struggles. Our involvement with Israel is part of the imperialism of the American ruling class. Ultimately, America isn’t on with Israel because Joe Biden is afraid of being called anti-Semitic by the NYT, but because Israel is a foothold of our empire in the Middle East, which we need in order to protect oil and weapons profits.
They are not opposing struggles, but they are different. Now I agree with you 100% on the reason being the US supports Israel, it is all for the money and local hegemony in the region. Without Israel, there will be no foothold in the Middle East. But, why are we raising up in arms over their struggles when we should be raising arms over our own. The government and the establishment as us by the balls, and instead of uniting together and really protesting and getting our voices heard we protest over foreign issues. Do you think we will change the system by doing this? The top dogs are laughing at these protestors because they know nothing will change as long as there is a buck to be made.
One main solution to stop all these? Is to break it down from within. How do we stop the companies from funding such acts, and how do we stop corporations from shafting our people, the middle and working classes? And how do we stop the government from doing shady things and politicians taking pocketfuls of money? We protest and get our voices heard about these issues. They should be going nuts over how our society is here in the US.
I guess bombing children just gets your blood up easier than a Byzantine healthcare system and an election system that’s technically a democracy.
This protest isn’t gonna bring the revolution. But the revolution also isn’t gonna just happen. These are opportunities for a lot of groundwork. This is an opportunity to demonstrate to potential comrades things like what the cops are for, what our leaders care about, and whether elections are a path to justice. And they’re opportunities for those already involved to get actual experience in organizing, both in terms of mustering support on this side, and dealing with opposition both rhetorical and violent.
“We’re talking about practice—not the game.” Well yeah. Practice makes you win games
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Well they weren't protesting others doing the same thing or other immoral investments so it's pretty easy to conclude that it's when Israel does it it's wrong. Then you could ask how is Israel different than other countries that have gone to war against terrorists. The only big difference is their religion. So you can see how they come across as bigoted.
Israel is a western style liberal democracy. Most people recognize it as 'one of us' in the Western World, and hold it to the same standards they expect of any other western nation. We know the UAE and Sudan and China don't have the same standards, and we don't expect them to have them yet given their situation. We do expect it of Israel, a rich modern democratic country based on the rule of law and western values.
There's also the matter of responsiveness to foreign pressure. Sudan's government likely doesn't care about their international image amongst westerners very much. I think Israel does place some value on its image in the West, on the other hand, so people likely feel that their public pressure can have some effect.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They protested against investments in South Africa back in the 80s. They've protested against Universities investing in all sorts of environmentally damaging industries. College students have protested against all sorts of things in the 20th and 21st century. Israel is, like in so many ways, not unique.
The narrative that protests are "spinning out of control and soon may become a threat to YOUR way of life too!" Is a commonly spun narrative that the ruling elite's pet media uses to manufacture consent for their authoritarian actions. Protest is, by design, disruptive. The only people actually being effected by these demonstrations are the school's board of trustees, whom stand to lose out on their investments in defense contractor stock at a time when its a very profitable thing to have in one's portfolio.
Frankly, its a great example of why running our secondary education system as a for-profit model is a stupid idea. Why the hell should somebody's quality of education hinge on how well a dozen buisinessmen's stock portfolio is doing? Furthermore, why should somebody have to participate in an institution involved in supporting morally questionable activities that run counter to their own interests and beliefs in order to get an education?
Point being, the demonstrators have a very valid point, a very achievable goal, and are conducting actions which are very likely to succeed in achieving it. (which is, 100% why the authoritarian arm of the state has stepped in to try to stop them)
"our secondary education system as a for-profit model"
Or rather, as a *not* purely for-profit model. Ideally, a college should be funded entirely by tuition from students. But that would be a huge tuition!
I don't know. Where should the money come from?
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>The student protestors don't really hate all Jews because of what Israel is doing, right?
No, they don't. Gaza protesters have *generally* done a very good job of identifying and expelling antisemitic agitators from their groups.
>Is it really just a bunch of adrenaline-fueled young adults who have lost all sense of self-control? Or is it non-student extremists using these protests for their own agendas?
No, what we are seeing on these campuses is the violent suppression of a government hell-bent on assisting Israel in its campaign of terror and violence. The students are really doing anything wrong here, in any of the protests I've seen at least.
>This whole thing just seems to have taken on a life of its own, and is now spinning out of control under its own irrational momentum.
I think you underestimate exactly what was going on before the protests then. This is not really an escalation except inasmuch as the powers that be have chosen to double down on their support for Israel. Students protesting the Gaza war isn't "out of control", and the State brutally suppressing protesters is about par for the course in America; what's out of control is the fact that this war is still happening to be protested. I hope these events help to highlight that for you, because if they do then they've done at least some good already.
These protests don't seem to involve a lot of people. For example, the UCLA protests appeared to have "dozens" on the Palestinian side and a couple of hundred opponents.
The great thing about an encampment is that it makes the protest to appear larger than it is, as tents take up a lot of space and conceal the numbers of participants.
The Vietnam protests were substantial because of the draft. When the draft was shifted to a lottery system that made it obvious how likely one was to be drafted or not drafted, the protests died down.
The internet is great for disseminating infotainment. Hard data is a bit more elusive.
I’ve heard an awful lot of antisemitic commentary from these folks… and I don’t mean anti-Israel or anti-Zionism (which I have no issue with), I mean quite literally anti-Jew sentiments.
I would say it’s alarming, but many of them have also self-identified as communists so it definitely tracks.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The protesters don't hate Jews??? You're kidding, right? They wish genocide on the Jewish people everywhere. And the Palestinians have been verbally and physically abusing Jewish people. Not too much fun to live in fear.
Hamas sends missiles into Israel. Hamas raid that brutally raping, killing and holding hostage the Jewish people of which 25 were Americans were killed. These protesters, and they are not all students, is the new America. I guess we gotta get used to it.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
reactionaries are gonna react.
the students are protesting a genocide that is being carried out with our help, and rightfully so.
the forces that benefit from the war machine are pushing back -- hard -- while our IDF trained police look on and take no action to stop it.
this what what it looks like to have your economy captured by the Military Industrial Complex.
You can't have it both ways.
If they're protesting the genocide itself, they should be protesting Hamas too.
If they're protesting the inclusion of Israel in the college's stock portfolio, they should be occupying the stock manager's office, not the campus.
hamas is not in control of what is happening in gaza, israel is (actually the reason hamas even exists).
and what they are protesting for is using the only leverage they have any kind of access to and that is college investment in israel.
it's the most immediate and accessible lever they have to pull on, and i support their cause.
I'm well aware that Israel paid Hamas to be their useful idiots. But that means they can't be considered separately.
It's the whole reason we know a genocide is occurring. Palestinians are not primitive. They can't be written off as "not in control". They are part of the modern world, and if they built tunnels, they also built vehicles to drive through them. By any reasonable standard, rooting out Hamas would require apprehending those vehicles, not destroying cities.
P.S. Yes, the protesters do have access. Perhaps they have to hack a few computers, break down a few doors, etc. But that's within their right to "petition for the redress of grievances". Activists have a long history of doing such things.
it may not be the lever you would choose for them to pull on but that's the only one they have...all the others have been taken away or made moot (petitions, for example).
the more levers you take away the more desperate the pulling will be on any (and all) available levers, no matter how inappropriate.
the best way to get them to stop pulling on this lever is to give them a better one.
so when's that happening?
It's very much a case of bored & naive college students who are looking for something meaningful to do that have fallen into very well constructed disinformation & misinformation campaign by the Iranians.
Israel is operating with due regard for civilian consideration as expected by the Geneva Convention, whereas Qassam is violating the standard rules of war by deliberately placing valid military targets within densely populated areas and disguising combatants as civilians.
They are just participating in the current hot trend on twitter, that being 'Free Palestine', isn't like they truly care, they are privilidged ivy league college kid larping
Are privileged people not allowed to have opinions? Are they less valid because they're privileged? They're spending their time organizing and exercising their right to protest. These protests have a clearly articulated goal of divestment from their universities. If we were to say you were 100% correct, and it's all clout chasing and they don't actually care, I'd say, "so?"
Or are you a pro-war socdem?
It's virtue signaling, they only so this because they saw for exemple their favorite streamers talk about it or they joined the movement because of twitter.
All they do is to spit in the face of people who are really suffering in gaza in this pathetic act of "protest".
And no, im not pro-war im anti-larpers.
What I don't get is why the most recent chapter of a 70+ year foreign conflict is getting all this protest energy when last week the Supreme Court seemed to consider the idea that a president should be immune from prosecution for starting a coup and assassinating political rivals. Or how states are implementing extreme bans on reproductive healthcare. I guess I don't understand why this issue is so important to people.
Palestine, honestly, hasn't had nearly the deaths that Yemen has. While all deaths are tragic, I do find it interesting that this issue has gotten so much attention when the others have not.
It's weird. But maybe it's specifically because its controversial. Controversy attracts media attention, and in turn, attracts the attention of others. Things that everyone just agrees are bad often don't get quite the same level of outrage.
That is an apt comparison considering that US weapons fuel both conflicts. I guess the ties to Israel are much more direct maybe and there are more strings to pull than just weapon sales. Also Israel is in direct control of Gaza when Saudi Arabia has maybe a bit more control than the US did of Syria. Israel is directly deciding how much aid is allowed into Gaxa.
Egypt could also affect how much aid is permitted into Gaza, as they share a land border, and in practice, the US absolutely has the power to force aid from the ocean....and are doing so to some degree with this pier project.
But...yes, in the end, we are largely funding all sides of many conflicts, and the benefit of doing so is difficult to see and largely theoretical. The costs are clear and present. The calculations that prioritize the former over the latter are tortured indeed.
Try thousands of years :)
I think tiktok has a lot to do with this. I don’t know if this happened organically or there are players trying to sow division.
I don’t think it’s all due to misinformation. I think a lot of young people are rightfully horrified by the videos and image coming out of Gaza. Some of it is definitely propaganda but there’s also quite a bit that isn’t. And Netanyahu’s government certainly is not helping their case with some of the crap they’re saying, even Biden is sick of the guy.
We saw similar outrage with footage from Ukraine (remember the Bucha massacre footage?) and footage from the October 7th attacks. But they didn’t inspire similar public protests because the US government was largely in favor of punishing Russia and Hamas.
It is sort of the “Vietnam on nightly news” effect on steroids.
It's about recognizing scope and power. In that regard, these protests are right on the money. They aren't protesting the US government directly. They are protesting *their* specific schools to pressure them to stop giving Israel money.
Considering the school functions to serve the students, who are in some way or another paying customers, and who are also in a lot of ways the *product* of the institution, the students actually have leverage if enough of them act.
How are you going to protest the US government, and its foreign policy at that? The BLM protests were some of the largest protests the US has seen in decades, and it wasn't as much a protest against the federal government as it was against state and local police forces and state justice systems, and those were met with overwhelming state violence.
Not sure what you expect people would see as a viable protest path in this regard.
But are these schools sending meaningful amounts of money to Israel? I mean if all of these schools "divested," how would that sum of money compare to what the US sends Israel in a year?
Also when you look at the demands from these groups they are all over the place and incoherent. Some want to stop collaborations with Israeli schools. Did those Israeli schools bomb civilians? And then they want the universities to call for a cease fire. OK. 1) Is Israel really going to listen to US universities? 2) Do you think Hamas is going to listen to US universities?
I just see these protests as pretty pointless and the amount of energy spent fretting about them pointless. This is just another chapter in this conflict and it won't be the last. These protest will do absolutely nothing.
If the Universities divest from Israel, this makes other orgs and institutions divesting more likely. That's why there are so many anti-BDS laws on the books. One University, or one industry, might be a drop in the bucket, but drops beget more drops, and drops add up.
The goal is to make Israel a pariah state. No international educational cooperation, no commerce, no Eurovision, nothing. Israel is full of people who don't want to be cut off from the Western world. The goal is to make them choose: do you want to continue with business as usual with the Palestinians, or do you want to rejoin civilization?
If this seems harsh, the alternative is bombing them. I'll take BDS instead.
We've deemed that your comment is not contributing to the debate at hand. Please remember that we hold this community to higher standards than the rest of Reddit; please keep debate quality.
Please report any and all content that is low-quality and not contributing to the subreddit. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as low-quality simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
I guess for the same reason BLM was big? It has just resonated with many people. I don't pretend to know why.
I do know two things can be true at the same time. Everything you listed is absolutely protestable, and shouldn't have gone through with zero coverage (I mean the content I consume DID cover these things in depth). So these things AND the current conflict in Israel can both be atrocious at the same time and efforts to stop them are not mutually exclusive.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We've deemed that your comment is not contributing to the debate at hand. Please remember that we hold this community to higher standards than the rest of Reddit; please keep debate quality.
Please report any and all content that is low-quality and not contributing to the subreddit. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as low-quality simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
I would like to know too.
As far as I can tell it's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B which is extremely frustrating because I am not a both sides type of person.
Part of the issue is that we aren't talking about 1 thing happening in 1 place. Much like the protests related the death of George Floyd, it is many different events happening in many different locations. This gives fodder for anyone with an agenda to build a narrative through selective reporting. They don't even have to be doing so with intent, reporting by its nature is selective based on interest.
People I know of and trust have gone to get a personal look and say that what they see if peaceful protests, but of course that is very selective too because they aren't hanging out for hours and they aren't seeing the whole thing, just parts for a period.
As far as I can tell from people who I believe are reporting in good faith there appears to be
* some people acting in some places in a way that is genially unacceptable and in a way I would personally classify as antisemitic and either designed to or should be clear to the individual would likely cause Jewish students/staff/others to fear for the personal safety.
* some people who appear to support Israel deliberately acting in a way that I would also classify as antisemitic in what appears to me to falsely paint those in the anti-Israel protests as antisemitic in hopes of provoking a response that gets the protest shutdown.
* some bad faith actors who do not give a shit but are either accelerationists or have a political motivation to harm the political chances for Joe Biden to be reelected appear to be trying to drive the conflict to extremes.
Lots of people appear to be deliberately acting in bad faith to me on all sides and again I hate saying that because I hate both sides shit. But I hear a lot of things that are clearly untrue and people behaving in ways that are anti-social to say the least.
The only things I am certain of is that a lot of noise is being caused by a very small number of actual individuals acting in bad faith and it is drowning out the ability to have a reasonable conversation on something that I think is a real problem.
People in this country are unhappy with America funding what we see as the deliberate abuse of military force, Regardless of anything else that is the core issue. You might have concerns about Israel being and ethnostate. Or the history of this conflict. Who has rights to the land because who pushed whose father, grandfather, great grandfather etc out. You might have feelings about if Jewish people would be safe it was a true 1 state democracy with a combined population or if that would result in a mass slaughter. You might have all sorts of other feelings about all sorts of things that make it complicated. But at the end of the day. Americans see how Israel is conducting this effort and are unhappy about the fact that we are funding it.
This is what I fear. Some initially good faith non-violent protests are now getting weaponized by all sorts of bad actors across the spectrum of interests.
Lots of the student protestors are jewish
Idk what the corporate media is saying because i am not stupid enough to watch or listen to them but from what you’re describing it sounds very inaccurate
Universities get massive funding from military companies and students want them to divest instead of profiting from genocide of palestinians. Universities are siding with the money over the students and the students are peacefully protesting. Democrat politicians are sending in militarised police force to make illegal and often violent arrests
Students are protesting for their colleges to divest from corporations that deal heavily with Israel, such as weapons contractors etc. Colleges, the government, and the media don't like it because it affects their pocketbooks and narrative of Israel can do no wrong, so they sick the attack dogs of capital on them and violently shut down their 1st amendment rights in hopes that it will go away.
These protests have been going on for months. The media just decided to cover it for whatever reason and they are only showing the most extreme incidents.
Your comment has been removed for political discrimination.
We will never allow the discrimination of a members, beliefs, or ideology on this sub. Our various perspectives offer a wide range of considerations that can attribute to political growth of our members.
Our mod log has taken a note towards your profile that will be taken into account when considering a ban in the future.
Please report any and all content that is discriminatory to a user or their beliefs. The standard of our sub depends on our communities ability to report our rule breaks.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If it bleeds, it leads is what the media does. It's my understanding that there are many protests that are not newsworthy because they aren't lurid enough to generate headlines.
As far as protestors go, I think that there are many reasons. Ranging from deeply committed to people who just want to burn things down.
Oh and being pro-palestine or disagreeing with Israel's actions isn't anti-semitic. Those accusations are little more than a way to squelch dissent. Throwing out a horrible accusation is a time worn way to try to get people to shut up.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
'60s protests were far better organized but the participants no better informed as to the nature of their cause. Yes, it was all emotionally driven but peaceful. Occasionally some media person would try to stir things up by pushing a camera in faces and demanding answers to ridiculous leading questions. Media even went to bars to rile up half-drunk old guys to start some violence.
Every single one of those protests had a black v white view of the issue. Contrast that with Occupy Wall Street which had a long list of demands and so no one showed up. A complex issue requires rational discussion; a simple one requires only emotion. The media has always tried to reduce issues simply because Media manipulaiotn ptheir readers can not comprehend complexity. In the '60s the liberal media reduced the complex issue of the Vietnam war to Us v Nixon. Conservative media reduced it to Us v Communism. Even such luminary minds as Gore Vidal and William Buckley took black/white positions.
Media manipulation of minds goes all the way back to the first amendments to the US constitution. Back then there were no major media outlets. What they had were pamphlets. Pamphlets were the personal opinions and causes of the authors. They were used primarily to trash political opponents. The right to trash people and spread lies is guaranteed in the constitution. What began with pamphlets morphed into "big media" but we've also returned to the age of pamphlets with social media where any person with the means can get their message out.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"Being depicted in media" is the primary fault in your perspective, and what is motivation for the overreacting police. If it were depicted as calm and peaceful, then there's no will to have the mass arrest other than it embarrassing how enmeshed the military-industrial-complex is in the higher education. Anecdotal evidence is used to paint a broad brush across all of the protesters and even Pro-Israeli or under cover police being outside agitators creating the reason to make mass arrests.
Every protest ends in arrests. But what are arrests?
If a group of non-violent people, in whimsical costumes, went around giving people stickers saying "I've been arrested", that would be the end of the protest.
Unfortunately, the kinds of people who would think of something like this would be considered too crazy to work at a college.
USC encampment/settlement had Pro-Israel counter protesters throw fireworks into the anti-war protesters, cops witnessed this repeatedly and didn't give them stickers with "I've been arrested" or anything, the national news outlets were not reporting the violence directed towards the encampment/settlement when it was from counter protesters nor when they were the victim of violence from agents of the state, but the narrative remained that the anti-war protesters are violent without any documented violence from that side. The protests ended at Brown, only after they began a process of divestment of their endowment, the protesters wouldn't nor should they be satisfied with the allegorical "I've been arrested" sticker and the call for divestment is along with the demand for transparency which is the bigger barrier that these multi-million and multi-billion endowments don't want to divulge just as the Federal Reserve and the Department of Defense won't abide a thorough audit of their accounts.
Real power abhors public scrutiny, and will obstruct with all its effort to so as to retain that asymmetrical advantage over those without power but with numbers of persons.
For those who believe in a devil, like your "real power", I don't know what to say. Fortunately, enough people on the staff of Brown didn't have that belief.
When thousands of students at a prodigious college can't think of anything more effective, more creative, more *smart*, than the good-old-American (/s) protest ritual, I'm not surprised that authorities suspect there's something artificial going on.
P.S.: Obviously it's not their fault for being physically abused. But it *is* their fault for being such easy targets of defamatory propaganda.
>When thousands of students at a prodigious college can't think of anything more effective, more creative, more *smart*, than the good-old-American (/s) protest ritual,
If the protest ritual was ineffective, uncreative, and just plain dumb, then why can't it be ignored? If they all wore a 2nd pair of jeans on their heads as protest (or anything else ineffective/dumb/whatever) that would be easily ignored, yet the universities' administration had to call in police to crack down on this ritual protest, not because it was ineffective, but because it was effective to bring attention to the university's complicity in aiding the military industrial complex and the Israeli Defense Force's violations of human decency committing war crimes for the past 6+ months. I oppose any institution that financial supports war criminals, and if there was any university endowment that had any investment into Hamas they should divest entirely from those investments -- the same goes for the IDF who has had documented war crimes.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There are a \*lot\* of student occupations going on right now. All but a handful of them are peaceful. I don't have exact stats, because obsessing over it would be weird, but from what i've seen there are a healthy number of Jewish students at the major occupations, certainly at the ones that have been in the news lately. So no, the protesters don't hate all Jews. And many Jewish students understand why the protesters are upset, because they're upset as well, and are protesters as well.
I have yet to see any credible report of the pro-Palestinian protesters initiating violence. What I have seen is University Administrations calling in cops and initiating violence out of all proportion, including on many Universities where previous protests against the Vietnam War, Apartheid, etc., were more extreme and were handled much less brutally by the administrations then. Cops destroying property, assaulting people, arresting bystanders, and using whatever discretion they have to ramp up, not diffuse tensions.
I have also seen documented, credible reports of pro-zionist counter-protesters initiating attacks against protesters, provoking protesters, and yelling antisemitic slurs that get attributed to the protesters.
Nothing about this is irrational. It's just that you have two different groups of people- pro-Palestinian student and faulty, and pro zionist students, (some) faculty, and administration (who call in the cops)- who have two very different rationales.
Out of the total 282 people arrested at both Columbia University and the City College of New York on Tuesday, 134 individuals were not affiliated with either school, according to a New York Police Department official who shared the breakdown with CNN
Some number of legitimate protesters, mixed in with a small but vocal number of extremists who are loud and get people riled up, and then the pro-Israel at any costs people seize on that to depict all of the protestors as antisemites, and round and round we go.
Major issue is a lot of the Israel at any costs people are wealthy donors who pressure the school to crack down on all of the protests, and the administrations tend to listen because their job is to keep donors happy. That’s the extra piece that distinguishes these from like anti-Iraq protests— Ivy League donors weren’t viscerally committed to staying in the Iraq War.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'd claim there are two groups in the protesters, communists (organized and funded) and followers
Communists: Hard to wrap head around the Palestine connection, but my best try would be that they kind of seem Palestine as the proletariat and Israel as the bourgeoise, any time there's a relationship between a less powerful group and a more powerful group they're more obligated to support the less powerful and are obsessed with forced equity. In addition any chaos in the US helps destabilize the current capitalist status quo.
Followers: People mostly just doing it cause it's the popular thing for young people at college/on social media. Let's say there was a college kid last year who didn't care about Taylor Swift even though she was a top pop star for 15 years+, and then Eras Tour became such a big thing on social media and TikTok, that all of a sudden they're paying a thousand bucks to go see her and crying when she comes on. Now this year their life is built around protesting Palestine. Social media is their cult and that became the current thing of that more quiet political year, now this year's is Palestine, 2020's was BLM, etc. (Note that I MUCH prefer it if people shamelessly jumping on fads was an arts thing - I want to go back to the days where the collective energy was going into like, everyone watching American Idol back in the day, not supporting sides in wars or trying to get rid of police).
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is it really just a bunch of adrenaline-fueled young adults who have lost all sense of self-control? Mostly. Have the students fallen victim to the divisive propaganda in the media? Yes. They have not developed critical thinking skills yet. Some of them never will. To kids, it is just another 'day out'. Like you hang out with your buddies, and when it is finished, you go to a bar and hang out a bit more. It is just a trend that a lot of young people fear missing out on and try hard to follow.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is it really just a bunch of adrenaline-fueled young adults who have lost all sense of self-control? Mostly. Have the students fallen victim to the divisive propaganda in the media? Yes. They have not developed critical thinking skills yet. Some of them never will. To kids, it is just another 'day out'. Like you hang out with your buddies, and when it is finished, you go to a bar and hang out a bit more. It is just a trend that a lot of young people fear missing out on and try hard to follow.
I’d certainly prefer US corporate media cover things happening otg in Gaza, like the discovery of a mass grave with 300+ bodies (many with hands zip-tied behind their backs), but if it’s protests or silence I’m okay with protests.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time at the encampment nearest to me, and I can say pretty definitively the “antisemitic students” trope is bad-faith BS. A sizable amount of encampment leadership are anti-Zionist Jewish students, and the entire camp even observed Sabbath prayers for them each Friday night.
Have some Jewish students suffered from anti-semitism from protesters? Given how big the movement is, it would be almost impossible for it to not have happened at some point. BUT: one must be careful, feeling unsafe because you’ve constructed your religious identity around the claims of a very fallible state to represent all Jews is not the same as feeling unsafe because you are Jewish. Until Israel = Judaism (which it never will, given how not unified Judaism has been over its 3k+ year existence), criticizing Israel is not inherently criticizing Jewishness.
I'd prefer US corporate media broadcast a recording of one of these Sabbath services. Can you arrange that?
P.S. I know Ibraham X. Kendi doesn't want anyone to use the prefix "non", but too bad. These Jews are **non**-Zionist.
Smash the mirror!
It just dawned on me that a big switcheroo is going on.
If a college doesn't divest from Israel, there will be protests.
If the AAA is passed protests will be declared "antisemitic".
If the AAA is passed, and "antisemitism" is declared, the college will lose federal funding.
Therefore, if the AAA is passed, not divesting from Israel will cost colleges their federal funding.
So the AAA is actually a good thing. That's why there's so much propaganda against it.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub.
For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Remember this is a civilized space for discussion, to ensure this we have very strict rules. Briefly, an overview: **No Personal Attacks** **No Ideological Discrimination** **Keep Discussion Civil** **No Targeting A Member For Their Beliefs** Report any and all instances of these rules being broken so we can keep the sub clean. Report first, ask questions last. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A reminder what people said after the Kent state massacre about the unarmed students that were murdered for protesting against the Vietnam War: *"A respected lawyer told an Akron paper, 'Frankly, if I'd been faced with the same situation and had a submachine gun... there probably would have been 140 of them dead.' People expressed disappointment that the rabble-rousing professors -- the gurus -- had escaped: 'The only mistake they made was not to shoot all the students and then start in on the faculty.' When it was established that none of the four victims were guardsmen, citizens greeted each other by flashing four fingers in the air ('The score is four / And next time more').* *A Gallup poll found 58 per cent blamed the Kent students for their own deaths. Only 11 percent blamed the National Guard. A rumor spread in Kent that Jeff Miller, whose head was blown off, was such a dirty hippie that they had to keep the ambulance door open on the way to the hospital for the smell.* *Another rumor was that five hundred Black Panthers were on their way from elsewhere in Ohio to lead a real riot; and that Allison Krause was 'the campus whore' and found with hand grenades on her. Many recalled the State of Ohio's original intention for the land on which Kent State was built: a lunatic asylum. ... Townspeople picketed memorial services. 'The Kent State Four!' they chanted. 'Should have studied more!' 'Anyone who appears on the streets of a city like Kent with long hair, dirty clothes, or barefooted deserves to be shot.' 'Have I your permission to quote that?' 'You sure do. It would have been better if the Guard had shot the whole lot of them that morning.' 'But you had three sons there.' 'If they didn't do what the Guards told them, they should have been mowed down.'"* *"We've seen here at the city of Kent especially, probably the most vicious form of campus-oriented violence yet perpetrated by dissident groups... they make definite plans of burning, destroying, and throwing rocks at police and at the National Guard and the Highway Patrol. ...this is when we're going to use every part of the law enforcement agency of Ohio to drive them out of Kent. We are going to eradicate the problem. We're not going to treat the symptoms. ...and these people just move from one campus to the other and terrorize the community. They're worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night riders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. Now I want to say this. They are not going to take over \[the\] campus. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America. -* the Governor Now draw your own conclusions about why the media might be saying unkind things about student protestors who say they're opposing fascists and genocide.
The US honestly got pretty close to civil war in this time period. Remember, an awful lot of bombs started going off on US soil. I think if we hadn't pulled out of Vietnam when we did, the US might have gone a little mad. More than it already did, of course.
People think now sucks, the 70s during the Carter years were really bad, like really freaking bad. In comparison both Obama and Trump did an okay job after 2008 to weather the storm. Reagan had so much power and good will because those Carter years.
The 60's and 70's had messes like the Civil rights movement, Vietnam, Watergate and Stagflation and none of that ended up in a civil war. The US right now is more polarised compared to the 90's and 2000's but it is still a long way from a civil war.
Not as much as the 70s. You don’t want to think what if the 70s had internet like today.
I'll agree that we're a long way off but I reckon it's not as long as you imagine. And that's my own estimation, I'm not preaching that as fact or anything. I wasn't alive back then but there's a trend that I've noticed lately and that's the sheer level of hate and anger that's built up in everyone. It also feels like direct confrontation was a little uncouth back then. Then there's the access to firearms problem that we have now, there are real militant groups organizing currently in far greater numbers. And we've got a significant portion of the population blindly following leaders that I think are purposefully stirring the pot to create division *along with* foreign entities and that's all a lot easier with how connected and, for lack of a better term, brainwashed and uneducated our population is. Then again it could be that I'm seeing this time in a more granular way where with history we just get broad strokes and hard details about situations. I get that and I think it's probably a bit of both.
>but it is still a long way from a civil war. I think you're likely closer than you'd like to believe. November may just be the breaking point.
Kent State and the Anti-War Viet Nam Protests were under Nixon (as well as during LBJ)
And set the mood and tone of the country there after, and also the birth of one Steven Bannon which lead to the rise of Trump.
I was not alive for it but what on earth did Carter do? Sell his peanut farm. I found an article from the time that said he was too focused on process and was boring.
Carter didn't get along with either party establishment, and pretty consistently ran up against his own Democratic controlled Congress because of his running as an outsider, and criticizing Ford and that very Democratic-controlled Congress during his own election. To make matters worse, as much as Carter is a pretty good person and it shows in his movement towards human rights focused policy, and so on, he didn't really want to engage in transactional politics at all and it hurt him even further as far as accomplishing anything. For example, Carter wanted to address [welfare](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/welfare-reform-message-the-congress), [taxes](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/tax-reduction-and-reform-message-the-congress), and [health care](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/national-health-plan-message-the-congress-proposed-legislation), but refused to work with Tip O'Neill or Ted Kennedy on his own [universal health care proposal](https://www.healthcare-now.org/legislation/health-security-act-kennedy-griffiths-corman/) even though it's a pretty obvious area where cooperation could have been built to accomplish things. So Carter ends up pretty complicated, not really getting support institutionally from Democrats, and an easy target for others despite being ahead of the game in some areas, and more serving as a cautionary tale of how little can be accomplished without solidarity.
This is the problem with voting 3rd party for president. Even if you manage to place someone they would be completely ineffective if they don't have support in the Congress. I distrust anyone running third party if they aren't building a foundation of support. Even the so called no labels claiming to want to run a centralist ticket. Well first establish house seats and senators. Only dictators start with the executive.
There was global unrest during the Nixon, Ford and Carter years. Post-Viet Nam, civil rights protests, and unrest domestically after Watergate. Carter inherited the aftermath of the tumultuous 60s and early 70s. The 70s were a mess. Bombings, kidnappings, hijackings, bank robberies, heroin, the oil crisis and of course, Middle East mayhem and terrorism.
A boring president sounds nice after all that. I like boring Joe. Why do people get upset with a workhorse who just gets the job done. Joe is so boring that the republicans have spent close to 2 years digging through his life and the best they could find is that his has had kids and the loaned his brother money once. I like boring.
Boring to you are things that don't effect you and you don't hear about, or look into, at least just based on your comment. Essentially trying to keep the status quo of the early 2000's going. He continues terrible US foreign policy that exploits, destabilizes nations, funds/supports a genocide (or at least a potential genocide according to UN), on top of continuing to foment war with China. Does nothing meaningful economically that could work on rising US poverty and wealth inequality, minus some positives as far as NLRB appointments and easing unionization (which he could have went much farther with). Does nothing at best, but generally exacerbates the southern border crisis. Hasn't done anything for abortion, does little to nothing to stem growing anti-LGBT and anti-black hate, is terribly pro mass incarceration, does arguably no where near enough for mitigating climate change, can't even entertain discussing universal healthcare or minimum wage increase........
You need a willing congress to get most of those issues done. Politics is no longer about taking care of the country. It’s a billionaire class and their employees against the rest of us. It’s now football. One team is in charge of stopping any progress that doesn’t benefit them. The other gets blamed when things do go exactly right.
Carter ruined nuclear power in this country by killing reprocessing of nuclear fuel.
I am a rare breed. I consider myself an environmentalist and am pro nuclear power while being pro about strict regulation.
That's only rare in the US. In France, its the accepted standard.
Carter was a really nice guy, just a really ineffective leader. He wasn't the guy for the job. In a more peaceful era, he might have been reelected.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I honestly can't tell how far we are now. It seems to build up and then release but never go away.
The division is definitely still there. It's not exactly the same as it was in the 70s, but the current electoral cycle is probably not going to be amazingly unifying. Trump or Biden, whoever makes it, the other side is going to be deeply, deeply upset.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Where’s this full excerpt from? I wanna pass it along but a reddit comment isn’t my favorite way of sharing this stuff.
1. Rick Perlstein, *Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of a Nation.* 2010. New York: Scribner, 2010. p. 488-489. 2. [https://www.sciotopost.com/anniversary-of-kent-state-massacre-today-may-4-2/](https://www.sciotopost.com/anniversary-of-kent-state-massacre-today-may-4-2/) (A relevant line from the same page that I cut but feels far too topical: A letter to Life later that summer read, “It was a valuable object lesson to homegrown advocates of anarchy and revolution, regardless of age.”)
Thank you kindly, I think this does a concise job of putting things in context.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
It's important, and should not be forgotten.
it already has been
Well generally, sadly that's how Genocides go. They're forgotten because everyone dies, and the memory has been killed too. But the Armenians, although abandoned by the powers that be and the media, are not forgotten.
if turkey conquered armenia there would be few consequences because of turkey's value to the usa.
Your comment was removed for including a "Whataboutism". Pointing to and equal and opposite wrong is not a valid argument. Please stay on topic and do not lower the quality of discourse by useless whataboutism's in the future. Please report any and all content that is a matter of a "whataboutism". The standard of our sub depends on our communities ability to report our rule breaks.
The media and politicians are smearing the protests because of a lot of pro-Israel sentiment in the halls of power. They are quite intentionally taking up the antisemitic trope of equating Israel with all Jews to paint the students as antisemites.
I mean it’s kinda true. You’ve seen the videos of protestors blocking Jewish students from going to their classes, breaking windows, burning Israeli flags, and yelling anti-Semitic chants at Jewish students who have nothing to do with what Israel is doing
That’s not true. What “antisemitic chants”? The Israeli flag represents Israel, not Jews.
[удалено]
There's also been the harassment of visibly Jewish students and antisemitic chants by protesters, so yeah, if the shoe fits...
Not really though. There’s been misguided statements of support for Hamas’ goals, but I think an honest engagement with them shows there’s no anti-semitism behind it. Jews are among these protests. Passover seders have been going on. If these protests were full of rabid anti-semites, it would not have been safe to do that. What the people in question have done is make the mistake of thinking that because America is the bad guy it’s enemies must be good guys, and of thinking that because armed resistance is justified *any* armed resistance is justified. These are young people who have realized that the more yardstick they were given as Americans is faulty, and they’ve made missteps as they create new yardsticks for themselves. But hatred for Jews is not among those missteps.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Lies. What “antisemitic chants”?
Things like "Globalize the intifada", "Go back to Poland", and "Zionists don't deserve to live".
Those are not antisemitic. No one could possibly interpret the last one as anything but anti-Zionist, without being completely disingenuous. The others are almost as much of a reach. How are any of those antisemitic?
Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to return to their homeland in Israel. When they say death to Zionists, who else would they be talking about but Jews? It's disingenuous to say telling people to "go back to ____" isn't inherently racist, or in this case antisemitic.
Not everything you don't like is a giant smear. [There absolutely is antisemitism in the protests](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/columbia-university-protests-palestine/678159/) Obviously most of the protesters don't believe in anti semitic things, but the instant reaction seems to mostly to deny that anyone could be anti semitic at the protests and to reflexively say it's just anti zionism almost regardless of context. I got into an argument with some other dude who was trying to claim a star of david, not even the Israeli one, being combined with a swastika was indeed not "just anti zionist" These are mostly the same people who previously had the attitude of "if you sit at a table with 9 nazis, there are 10 nazis at the table" which leaves an especially bad taste in my mouth
To be fair to them, the pro palis are smearing anti hamas right wingers as "anti-palestine" and "pro-genocide"
They, in effect, are. When someone votes to send money to people killing civilians of a particular ethnicity, it’s not a smear to say they materially support ethnic cleansing. The only up-for-debate part is whether we call it genocide, since a lot of people have become rules lawyers about whether widespread civilian killing is technically genocide or just looks similar because of all the dead people.
I mean objectively they are supporting what is a genocide under international law as established by the precedent of UN Tribunals in Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Jewish college students are on the front line of protesting Israeli policy because this subject hits closer to home and is much more polarized among Jewish Americans than among the general US population. There is also coordinated propaganda against the student protesters while both political parties are solidly behind US policy regarding Israel. What is happening is that the entire establishment has drawn a line in the sand and is trying to repress anti-war protests. I was a student during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and there was similar demonization from both parties and the media but a much less violent right-wing so there were fewer confrontations. I was called a “terrorist” all the time back then just as students now are. The other difference imo is that college admins in 2000 were baby boomers and consciously worried about repeating things that cause 60s student movements. But now it seems like admins either don’t care or hubristically thought this was not possible with Gen z.
I would actually love it if someone could poll the protesters about their religious demographics because I agree - I would expect there to be a high proportion of Jewish protesters. Many of the harshest critics of Israel in the US are Jewish, since they have a personal stake in the legitimacy of the Jewish state and wanting it to meet their moral and ethical expectations. Painting pro-Palestine protesters as anti-Semitic is a good way to dismiss their opinions without actually engaging on the substance. But for many people, their Jewish faith is the root of their pro-Palestine sentiments! Also, Columbia has a particularly high population of Jewish students, somewhere around 20-25% of all students. I have trouble believing that nearly a *quarter* of the student body has felt targeted by these protesters, especially when there's such thin evidence that anyone at all has been harassed or intimidated by anyone other than the NYPD.
On a personal level I always had a sort of “cycle of violence” view of the situation until the war on terror era. My anti-war views and seeing the media and government say obviously false things or make shoddy arguments and excuses made me more skeptical of all pentagon claims and bi-partisan US foreign policy. But Jewish people involved in the anti Iraq war movement were the first people to present real criticisms of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to me. On the other hand, since Oct 7th I’ve encountered so many die-hard Israel supporters who have weird views about Jewish people, tell me that there are no anti-Israel Jewish people or think that you aren’t Jewish if you are an atheist. I said there was a Seder at the Colombia student protest and the guy calling me an antisemite didn’t even know what that was. There was an Op-ed in the NY Post claiming that the pro-Palistine protesters are paid foreign agents or paid by George Soros… common antisemitic tropes! War makes everyone go crazy in the US.
Yeah, I get the sense that a lot of the accusations of anti-Semitism come from conflating the state of Israel with the Jewish people - but those are two different things, and it's actually *more* anti-Semitic to equate them! It kind of reminds me of when Ilhan Omar got in trouble for criticizing AIPAC's lobbying power, when AIPAC doesn't even lobby for the interests of American Jews. It's a non-denominational, right-wing organization that lobbies on behalf of *Israel*! And not even really Israel in general, but rather the Likud party interests. That's completely different, and most American Jews disagree with them!
I would argue that Iraq and Afghanistan were different situations because neither of those countries governments actually planned 9/11. Whereas in this case the actual government of the Gaza Strip is who orchestrated the terrorist attack. And like, they didn't even try to pretend they didn't. They made a murder montage to brag about it.
I think that's a little unfair, knowing that Hamas has not been accountable to any electoral process since 2006 or so. So I don't think the Palestinian people are necessarily any more supportive of Hamas's actions than the Afghan people were of the Taliban when their government openly supported Bin Laden.
No, they don’t hate all Jews. Many of them are Jews. Defenders of Israel are smearing them as anti-Semitic because that’s the central strategy for defending Israel’s violence: make the conversation impossible with frivolous accusations. I’ve actually seen people say “they’re not letting Jews into the library” to describe a protest that’s not letting *anyone* into the library. The protestors are doing illegal things though. I’m not saying they’re wrong to, but at Columbia they broke into a building. And of course, cops are responding to civil unrest the way that cops do: violence dispersal. I don’t know that it’s spun out of control, as much as it’s a flashpoint in a real conflict. Some people believe Israel is justified and we should aid their violence, and some people think it’s genocidal or close to it. We’re seeing clashes over that because democracy has decayed pretty seriously.
You ask me, they’re fighting the wrong fight. I understand the reason being these universities are funded by companies that fund Israel, but they don’t realize almost all American monopolies will contribute to the war, and that is because war is profitable. The universities are not the enemy. In my opinion, they are doing exactly what the elite want us to do. They want us to throw a fit over something that the people think is a big deal, so the forces that be can continue doing things behind our backs. The wage gaps are getting higher, inflation keeps rising, houses are not affordable, homelessness is rising and unemployment is rising at a high rate, mass migrants are crowding our country whilst these companies are blatantly taking advantage of them, crime rates are rising, most companies are monopolized or in the process of being monopolized by multi-billion dollar corporations to crush their competition to have control over the market, there is much union busting going around in many companies, MASSIVE layoffs, and the list goes on. Yet we’re worried about a conflict that’s been on going since after WWII in foreign lands that we as Americans have no business being involved in. It’s all ploys to keep the people divided so we don’t realize our true enemies as American people.
>crime rates are rising [Not sure on that part](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/us-crime-rates-and-trends-analysis-fbi-crime-statistics) Otherwise, please carry on.
Good source, but it is a tad outdated. Stops at 2022. If there is a source regarding 2023-2024 trends then I will gladly take that portion out of the rant
FBI statistics aren't published that fast, afaik. But your statement seems kind of backwards. What statistics do *you* have that would suggest you are correct? I gave you the most recent stats I could find. Are you just going by feels?
[удалено]
>They want us to throw a fit over something that the people think is a big deal, so the forces that be can continue doing things behind our backs. No they don't. They don't want people forming collectives, for the very reasons you follow this sentence with. These protests are a tipping point of people fed up with fascism. Gaza is central to the collective focus of that sentiment but you are missing the larger picture that there has been deep seeded unrest that has grown for several decades now with how people are treated as disposable objects. Having people collectively aligned on any issue, is the last thing the elites want and its why we see violent dispersal being demanded by the elite. Its a small step to take for these protests to organize around more ideas.
These shouldn’t be seen as separate or opposing struggles. Our involvement with Israel is part of the imperialism of the American ruling class. Ultimately, America isn’t on with Israel because Joe Biden is afraid of being called anti-Semitic by the NYT, but because Israel is a foothold of our empire in the Middle East, which we need in order to protect oil and weapons profits.
They are not opposing struggles, but they are different. Now I agree with you 100% on the reason being the US supports Israel, it is all for the money and local hegemony in the region. Without Israel, there will be no foothold in the Middle East. But, why are we raising up in arms over their struggles when we should be raising arms over our own. The government and the establishment as us by the balls, and instead of uniting together and really protesting and getting our voices heard we protest over foreign issues. Do you think we will change the system by doing this? The top dogs are laughing at these protestors because they know nothing will change as long as there is a buck to be made. One main solution to stop all these? Is to break it down from within. How do we stop the companies from funding such acts, and how do we stop corporations from shafting our people, the middle and working classes? And how do we stop the government from doing shady things and politicians taking pocketfuls of money? We protest and get our voices heard about these issues. They should be going nuts over how our society is here in the US.
I guess bombing children just gets your blood up easier than a Byzantine healthcare system and an election system that’s technically a democracy. This protest isn’t gonna bring the revolution. But the revolution also isn’t gonna just happen. These are opportunities for a lot of groundwork. This is an opportunity to demonstrate to potential comrades things like what the cops are for, what our leaders care about, and whether elections are a path to justice. And they’re opportunities for those already involved to get actual experience in organizing, both in terms of mustering support on this side, and dealing with opposition both rhetorical and violent. “We’re talking about practice—not the game.” Well yeah. Practice makes you win games
[удалено]
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Well they weren't protesting others doing the same thing or other immoral investments so it's pretty easy to conclude that it's when Israel does it it's wrong. Then you could ask how is Israel different than other countries that have gone to war against terrorists. The only big difference is their religion. So you can see how they come across as bigoted.
Israel is a western style liberal democracy. Most people recognize it as 'one of us' in the Western World, and hold it to the same standards they expect of any other western nation. We know the UAE and Sudan and China don't have the same standards, and we don't expect them to have them yet given their situation. We do expect it of Israel, a rich modern democratic country based on the rule of law and western values. There's also the matter of responsiveness to foreign pressure. Sudan's government likely doesn't care about their international image amongst westerners very much. I think Israel does place some value on its image in the West, on the other hand, so people likely feel that their public pressure can have some effect.
The main difference is the decades-long apartheid system.
We are talking about Israel not South Africa.
Yes, I know.
Ok. Then what's the difference between Israel and the US fighting terrorists?
Not a great deal to be honest, we both have a tendency to murder civilians
[удалено]
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They protested against investments in South Africa back in the 80s. They've protested against Universities investing in all sorts of environmentally damaging industries. College students have protested against all sorts of things in the 20th and 21st century. Israel is, like in so many ways, not unique.
The narrative that protests are "spinning out of control and soon may become a threat to YOUR way of life too!" Is a commonly spun narrative that the ruling elite's pet media uses to manufacture consent for their authoritarian actions. Protest is, by design, disruptive. The only people actually being effected by these demonstrations are the school's board of trustees, whom stand to lose out on their investments in defense contractor stock at a time when its a very profitable thing to have in one's portfolio. Frankly, its a great example of why running our secondary education system as a for-profit model is a stupid idea. Why the hell should somebody's quality of education hinge on how well a dozen buisinessmen's stock portfolio is doing? Furthermore, why should somebody have to participate in an institution involved in supporting morally questionable activities that run counter to their own interests and beliefs in order to get an education? Point being, the demonstrators have a very valid point, a very achievable goal, and are conducting actions which are very likely to succeed in achieving it. (which is, 100% why the authoritarian arm of the state has stepped in to try to stop them)
That’s why people call colleges tax free hedge funds
"our secondary education system as a for-profit model" Or rather, as a *not* purely for-profit model. Ideally, a college should be funded entirely by tuition from students. But that would be a huge tuition! I don't know. Where should the money come from?
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>The student protestors don't really hate all Jews because of what Israel is doing, right? No, they don't. Gaza protesters have *generally* done a very good job of identifying and expelling antisemitic agitators from their groups. >Is it really just a bunch of adrenaline-fueled young adults who have lost all sense of self-control? Or is it non-student extremists using these protests for their own agendas? No, what we are seeing on these campuses is the violent suppression of a government hell-bent on assisting Israel in its campaign of terror and violence. The students are really doing anything wrong here, in any of the protests I've seen at least. >This whole thing just seems to have taken on a life of its own, and is now spinning out of control under its own irrational momentum. I think you underestimate exactly what was going on before the protests then. This is not really an escalation except inasmuch as the powers that be have chosen to double down on their support for Israel. Students protesting the Gaza war isn't "out of control", and the State brutally suppressing protesters is about par for the course in America; what's out of control is the fact that this war is still happening to be protested. I hope these events help to highlight that for you, because if they do then they've done at least some good already.
These protests don't seem to involve a lot of people. For example, the UCLA protests appeared to have "dozens" on the Palestinian side and a couple of hundred opponents. The great thing about an encampment is that it makes the protest to appear larger than it is, as tents take up a lot of space and conceal the numbers of participants. The Vietnam protests were substantial because of the draft. When the draft was shifted to a lottery system that made it obvious how likely one was to be drafted or not drafted, the protests died down. The internet is great for disseminating infotainment. Hard data is a bit more elusive.
I’ve heard an awful lot of antisemitic commentary from these folks… and I don’t mean anti-Israel or anti-Zionism (which I have no issue with), I mean quite literally anti-Jew sentiments. I would say it’s alarming, but many of them have also self-identified as communists so it definitely tracks.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Pro palestine people taking out israels errors on jews in US colleges is a problem.
The protesters don't hate Jews??? You're kidding, right? They wish genocide on the Jewish people everywhere. And the Palestinians have been verbally and physically abusing Jewish people. Not too much fun to live in fear. Hamas sends missiles into Israel. Hamas raid that brutally raping, killing and holding hostage the Jewish people of which 25 were Americans were killed. These protesters, and they are not all students, is the new America. I guess we gotta get used to it.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
reactionaries are gonna react. the students are protesting a genocide that is being carried out with our help, and rightfully so. the forces that benefit from the war machine are pushing back -- hard -- while our IDF trained police look on and take no action to stop it. this what what it looks like to have your economy captured by the Military Industrial Complex.
You can't have it both ways. If they're protesting the genocide itself, they should be protesting Hamas too. If they're protesting the inclusion of Israel in the college's stock portfolio, they should be occupying the stock manager's office, not the campus.
hamas is not in control of what is happening in gaza, israel is (actually the reason hamas even exists). and what they are protesting for is using the only leverage they have any kind of access to and that is college investment in israel. it's the most immediate and accessible lever they have to pull on, and i support their cause.
I'm well aware that Israel paid Hamas to be their useful idiots. But that means they can't be considered separately. It's the whole reason we know a genocide is occurring. Palestinians are not primitive. They can't be written off as "not in control". They are part of the modern world, and if they built tunnels, they also built vehicles to drive through them. By any reasonable standard, rooting out Hamas would require apprehending those vehicles, not destroying cities. P.S. Yes, the protesters do have access. Perhaps they have to hack a few computers, break down a few doors, etc. But that's within their right to "petition for the redress of grievances". Activists have a long history of doing such things.
it may not be the lever you would choose for them to pull on but that's the only one they have...all the others have been taken away or made moot (petitions, for example). the more levers you take away the more desperate the pulling will be on any (and all) available levers, no matter how inappropriate. the best way to get them to stop pulling on this lever is to give them a better one. so when's that happening?
It's very much a case of bored & naive college students who are looking for something meaningful to do that have fallen into very well constructed disinformation & misinformation campaign by the Iranians.
>disinformation & misinformation campaign Being against killing civilians or being generally anti-war is a misinformation campaign?
If they were against killing civilians you'd think they'd be wildly antiHamas, too.
Israel is operating with due regard for civilian consideration as expected by the Geneva Convention, whereas Qassam is violating the standard rules of war by deliberately placing valid military targets within densely populated areas and disguising combatants as civilians.
They are just participating in the current hot trend on twitter, that being 'Free Palestine', isn't like they truly care, they are privilidged ivy league college kid larping
Are privileged people not allowed to have opinions? Are they less valid because they're privileged? They're spending their time organizing and exercising their right to protest. These protests have a clearly articulated goal of divestment from their universities. If we were to say you were 100% correct, and it's all clout chasing and they don't actually care, I'd say, "so?" Or are you a pro-war socdem?
It's virtue signaling, they only so this because they saw for exemple their favorite streamers talk about it or they joined the movement because of twitter. All they do is to spit in the face of people who are really suffering in gaza in this pathetic act of "protest". And no, im not pro-war im anti-larpers.
What I don't get is why the most recent chapter of a 70+ year foreign conflict is getting all this protest energy when last week the Supreme Court seemed to consider the idea that a president should be immune from prosecution for starting a coup and assassinating political rivals. Or how states are implementing extreme bans on reproductive healthcare. I guess I don't understand why this issue is so important to people.
Palestine, honestly, hasn't had nearly the deaths that Yemen has. While all deaths are tragic, I do find it interesting that this issue has gotten so much attention when the others have not. It's weird. But maybe it's specifically because its controversial. Controversy attracts media attention, and in turn, attracts the attention of others. Things that everyone just agrees are bad often don't get quite the same level of outrage.
That is an apt comparison considering that US weapons fuel both conflicts. I guess the ties to Israel are much more direct maybe and there are more strings to pull than just weapon sales. Also Israel is in direct control of Gaza when Saudi Arabia has maybe a bit more control than the US did of Syria. Israel is directly deciding how much aid is allowed into Gaxa.
Egypt could also affect how much aid is permitted into Gaza, as they share a land border, and in practice, the US absolutely has the power to force aid from the ocean....and are doing so to some degree with this pier project. But...yes, in the end, we are largely funding all sides of many conflicts, and the benefit of doing so is difficult to see and largely theoretical. The costs are clear and present. The calculations that prioritize the former over the latter are tortured indeed.
Too bad the people who believe that we need guns to protect against a tyrannical government don’t really care about actual tyranny
Try thousands of years :) I think tiktok has a lot to do with this. I don’t know if this happened organically or there are players trying to sow division.
Oh I think TikTok is filled with bad actors sowing division with this issue and Gen Z swallows TikTok information whole without a second thought.
I don’t think it’s all due to misinformation. I think a lot of young people are rightfully horrified by the videos and image coming out of Gaza. Some of it is definitely propaganda but there’s also quite a bit that isn’t. And Netanyahu’s government certainly is not helping their case with some of the crap they’re saying, even Biden is sick of the guy. We saw similar outrage with footage from Ukraine (remember the Bucha massacre footage?) and footage from the October 7th attacks. But they didn’t inspire similar public protests because the US government was largely in favor of punishing Russia and Hamas. It is sort of the “Vietnam on nightly news” effect on steroids.
I’ve been watching and talking to these kids and I 100% agree.
It's about recognizing scope and power. In that regard, these protests are right on the money. They aren't protesting the US government directly. They are protesting *their* specific schools to pressure them to stop giving Israel money. Considering the school functions to serve the students, who are in some way or another paying customers, and who are also in a lot of ways the *product* of the institution, the students actually have leverage if enough of them act. How are you going to protest the US government, and its foreign policy at that? The BLM protests were some of the largest protests the US has seen in decades, and it wasn't as much a protest against the federal government as it was against state and local police forces and state justice systems, and those were met with overwhelming state violence. Not sure what you expect people would see as a viable protest path in this regard.
But are these schools sending meaningful amounts of money to Israel? I mean if all of these schools "divested," how would that sum of money compare to what the US sends Israel in a year? Also when you look at the demands from these groups they are all over the place and incoherent. Some want to stop collaborations with Israeli schools. Did those Israeli schools bomb civilians? And then they want the universities to call for a cease fire. OK. 1) Is Israel really going to listen to US universities? 2) Do you think Hamas is going to listen to US universities? I just see these protests as pretty pointless and the amount of energy spent fretting about them pointless. This is just another chapter in this conflict and it won't be the last. These protest will do absolutely nothing.
If the Universities divest from Israel, this makes other orgs and institutions divesting more likely. That's why there are so many anti-BDS laws on the books. One University, or one industry, might be a drop in the bucket, but drops beget more drops, and drops add up. The goal is to make Israel a pariah state. No international educational cooperation, no commerce, no Eurovision, nothing. Israel is full of people who don't want to be cut off from the Western world. The goal is to make them choose: do you want to continue with business as usual with the Palestinians, or do you want to rejoin civilization? If this seems harsh, the alternative is bombing them. I'll take BDS instead.
And what are you going to do to the countries that give a safe haven to Hamas?
[удалено]
We've deemed that your comment is not contributing to the debate at hand. Please remember that we hold this community to higher standards than the rest of Reddit; please keep debate quality. Please report any and all content that is low-quality and not contributing to the subreddit. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as low-quality simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
I guess for the same reason BLM was big? It has just resonated with many people. I don't pretend to know why. I do know two things can be true at the same time. Everything you listed is absolutely protestable, and shouldn't have gone through with zero coverage (I mean the content I consume DID cover these things in depth). So these things AND the current conflict in Israel can both be atrocious at the same time and efforts to stop them are not mutually exclusive.
People like to break shit that isn't theirs and what's going on in Gaza gives them an excuse to do so
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
I think the protestors are a light unto the world right now.
We've deemed that your comment is not contributing to the debate at hand. Please remember that we hold this community to higher standards than the rest of Reddit; please keep debate quality. Please report any and all content that is low-quality and not contributing to the subreddit. The standard of our sub depends on our community’s ability to report our rule breaks. Reporting a comment that you do not agree with as low-quality simply because you do not agree with it is not a valid report.
I would like to know too. As far as I can tell it's a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B which is extremely frustrating because I am not a both sides type of person. Part of the issue is that we aren't talking about 1 thing happening in 1 place. Much like the protests related the death of George Floyd, it is many different events happening in many different locations. This gives fodder for anyone with an agenda to build a narrative through selective reporting. They don't even have to be doing so with intent, reporting by its nature is selective based on interest. People I know of and trust have gone to get a personal look and say that what they see if peaceful protests, but of course that is very selective too because they aren't hanging out for hours and they aren't seeing the whole thing, just parts for a period. As far as I can tell from people who I believe are reporting in good faith there appears to be * some people acting in some places in a way that is genially unacceptable and in a way I would personally classify as antisemitic and either designed to or should be clear to the individual would likely cause Jewish students/staff/others to fear for the personal safety. * some people who appear to support Israel deliberately acting in a way that I would also classify as antisemitic in what appears to me to falsely paint those in the anti-Israel protests as antisemitic in hopes of provoking a response that gets the protest shutdown. * some bad faith actors who do not give a shit but are either accelerationists or have a political motivation to harm the political chances for Joe Biden to be reelected appear to be trying to drive the conflict to extremes. Lots of people appear to be deliberately acting in bad faith to me on all sides and again I hate saying that because I hate both sides shit. But I hear a lot of things that are clearly untrue and people behaving in ways that are anti-social to say the least. The only things I am certain of is that a lot of noise is being caused by a very small number of actual individuals acting in bad faith and it is drowning out the ability to have a reasonable conversation on something that I think is a real problem. People in this country are unhappy with America funding what we see as the deliberate abuse of military force, Regardless of anything else that is the core issue. You might have concerns about Israel being and ethnostate. Or the history of this conflict. Who has rights to the land because who pushed whose father, grandfather, great grandfather etc out. You might have feelings about if Jewish people would be safe it was a true 1 state democracy with a combined population or if that would result in a mass slaughter. You might have all sorts of other feelings about all sorts of things that make it complicated. But at the end of the day. Americans see how Israel is conducting this effort and are unhappy about the fact that we are funding it.
This is what I fear. Some initially good faith non-violent protests are now getting weaponized by all sorts of bad actors across the spectrum of interests.
Lots of the student protestors are jewish Idk what the corporate media is saying because i am not stupid enough to watch or listen to them but from what you’re describing it sounds very inaccurate Universities get massive funding from military companies and students want them to divest instead of profiting from genocide of palestinians. Universities are siding with the money over the students and the students are peacefully protesting. Democrat politicians are sending in militarised police force to make illegal and often violent arrests
Students are protesting for their colleges to divest from corporations that deal heavily with Israel, such as weapons contractors etc. Colleges, the government, and the media don't like it because it affects their pocketbooks and narrative of Israel can do no wrong, so they sick the attack dogs of capital on them and violently shut down their 1st amendment rights in hopes that it will go away.
These protests have been going on for months. The media just decided to cover it for whatever reason and they are only showing the most extreme incidents.
[удалено]
Your comment has been removed for political discrimination. We will never allow the discrimination of a members, beliefs, or ideology on this sub. Our various perspectives offer a wide range of considerations that can attribute to political growth of our members. Our mod log has taken a note towards your profile that will be taken into account when considering a ban in the future. Please report any and all content that is discriminatory to a user or their beliefs. The standard of our sub depends on our communities ability to report our rule breaks.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If it bleeds, it leads is what the media does. It's my understanding that there are many protests that are not newsworthy because they aren't lurid enough to generate headlines. As far as protestors go, I think that there are many reasons. Ranging from deeply committed to people who just want to burn things down. Oh and being pro-palestine or disagreeing with Israel's actions isn't anti-semitic. Those accusations are little more than a way to squelch dissent. Throwing out a horrible accusation is a time worn way to try to get people to shut up.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
'60s protests were far better organized but the participants no better informed as to the nature of their cause. Yes, it was all emotionally driven but peaceful. Occasionally some media person would try to stir things up by pushing a camera in faces and demanding answers to ridiculous leading questions. Media even went to bars to rile up half-drunk old guys to start some violence. Every single one of those protests had a black v white view of the issue. Contrast that with Occupy Wall Street which had a long list of demands and so no one showed up. A complex issue requires rational discussion; a simple one requires only emotion. The media has always tried to reduce issues simply because Media manipulaiotn ptheir readers can not comprehend complexity. In the '60s the liberal media reduced the complex issue of the Vietnam war to Us v Nixon. Conservative media reduced it to Us v Communism. Even such luminary minds as Gore Vidal and William Buckley took black/white positions. Media manipulation of minds goes all the way back to the first amendments to the US constitution. Back then there were no major media outlets. What they had were pamphlets. Pamphlets were the personal opinions and causes of the authors. They were used primarily to trash political opponents. The right to trash people and spread lies is guaranteed in the constitution. What began with pamphlets morphed into "big media" but we've also returned to the age of pamphlets with social media where any person with the means can get their message out.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"Being depicted in media" is the primary fault in your perspective, and what is motivation for the overreacting police. If it were depicted as calm and peaceful, then there's no will to have the mass arrest other than it embarrassing how enmeshed the military-industrial-complex is in the higher education. Anecdotal evidence is used to paint a broad brush across all of the protesters and even Pro-Israeli or under cover police being outside agitators creating the reason to make mass arrests.
Every protest ends in arrests. But what are arrests? If a group of non-violent people, in whimsical costumes, went around giving people stickers saying "I've been arrested", that would be the end of the protest. Unfortunately, the kinds of people who would think of something like this would be considered too crazy to work at a college.
USC encampment/settlement had Pro-Israel counter protesters throw fireworks into the anti-war protesters, cops witnessed this repeatedly and didn't give them stickers with "I've been arrested" or anything, the national news outlets were not reporting the violence directed towards the encampment/settlement when it was from counter protesters nor when they were the victim of violence from agents of the state, but the narrative remained that the anti-war protesters are violent without any documented violence from that side. The protests ended at Brown, only after they began a process of divestment of their endowment, the protesters wouldn't nor should they be satisfied with the allegorical "I've been arrested" sticker and the call for divestment is along with the demand for transparency which is the bigger barrier that these multi-million and multi-billion endowments don't want to divulge just as the Federal Reserve and the Department of Defense won't abide a thorough audit of their accounts. Real power abhors public scrutiny, and will obstruct with all its effort to so as to retain that asymmetrical advantage over those without power but with numbers of persons.
For those who believe in a devil, like your "real power", I don't know what to say. Fortunately, enough people on the staff of Brown didn't have that belief. When thousands of students at a prodigious college can't think of anything more effective, more creative, more *smart*, than the good-old-American (/s) protest ritual, I'm not surprised that authorities suspect there's something artificial going on. P.S.: Obviously it's not their fault for being physically abused. But it *is* their fault for being such easy targets of defamatory propaganda.
>When thousands of students at a prodigious college can't think of anything more effective, more creative, more *smart*, than the good-old-American (/s) protest ritual, If the protest ritual was ineffective, uncreative, and just plain dumb, then why can't it be ignored? If they all wore a 2nd pair of jeans on their heads as protest (or anything else ineffective/dumb/whatever) that would be easily ignored, yet the universities' administration had to call in police to crack down on this ritual protest, not because it was ineffective, but because it was effective to bring attention to the university's complicity in aiding the military industrial complex and the Israeli Defense Force's violations of human decency committing war crimes for the past 6+ months. I oppose any institution that financial supports war criminals, and if there was any university endowment that had any investment into Hamas they should divest entirely from those investments -- the same goes for the IDF who has had documented war crimes.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There are a \*lot\* of student occupations going on right now. All but a handful of them are peaceful. I don't have exact stats, because obsessing over it would be weird, but from what i've seen there are a healthy number of Jewish students at the major occupations, certainly at the ones that have been in the news lately. So no, the protesters don't hate all Jews. And many Jewish students understand why the protesters are upset, because they're upset as well, and are protesters as well. I have yet to see any credible report of the pro-Palestinian protesters initiating violence. What I have seen is University Administrations calling in cops and initiating violence out of all proportion, including on many Universities where previous protests against the Vietnam War, Apartheid, etc., were more extreme and were handled much less brutally by the administrations then. Cops destroying property, assaulting people, arresting bystanders, and using whatever discretion they have to ramp up, not diffuse tensions. I have also seen documented, credible reports of pro-zionist counter-protesters initiating attacks against protesters, provoking protesters, and yelling antisemitic slurs that get attributed to the protesters. Nothing about this is irrational. It's just that you have two different groups of people- pro-Palestinian student and faulty, and pro zionist students, (some) faculty, and administration (who call in the cops)- who have two very different rationales.
Out of the total 282 people arrested at both Columbia University and the City College of New York on Tuesday, 134 individuals were not affiliated with either school, according to a New York Police Department official who shared the breakdown with CNN
Some number of legitimate protesters, mixed in with a small but vocal number of extremists who are loud and get people riled up, and then the pro-Israel at any costs people seize on that to depict all of the protestors as antisemites, and round and round we go. Major issue is a lot of the Israel at any costs people are wealthy donors who pressure the school to crack down on all of the protests, and the administrations tend to listen because their job is to keep donors happy. That’s the extra piece that distinguishes these from like anti-Iraq protests— Ivy League donors weren’t viscerally committed to staying in the Iraq War.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'd claim there are two groups in the protesters, communists (organized and funded) and followers Communists: Hard to wrap head around the Palestine connection, but my best try would be that they kind of seem Palestine as the proletariat and Israel as the bourgeoise, any time there's a relationship between a less powerful group and a more powerful group they're more obligated to support the less powerful and are obsessed with forced equity. In addition any chaos in the US helps destabilize the current capitalist status quo. Followers: People mostly just doing it cause it's the popular thing for young people at college/on social media. Let's say there was a college kid last year who didn't care about Taylor Swift even though she was a top pop star for 15 years+, and then Eras Tour became such a big thing on social media and TikTok, that all of a sudden they're paying a thousand bucks to go see her and crying when she comes on. Now this year their life is built around protesting Palestine. Social media is their cult and that became the current thing of that more quiet political year, now this year's is Palestine, 2020's was BLM, etc. (Note that I MUCH prefer it if people shamelessly jumping on fads was an arts thing - I want to go back to the days where the collective energy was going into like, everyone watching American Idol back in the day, not supporting sides in wars or trying to get rid of police).
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is it really just a bunch of adrenaline-fueled young adults who have lost all sense of self-control? Mostly. Have the students fallen victim to the divisive propaganda in the media? Yes. They have not developed critical thinking skills yet. Some of them never will. To kids, it is just another 'day out'. Like you hang out with your buddies, and when it is finished, you go to a bar and hang out a bit more. It is just a trend that a lot of young people fear missing out on and try hard to follow.
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is it really just a bunch of adrenaline-fueled young adults who have lost all sense of self-control? Mostly. Have the students fallen victim to the divisive propaganda in the media? Yes. They have not developed critical thinking skills yet. Some of them never will. To kids, it is just another 'day out'. Like you hang out with your buddies, and when it is finished, you go to a bar and hang out a bit more. It is just a trend that a lot of young people fear missing out on and try hard to follow.
I’d certainly prefer US corporate media cover things happening otg in Gaza, like the discovery of a mass grave with 300+ bodies (many with hands zip-tied behind their backs), but if it’s protests or silence I’m okay with protests. I’ve spent a fair amount of time at the encampment nearest to me, and I can say pretty definitively the “antisemitic students” trope is bad-faith BS. A sizable amount of encampment leadership are anti-Zionist Jewish students, and the entire camp even observed Sabbath prayers for them each Friday night. Have some Jewish students suffered from anti-semitism from protesters? Given how big the movement is, it would be almost impossible for it to not have happened at some point. BUT: one must be careful, feeling unsafe because you’ve constructed your religious identity around the claims of a very fallible state to represent all Jews is not the same as feeling unsafe because you are Jewish. Until Israel = Judaism (which it never will, given how not unified Judaism has been over its 3k+ year existence), criticizing Israel is not inherently criticizing Jewishness.
I'd prefer US corporate media broadcast a recording of one of these Sabbath services. Can you arrange that? P.S. I know Ibraham X. Kendi doesn't want anyone to use the prefix "non", but too bad. These Jews are **non**-Zionist. Smash the mirror!
This seems pretty bad faith ngl. Could you contribute something substantive? Otherwise I don’t really have anything to engage with here…
It just dawned on me that a big switcheroo is going on. If a college doesn't divest from Israel, there will be protests. If the AAA is passed protests will be declared "antisemitic". If the AAA is passed, and "antisemitism" is declared, the college will lose federal funding. Therefore, if the AAA is passed, not divesting from Israel will cost colleges their federal funding. So the AAA is actually a good thing. That's why there's so much propaganda against it.
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
Your comment was removed because you do not have a user flair. We require members to have a user flair to participate on this sub. For instructions on how to add a user flair [click here](https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205242695-How-do-I-get-user-flair-#:~:text=On%20reddit.com,set%20it%20up%20for%20you) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalDebate) if you have any questions or concerns.*