Why is the simplest explanation of campus protests so hard to accept?
The reality is simpler: Many young people (and many Americans) object to how the war is conducted. The encampments are an inexpensive way to demonstrate those objections. But this impulse is presented as some grand conspiracy — including by a prominent member of law enforcement.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Over the weekend, New York Police Chief of Patrol John Chell took to social media to offer thoughts on the college campus protests that his department had a role in disrupting a few days before.
“Who is funding this? What is happening? There is an unknown entity who is radicalizing our vulnerable students,” he wrote over a photo of university encampments. “Taking advantage of their young minds. As parents and Americans we must demand some answers! I can’t speak for the rest of America, but in NYC we won’t rest until we find out!”
Variations on this idea that young people have been snookered into opposing Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza have been rampant in recent weeks. It’s a subset of a much longer-standing belief, particularly on the right, that young people arrive at their beliefs as a function of being brainwashed by various actors or technologies.
The reality is simpler: Many young people (and many Americans) object to how the war is conducted. The encampments are an inexpensive way to demonstrate those objections. But this impulse is presented as some grand conspiracy — including by a prominent member of law enforcement.
The New York Police Department has not bathed itself in glory in its reaction to the encampments. In the immediate aftermath of last week’s action, an NYPD deputy commissioner presented a heavy chain as evidence that outside agitators were involved in taking over a Columbia University building, Hamilton Hall. The chain was quickly demonstrated to be one sold by the university for students to secure their bikes.
Then another official went on television to present items seized from protesters.
“Let’s talk about Hamilton Hall,” Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said on the right-wing network Newsmax. He held up a book: “A book on terrorism. I’ve said it before, there’s somebody, whether it’s paid, not paid, but they are radicalizing our students.”
But you see the thread, manifested again by Chell: Someone is doing this to the students. To the “children,” as the person ultimately in charge of the NYPD, New York Mayor Eric Adams, put it last week.
On Sunday, Politico published a report that could be seen as answering Chell’s question about funding. The protesters were backed by “a surprising source,” it claimed: President “Biden’s biggest donors.”
The path from “Biden donors” to the protests, though, was far from direct. One conduit identified by Politico was the Tides Foundation, which we looked at last week when debunking the idea that liberal philanthropist George Soros had an active hand in the protests. The Tides Foundation has gotten money from Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF); it also contributed to organizations that have supported the protests. But Tides is gigantic, with hundreds of millions in assets, a small fraction of which was donated by OSF. Tracing money upstream to Soros (or other “Biden donors”) is an exercise not in determining responsibility but in meeting demand for non-student originators.
More importantly, though, there’s no reason to think that the protests are centrally and uniquely powered by organizations that received this funding. Again, the simple explanation is that left-leaning organizations received money and are contributing to a cause popular on the left. There isn’t even any reason to think that significant funding is needed for the protests to exist. Camping out in cheap tents is not only inexpensive, but in the abstract it’s an utterly unremarkable activity for college-age people to engage in. One might more justifiably wonder who’s funding young people’s trips to Coachella.
The protests generate as much support from Democrats overall as from people under 30, as polling released by YouGov last week shows. More than half of Democrats are over 50. Did the Tides Foundation get to them, too? Or did someone else brainwash them?
Maybe it was TikTok. That’s the favorite boogeyman for many critics of the protests and of young people’s politics in general. That less than a third of people under 30 get news from TikTok and that people in that age group make up a larger chunk of Reddit’s news-consuming audience than TikTok’s is brushed away.
Early efforts to blame TikTok for views of the war — and by extension, to blame the app’s Chinese-owned parent company — were confusing correlation for causation. But it’s not a coincidence that Congress passed legislation forcing the sale of TikTok in the wake of that rhetoric. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) pointed specifically to those claims last week when talking about the legislation.
We’re back to the same place: The simplest explanation is that young people are more sympathetic to the Palestinian position than older people (as they were even before the war) and that it doesn’t take many who feel strongly about it before a movement can gain a foothold.
We’ve seen this before. In 1970, the pollster Harris & Associates asked Americans who or what was to blame for campus protests targeting the Vietnam War — a cause that people now broadly view as just. “Radical student groups” were blamed by more respondents than anything else. More than three-quarters blamed college professors. In fifth place (of eight) came “the continuing war in Vietnam.”
Then, as now, some other factor was sought out.
There is one other reason that the NYPD’s leadership might be so eager to blame non-students for the unrest (and not simply that police tend to be more politically conservative than the populations they serve). Last week was the second time that New York police cleared Columbia’s campus. The first time was in mid-April, an event that coincided with a surge in media attention being paid to the protests and to an increase in new encampments at colleges around the country.
The police response at Columbia has been identified as a trigger for protests elsewhere. And while correlation is not causation, it is easier to point to the actions of the well-funded NYPD organization as a reason for the surge in protests than to the actions of the Tides Foundation.
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The political right is having a field day blowing the antisemitic aspect of these protests way out of proportion.
It begs the longstanding question. Are objections to Israeli policy and actions always anti-semitic by definition?
Depends on whose 'truth' is being spun.
I think you can be against Netanyahu's government and actions but still support the State of Israel and its citizens
of course
Indeed you can but partisan politics will charge you a fee.
Who is funding this?
The same people who fund Biden.
any young people (and many Americans) object to how the war is conducted.
That explains the burning of the American flags, the racial slurs, the threats, the checkpoints to keep jews out...
The political right is having a field day blowing the antisemitic aspect of these protests way out of proportion.
Bullcrap, if anything the media is underplaying how Bidens Hitler youth are attacking Jewish people.
Bidens Hitler Youth? Have a link for that or are you just spouting hyperbole?
Or just quoting Donald.
Are these protesters being led by those who cheered the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Libya on Obama's watch? Maybe Biden and Blinken can just blame a video. Joe Biden doesn't seem to be doing a very good job trying to keep the Obama legacy alive. The transformative narrative Obama brought to the political arena can't break through the Biden chaos.
Democrats on the port side of the party have tried to convince Biden to steer the ship of state in a counterclockwise circle. Go left, young man, go left! Circling down the drain. And these out-of-touch Democrats trying to compare the Palestinian protests to Jan 6th seem oblivious to the simple fact that politics is no longer Eurocentric. Joe Biden is the wrong man, at the wrong time, for the wrong job.
Welcome to the brown majority, folks.
Do digress.
wow....is that what I think it is? Can't call it that, tho
their "truth" is being revealed
It's getting more blatant every day. First the comment about Marxism being worse than slavery and now this
Marxists killed a hundred million people last century, yet marxist ideology is still taught in universities. No one is teaching pro-slavery ideology.
Marx didnt advocate violence, did he ?
Are these "Marxist" professors advocating violence ?
Is that your answer? Democrats have championed and cheered the coming of a brown majority. Joe Biden is taking direct action to speed the emergence of a brown majority. And anyone that acknowledges the success of those efforts is a racist? You do understand that denying these people political power by ignoring them really is racist.
It's not racist to point out that Europe is not the origin of brown people. It's not racist to point out the Europe is not the cultural center for the traditions, heritage, or history of brown populations. The emerging brown majority that Democrats have worked so hard to create will fundamentally change the United States.
What's so amazing is that bright, white liberals are so blatantly ignorant of the world outside of Europe. And trying to guilt shame the emerging brown majority into adopting a Eurocentric worldview ain't any different than preaching from the slave bible.
The future is browner, gayer and more equal. Get over it!
Sure he did. Revolutionary terror isn't checkers.
re these "Marxist" professors advocating violence ?
When they advocate a system of thought that inevitably results in it, does that matter? Are you okay with "National socialist" Professors who don't advocate violence?
Democrats have championed and cheered the coming of a brown majority
Here's a book celebrating it.
Do you think that's true? Are African countries more gay, equal and tolerant than America? What about middle eastern?
Has South Africa become a beacon of gayness and equality since getting rid of white rule?
Of course Marx advocated violence. Seizing the means of production is a violent act. That's the source of revolutionary Socialism.
Marx apologists try to square the circle by citing collective good and the democratic will of the people. But that argument really only highlights the ability of the majority to impose itself onto a minority; typically with threats of political violence. Democracy is inherently violent.
I haven't opposed it. I'm only pointing out how the emerging brown majority is affecting the political landscape. If people like what they see then thank a Democrat. But if people are concerned about what is happening then blame a Democrat. Democrats are the xeno-sensitive agents of change (being liberal and all) so it's not really about Republicans.
I haven't read the book but I doubt there's any defense of NATO anywhere in the text. NATO is a 'white thang'. And with all the indoctrination that's take place, it really is difficult to believe that a brown majority will adopt and appropriate white European traditional priorities.
Why would a brown majority want to protect, defend, and sustain European economic dominance? Seems to me the politics of the United States would more likely shift towards economic development of the brown parts of the world. I wouldn't be surprised if Hakeem Jefferies is more interested in developing India than confronting China. And NATO is only a drain of money that could be better spent improving lives in South America and Africa.
What's amazing is that American cartographers center the US in the middle of world maps and all other areas are named Dragons Live There.
Will a brown majority change that?
There are 1 or 2 quotes of him doing so in his massive writings. As with anyone writing during the Industrial Revolution, the times must be taken into account; the explosion in wealth was equalled by the explosion in misery. One needs to remember that communism came to the foreground decades after his death and his successors muddied his and Engels' ideas to become what they really wanted to be, 'proletariat' dictators. Steve Bannon is a rebirth of the worst of them, Trotsky, and sells it to Trump and his minions.
I could not care less what colour the majority will be, humans be humans. However, if you wish to push deeper I would vote for a female majority any time.
Let’s explore this further:
The Communist Manifesto :
Dictatorship of the Proletariat :
Criticism and Interpretations :
Context Matters :
In summary, while Marx did not explicitly advocate violence, his theories intersected with the tumultuous historical context, and interpretations of his writings vary. If you have more questions or need further clarification, feel free to ask!
A brown majority is about more than color. The brown parts of the world have a decidedly different history and worldview.
Sayings of Chairman Mao (Peace Be Upon Him!) , IIRC its from "The Little Red Book":
I was also thinking:
The first may or may not be from the honorable and highly veneered Chairman Mao (PBUH)...the second probably isn't.
Employing all the apologist arguments in the world won't change the simple fact that imposing a sacrifice on one for the good of the many is an inherently violent act.
The privileged giving up their privileges will only foment violence among those who want to obtain and keep those privileges. We've seen how power, privilege, and money has corrupted activism for the oppressed since Karl Marx exploited human envy, jealousy, and greed.
Capitalism is ideally built upon the idea of a voluntary transaction. A barter system was the original model for capitalism. But we've seen how that has been corrupted by envy, jealousy, and greed, too. Socialism won't change human nature.
And let's not forget the "Yellow Parts", the "Red Parts" and the "Black parts" (and that's not including "The party of the first part"!)*
*We can ask Buzz about the last part mentioned here-- he should be able to explain it better than me (although obviously he doesn't " POOTV"! )
Sounds like Mao was well read in the American Revolution.
Try telling that to the 1619 Project.
And Adam Smith could be as wrong as Karl Marx. An interesting article: The Myth of the Barter Economy
From what I have read the author(s) did just that.
That's an out-of-touch comment. The brown parts of the world are not white Eurocentric; it's not about color. The 'yellow parts' really are part of the brown majority. Black Americans have tried to Anglicize the status of minority populations in the United States. But that doesn't represent the emerging brown majority. Black Americans have a real shock coming.
To me it seems as if they missed the story of a then, extremely radical principle, the principle of human equality, that was introduced into an existing, deeply unjust society 9especially by today's standards).
I wouldn't be surprised if that was true.
Many of the wiser political leaders (both extremists and moderates) study history to see what they can learn from it.
Many of the wiser political leaders (both extremists and moderates) study history to see what they can learn from it
Yep.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.
That's an out-of-touch comment.
Well, everyone can't be as in touch with the facts-- nor can they be as extremely wise, as you are!
(Aw c'mon-- don't be shy-- admit it: you're one helluva lots smarter than most of us mere mortals here on NT!)
The brown parts of the world are not white Eurocentric; it's not about color.
Correct-- "Brown" not a color. Rather-- its an essence-- a subtle essence that's part of the bitter-sweet drama that is life!
The 'yellow parts' really are part of the brown majority.
Of course-- everybody knows that! Yellow is part of Brown! And if you mix Red and Blue you get Purple (which also isn't actually a color either).
Black Americans have indeed tried to Anglicize the status of minority populations in the United States. Except in New Orleans of course. They cant :Anglasize diddly-squat (you how those French are! As you so brilliantly explained-- its all a matter of colors (which are not actually colors!)
But that doesn't represent the emerging brown majority. ("Emerging}? Is that anything like those Cicadas (what color are they in your system?) Cicadas that emerge every 17 years?
Black Americans have a real shock coming.
Brilliant Nerm-- absolutely brilliant!
Just keep this in mind and you should no longer have those problems communicating here on newstalkers:
Love is Hate
Up is Down
Ignorance is Bliss
And perhaps even more importantly-- Green isn't actually a color-- its actually just part of Mauve! (Or is it Taupe-- this uber color consciousness can get very confusing at times!)
Oh and I forgot to mention-- HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS!