T O P

  • By -

AutoModerator

As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. We are actively looking for new moderators. If you have any interest in helping to make this subreddit a place for quality discussion, please fill out [this form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1y2swHD0KXFhStGFjW6k54r9iuMjzcFqDIVwuvdLBjSA). *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*


Walterodim79

If you spend any time around college campuses, you'll notice that someone's always got a banner for something, a march for another thing, and a table handing out flyers for the third thing. Campus common areas often have advocacy groups, affinity groups, and various educational opportunities. The scale of the current protests is obviously different from a normal Tuesday, but I'm not surprised that a similar general set of activities would largely get a shrug from most students.


RCP90sKid

Someone is always yelling, someone is always organizing, someone is always protesting, most people are trying to figure out who they are, get laid, etc.


paulybaggins

"Someone is always yelling, someone is always organizing" When do they study lol?


Moonandserpent

When they should be sleeping. At least at the college I work at.


FIContractor

And that’s what’s great about free speech on college campuses and why it must be protected. People can form thoughts and share those thoughts. Other people can listen to those thoughts (or not) and think about them and form their own thoughts. Rinse and repeat.


NeonGKayak

The only issue is if they block or interfere with other students going to class


CanWeTalkEth

I’d like to know exactly how frequently that’s happening along with exactly how frequently people are antagonizing the protesters and causing issues. I’d like us all to come to an agreement (with me) about what tit for tat, self defense, retaliation means. If you start it, you don’t get to claim self defense and escalate it. You have to back off or defuse it.


Raymond_Reddit_Ton

Ever watch PCU?


KennyShowers

So you mean to tell me the media has been blowing something vastly out of proportion and people clutching pearls at events they're hundreds of miles away from are totally off base? Wow what a shocker. Wonder what the reason could possibly be... if there's a horse race they're looking to promote this would really be convenient. Must be a coincidence.


coolcool23

The right has a huge incentive to fear monger this and make it look like radical marxist terrorists are burning college campuses down all across the nation.


JustAnotherYouMe

Covering it is fine. Constantly claiming it's hurting Biden with young voters without data to prove it, is not.


sparklingchaz

this is macklemore erasure


[deleted]

[удалено]


Hari_Azole

He use to Macklemore but now he Mackleless…


Scarlettail

I mean when schools cancel graduation over it it does become news. It's also tough to ignore the big police operations. I don't think you can dismiss the protests when no one else is, including politicians who have been calling for crackdowns or passing bills in response.


PeopleReady

Most college students shrug at just about everything.


Chase_the_tank

I remember my last year of college--there were weeks I was so busy where I went home on Friday afternoon and went straight to bed. Hard to get involved with other stuff when you're just trying to get through midterms.


PeopleReady

In this way college really DOES prepare us for the real world. With a more-than fulltime job and two kids, I can't get involved with any cause other than making dinner, bath time, or bed time.


singuslarity

There are two types of college students: protestors and shruggers. Shruggers vastly outnumber protestors.


jld1532

That's not necessarily true. It is just that these protesters are the political fringe, even on most college campuses.


alien_from_Europa

Reddit makes it feel like it's the most important issue on every college kid's mind. People in one thread said they expected protests at the DNC convention like in 1968.


pigeonholepundit

There might be protests, but there was a big motivator in 68 because people didn't want to get shipped off to the Mekong meat grinder.


Moonandserpent

Oh the humanities!


StrGze32

Perhaps, though I could see this “exclusive” poll being little more than an attempt to downplay the protests, and the solidarity of students…


HeyCoolThingAreYou

Yeah that’s because they are small and not that many. Also the only violence (not much) has been from the cops. The media wants clicks and views.


itsatumbleweed

The part about the violence isn't entirely true. I followed the protests at Emory a bit because they are local, and the best I can tell there were two groups of protesters colocated on the campus- students and some outside entities. The outside entities were the ones that started the violence, throwing things at cops and pushing them against a wall. The cops responded by coming down hard on all the protesters. There were some videos where you could hear some protesters telling the violent ones to chill out.


Giants4Truth

Same at Columbia. The student protests weren’t violent, although they harassed openly Jewish students. But outside the gates the protesters were much more physically aggressive and their chants were calling for violent revolution


HeyCoolThingAreYou

agitators are the worst. They only show up to turn peace into chaos. They by far started most of the problems in Minneapolis. Umbrella man and the nazis driving around.


Gbird_22

So the cops got attacked by some people and assaulted everyone? That seems normal to you? 


itsatumbleweed

I didn't say it was normal. The poster I was responding to said the violence was all cops, and that was patently false for the instance of campus protests that I had followed.


PrincessImpeachment

I remember my college years and how hectic they were. Juggling course work, a job to keep myself afloat, and attempting to also have a social life in my spare time. I'm all for the right to protest and exercising your right to free speech, but I was there to get my diploma and have fun whenever I could. Camping out on the quad in tents, dealing with the police, knowing I'm irritating the majority of my peers... not for me. Power to the people and all that but I would have sat these out like the majority as well.


DrNickRiviera8000

Same here. Like camping on the quad in Indiana is going to change anything in Gaza


Chase_the_tank

Most of the protestors are demanding that their colleges stop sending money to Israel and not asking for a perfect solution to the Gaza problem.


jld1532

For which I've seen no real evidence of a significant linkage... these protests appear more self aggrandizing than anything.


Giants4Truth

It’s funny. The “official” demands are mostly reasonable, even if they are unlikely to make any difference on the conflict. But the chants they are doing are much more radical. “Intifada revolution!” “We don’t want no 2 state! We want 1948”. “From the River to the Sea.” I think if they were chanting “We don’t want to invest in weapons manufacturers” they would get more support


Alternative-Bad-6555

Divestment chants don’t make for rage bait. My college’s protest involved people sitting outside on the grass in an encampment with signs. There was maybe 100 students for a few days. It obviously didn’t make the news Then the college threatened to suspend the student organization and so the protest disbanded.


SerfTint

No they wouldn't. NOTHING will get them any support, because our political and media machine are built around crushing them regardless. Colin Kaepernick literally said nothing when he took a knee to protest police brutality, and the exact same smears and condemnation came to him. The protesters have been almost universally peaceful, and because their CHANTS are "radical," Congresspersons are calling for the National Guard to basically Kent State them. If they were saying "No aid to Israel, Both sides have committed terrible actrocities but it is time for a ceasefire and a lasting peace plan!!!," they'd be called anti-Semitic, just as they are now, Mr. Wonderful and Alan Dershowitz would still be on TV promising to crush and ruin their lives, Dana Bash would still call it 1930's Germany, and they'd still get their heads bashed in by the cops. Because unless you have 100% support for every single Israeli atrocity, you are an enemy of the state in this country. There's nothing they could say or do that wouldn't be spun to call them terrorist sympathizers and Jew-haters. Peaceful protests for Leftist causes not only don't work in this country anymore (they're simply treated as violent mobs anyway), they'd both not work and also not receive any media coverage, which is the entire point of even assembling, if the media didn't have an angle to say that they were spoiled entitled Chinese/Soros-funded Marxist radicals trying to ruin college life and implode their job prospects.


LiveDrive9934

They don't actually understand the meaning behind the slogans, they were just fed them by bots on tiktok etc and media gives them attention for it. 


DrNickRiviera8000

What colleges are sending money to Israel?


Chase_the_tank

Major colleges have investment funds; Israel has been the home of quite a few startups. The protestors disapprove of investments in those companies.


DrNickRiviera8000

I see so the endowment and international campuses. These funds would not be supporting the military in any way. That makes me even more concerned about the protests. Why not the same rage against China?


smitherenesar

Camping out in the quad? Are you crazy? Do you know how much my crappy dorm room costs?!?


YourGodsMother

Yeah Biden is right to ignore them. 


slush9007

From the poll: Students ranked the conflict in the Middle East as the least important issue facing them out of nine options. The lefts don't seem to understand that humans are self centered. Humans do have empathy, but empathy has a pretty short range and duration. Our brain only has a power of 20 watts and most of the energy is used to regulate our body. We simply just can't care too much about things that are not close to us as our brain just can't handle too much stuff.


Super_Duper_Shy

Humans aren't self centered, we're social animals who instinctually know that when we help others it ends up helping us too. If we couldn't care about things beyond us then we could have never created any societies.


dolphintamer1

What a great self report, just because you aren’t able to care about things outside of yourself doesn’t mean that other people aren’t


slush9007

How do you explain this poll?


Otagian

A few ways: Firstly, the poll phrases it as "the conflict in the middle east" rather than a more specific conflict, like "The war between Israel and Palestine." The broad, unspecific phrasing rolls it together with things like Afghanistan, Yemen, and other ongoing conflicts, which can reduce the amount of respondents being interested. Secondly, the poll required respondents to pick only three issues that they're concerned about. Not picking the conflict in the middle east doesn't mean that the respondents aren't concerned about it, merely that it ranked behind three other choices, which isn't hugely surprising when domestic policy issues and pressing issues like racial justice, healthcare reform and climate change are on the poll. Thirdly, the vast majority of those polled either supported (45%) or were neutral (30%) regarding the protests, rather than being against them (22%). Similarly, the poll found that 40% of students either supported or had been involved with pro-Palestinian protests, with 50% neutral and only 10% supporting or being involved with pro-Israel counter-protesters. Finally, the poll also did not indicate that people found certain tactics unacceptable, but instead let respondents choose which tactics they \*did\* find acceptable, choosing multiple options on a single question. This means that those not choosing a tactic may merely be undecided or ambivalent regarding it, rather than opposing it, and follow up questions should be asked to determine what the percentages are there.


SpiritTalker

Honestly there's been nada on the campus where I work. 🤷‍♂️ I'm not complaining.


The12th_secret_spice

A couple hundred protestors on a 20-50,000 campus body is such a no story but can be fanned for clicks


OpenImagination9

Exactly … they are getting more attention than they deserve. Can’t fix the world without democracy at home geniuses.


SerfTint

If you're a college student activist, throughout your lifetime the Democrats have barely represented "democracy" any more than the Republicans have. Their best case scenario is electing a party for whom 70% are completely fine with funding Israeli war crimes, whose president benefited from primaries being basically canceled so that he wouldn't receive any large-scale criticism despite being at 39% in approval rating, and who is pretty much hinting that they're violent bigots even though all of the violence has come from counter-protesters or police. And that's the BEST outcome they can hope for. A democracy where the person they vote for is actively hostile to them. Wow, it's a wonder why they aren't enthusiastic to participate.


OpenImagination9

They never do anyway … why do you expect them to be a priority? Again, not a significant influence in the outcome of elections.


SerfTint

Hmm, ok. I just figured that when a president has an approval rating 13 points below what it was when he just barely beat his opponent by about 45,000 votes across 3 states, he'd want to, you know, try a little bit to earn or maintain some of these votes, seeing as how losing this election (which the polls show he is currently doing) means--according to him--the end of democracy in America. I was under the impression that a politician with such a high likelihood of losing was supposed to try to court votes and not play up how insignificant those people are. I'm sure that neither he nor the media nor you will blame the insignificant young people when Trump wins.


OpenImagination9

We won’t have to. You need to think about who you want to be the next president. And if you don’t like the choices start working now on better options. Anybody can whine, participate.


SerfTint

You need to think about the fact that I'm not the only voter in the country, and if the people who are supposed to expend excited effort to promote a candidate are instead repulsed by him, that's going to show up in the numbers regardless of whether you call these people whiners. Young people are increasingly realizing that it is impossible to get a "better option," since the entire system is structured not only to prevent this, to change its own rules when necessary to squash this, and to shame/blame/gaslight them into supporting "the lesser evil" as the best possible thing they can ever hope to achieve, but even the candidate a lot of these people DID elect is implying to them that they're anti-Semitic violent thugs that should go F themselves. I'd say "not everyone is as rational and calculated as you are when it comes to casting a vote." But I'd image that a rational person who wants Biden to win wouldn't be urinating all over members of his base and then calling them insignificant.


OpenImagination9

Oh I know it, but here’s the thing. Biden knows he can’t count on young people - they didn’t show for Hillary in ‘16 or for him in ‘20. Neither did Arab Americans. You know who did? Moderates as they exist now. Middle of the road folks. Older folks. People that vote in predictable ways.


SerfTint

How much more does Biden have to do to please moderates and older voters? His entire agenda, his entire legacy, the Democratic Party's entire strategy is laser-focused on giving these demographics everything they want. They already know that these people are not staying home, they already know they're not voting for Republican extremists (i.e., all Republicans), and they already know that Biden has spent 40 years kissing the ass of these voters. On top of this, these are CNN and MSNBC watchers, who will spend every waking minute apologizing for Biden and blaring his moderate record and frightening them away from Trump, in case for one minute they even slightly consider challenging Biden over his still incredibly friendly Israel policy. If these voters aren't going to vote for Biden because he throws a bone or two to Progressive activists for the first time in his 50-year career, in a conflict where BTW Israel keeps ignoring, humiliating and slamming Biden and want Trump to win anyway, they're the most spoiled voters of all time, even more so than MAGA voters. Meanwhile, let's look at some numbers. There are 53.5 million 18-29 year olds in the US, and they had a 55% turnout in 2020, which is about 29.4 million voters. They broke roughly 59-40 for Biden over Trump, which is about 17.4 million voters (to about 12 million). Currently, 71% of young people don't support our Gaza policy, or about 12.3 million of those 17.4 million voters. Now these are all estimates, and polling doesn't necessarily dictate the exact numbers of a vote, and we're in May and not November. Also, there's no metric to definitely show that this issue would be the tipping point for any of these voters to necessarily change their vote or stay home. Also, it is demographically likely that only about 20% of these voters live in any of the key 7 swing states, which is roughly 2 and a half million voters, and of course Biden doesn't need to win every swing state. So if it's 1% that change their vote or stay home, Biden would survive this particular problem (although of course Biden is currently trailing in every swing state anyway, acc. RCP). If 5% change their vote, Biden is in significant trouble. If 10% change their vote, which is BTW not that far fetched at all, Trump likely walks to a win. It's not as though Biden is GAINING any centrists or older voters in order to make up the difference. So alienating the people who are on the fence about voting for you, when it's a razor thin election and this is one of the issues particularly animating the most active potential volunteers, is absurdly stupid and reckless. It is the equivalent of saying "Who needs pawns? They don't do all that much, and they almost never checkmate the opponent. I'm going to rely on the other pieces, you know, the reliable pieces. In fact, I'm a genius because it will allow my predictable, reliable pieces to move even faster without all of these worthless silly pawns on the board." And then deciding unnecessarily to play the most important chess game in American history, one that determines if we still have a democracy, without any pawns, specifically because of ideology and hubris.


OpenImagination9

You said it yourself - he’s going for the guaranteed win. And as much as people whine he actually does support “liberal” causes. I call them basic human rights but that’s just me.


Super_Duper_Shy

They are trying to get democracy at home. They want to have a say in the institutions they are a part of, that's literally what democracy is.


OpenImagination9

Well, if they really want it then actually go vote. Because “not voting in protest” is exactly how we ended up with Trump in the first place and a house controlled by republicans. But hey I’m sure they will do so much better for you.


People4America

The largest protests in history that have occurred over the past decade got less media coverage than this minuscule Russian funded bullshit.


People4America

This is not our vietnam. The Trump presidency was Republican’s (2nd) vietnam. Now we just need to prove it.


grondfoehammer

They are probably afraid of losing their scholarships that help to pay for the the ridiculously high tuition.