US Politics: The Bully Culprit

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, DanteGabriel said:

Can anyone cite of a student protest movement that was NOT vindicated by history?

Excellent point.  But it takes time, which the Gazans do not have.  Nor do we.

Let us keep our eyes on the ball, i.e. the reasons people are protesting -- the continuous murders, bombings, starvation, ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Right this minute. 

Do not allow the blob media and the fascists to use this as fuel to keep the freedumbs riled up about what, o I don't know -- suddenly the blob and the fascist no longer is concerned about censorship and free speech, so what else is there?

[kissdbyfire]

15 minutes ago, Gorn said:

I mean, they're calling for "intifada" (meaning, a terrorist suicide bombing campaign against Israeli civilians) and for Palestine "from the river to the sea" (meaning, destruction of Israel). Maybe some protestors don't understand what those terms actually mean, but the most charitable interpretation is that they are idiots and not actively malicious.

You might call that a minority of radicals, but I didn't see anyone from the protest movement calling them out or distancing themselves from such stances. In fact, doing that will get you shouted down as a "zionist". Which somehow became a dirty term despite actually meaning "someone who thinks Israel should continue to exist".

There’s so much propaganda here my head is spinning. For instance, the word intifada has been weaponised. I learned just the other day from a Jewish scholar… and in an interview with another Jewish intellectual, I learned that the Arabic translation of “Warsaw Ghetto” is”Warsaw Intifada” - IIRC, he was talking about this translation being in a book in a Holocaust Memorial/Museum, don’t remember which one. 

ETA: the uprising obviously 

Edited May 3 by kissdbyfire

[Gorn]

15 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

There’s so much propaganda here my head is spinning. For instance, the word intifada has been weaponised. I learned just the other day from a Jewish scholar… and in an interview with another Jewish intellectual, I learned that the Arabic translation of “Warsaw Ghetto” is”Warsaw Intifada” - IIRC, he was talking about this translation being in a book in a Holocaust Memorial/Museum, don’t remember which one. 

ETA: the uprising obviously 

"Intifada" has a very clear and specific meaning when used in an English-speaking society in the context of Israel and Palestine.

[Zorral]

So you think the ilks howling anti-Muslim and Palestinian hate language and throwing fireworks and using clubs to bash the people who were in a peaceful protesting encampment don't alienate voters?

So what do you think that means?

[kissdbyfire]

15 minutes ago, Gorn said:

"Intifada" has a very clear and specific meaning when used in an English-speaking society in the context of Israel and Palestine.

I disagree. I think it certainly has that one specific meaning but within a faction of the population. 

[Zorral]

Um, in Arabic, 'intifada' literally means 'a shaking off.'  Not bombing or terrorism, etc.. That's your definition.

And within the context of just this last nearly a century by now history of Israel and the Palestinians, the desire to shake off is understandable, and even, you know, justified. 

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, DanteGabriel said:

Can anyone cite of a student protest movement that was NOT vindicated by history?

It's an interesting question -- I guess it depends on what qualifies as a "student protest movement" and also what you mean by "vindicated by history". Back in my college days, there were fairly large protests against the 2003 war in Iraq. Here's an ancient CNN article:

Quote

At more than 360 schools across the country students walked out of class in protest, according to National Youth and Student Peace Coalition, the group that organized the rallies.

The Books not Bombs rallies, organized on the Internet and inspired by worldwide protests last month, took the form of relatively quiet gatherings on lush campus lawns in Southern California to marches through snow-plowed streets in a Midwest still knee-deep in winter.

You could argue that they were eventually vindicated by history in that the war was a bad idea, but they didn't accomplish much.

If you go further back in time, there were large anti-war protests before WWII:

Quote

The largest student demonstrations of the period were explicitly anti-war and anti-fascist, and aimed at avoiding another world war. At the University of Washington, student activists in the American Students’ Union (ASU) organized protests, meetings, and anti-ROTC campaigns to such an extent that the dean of the University handed their information over to the FBI. At the University of Oregon in Eugene, students led a 1,000-person campus protest as part of the 1935 national Student Strike Against War.

You could argue that they were halfway on the right side of history in that they were anti-fascist, but they were also very much anti-war.

Later, in April of 1940, there was the California Peace Strike which was much more explicitly anti-war (here's an image with some of their slogans). I think that set of protests is the most obvious candidate for your question.

[Spockydog]

It's going to take some Fourteenth Century level protesting before these bastards will listen to us again. They have too much money and power.

So let's fucking have it. Despite my dodgy knees, I'll be first over the Tower walls.

 

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Um, in Arabic, 'intifada' literally means 'a shaking off.'  Not bombing or terrorism, etc.. That's your definition.

Yes, and in English, the word "cleansing" literally means to make something clean. Who could be against making something clean, eh?

Literal meanings are pointless when applied to social actions. We all know exactly what these words really mean.

[IFR]

It seems to me pretty apparent in the USA with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict that there are strong elements in the media within both political groups that are attempting to depict the "other side" as only after mindless bloodshed. The liberals are antisemites who are fine seeing Jews die, and the conservatives are indifferent to genocide and think six year old Palestinians getting bombed have it coming. It has to be one or the other; there is no room for nuance.

I personally find it such a tired and simplistic trope to generalize all those on the "other side" as cackling villains.

Edited May 3 by IFR

[DanteGabriel]

2 hours ago, Spockydog said:

It's going to take some Fourteenth Century level protesting before these bastards will listen to us again. They have too much money and power.

So let's fucking have it. Despite my dodgy knees, I'll be first over the Tower walls.

 

I fear this is inevitable. Plutocrats are busily chipping away at the New Deal, instituted through quasi-legal strong-arming by Frankin Roosevelt -- himself a plutocrat who didn't want to end up like the Romanovs.

A while ago in the writers' strike thread, I suggested beating a few billionaires to death in public as a lesson to greedheads, then said I was 80% joking. 

The percentage keeps dropping...

[DanteGabriel]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

It's an interesting question -- I guess it depends on what qualifies as a "student protest movement" and also what you mean by "vindicated by history". Back in my college days, there were fairly large protests against the 2003 war in Iraq. Here's an ancient CNN article:

You could argue that they were eventually vindicated by history in that the war was a bad idea, but they didn't accomplish much.

 

By vindicated I just mean "were proven right that the thing they were against was bad" -- so those protesters against the invasion of Iraq were absolutely correct, about the phony justifications for war, the intentions of Bush's government, and their incompetence in managing everything after.

That said, the rest of your examples don't really apply, because I am not making an argument about how effective their protests were. The righteousness of a cause doesn't really seem to have much impact on its success.

If you are doing something bad enough to inspire widespread student protests, you are probably going to be known as an asshole in fifty years.

[Zorral]

Eric Adams Is the Lying Face of the Campus Crackdown
New York’s mayor is the right man for the job of standing up for the indefensible.

The campus crackdown, at both Columbia and schools across the nation, is indefensible. But when you are defending the indefensible, you need a spokesman like Adams, as prolific an inventor of fables as Scheherazade.By Jeet Heer

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/eric-adams-israel-campus-lies/

Quote

 

.... All the various strands of Adams’s political personality—his Zionism, his pro-cop stance, and his habit of lying—came together this week when he became the public face of the nationwide campus crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism. To be sure, this crackdown is supported by a dismayingly wide bipartisan consensus, headed by President Joe Biden. But Biden reserved his major pro-crackdown sentiment for a speech of less than four minutes, shameful but mercifully brief. By contrast, Adams has been rushing into the limelight to make arguments on behalf of a large sweep of Columbia University on Tuesday that led to more than 300 arrests.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Adams offered this strange rationale for the crackdown: “There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I’m not going to wait until it’s done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it. This is a global problem that young people are being influenced by those who are professionals at radicalizing our children, and I’m not going to allow that to happen as the mayor of the City of New York.”

This is a bizarre justification for a police action in a nation where free expression is constitutionally protected. After all, there is nothing illegal about “radicalizing” students, who are not, in any case, children. Adams is openly confessing to violating the First Amendment. The phrase “professionals” was much used by Adams and his administration, as was the even more nakedly authoritarian “outside agitators.” Even as he talked of “outside agitators” on Tuesday, Adams acknowledged that the concept had a disreputable past. The “outside agitator” trope was much used by racists in the Jim Crow South as a way to demonize the civil rights movement. It is, as Columbia historian Mae Ngai noted, a “bogeyman narrative.” But the toxic history of the phrase didn’t stop Adams from using it.

When Adams tried to specify who the outside agitators were, he repeatedly botched the facts. As Nia Prater of New York notes:

Adams cited one woman, Nahla Al-Arian, whose husband he claimed was “convicted of terrorism.” But Al-Arian wasn’t on Columbia’s campus this week, and she told the AP that Adams had misstated her husband’s legal past. Another woman, Lisa Fithian, a longtime activist who has made appearances at Occupy Wall Street and many other protests, was seen instructing protesters on how to barricade a door outside Hamilton Hall the night it was first occupied. But Fithian, whom the NYPD describes as a “confirmed professional agitator,” told the New York Times that she wasn’t on campus Tuesday evening when the arrests were made.

Finally, there was the lie the Adams administration advanced about the terrorist bicycle chain. On Wednesday, Deputy Commissioner Tarik Sheppard was allowed to go on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to hold up a chain and claim, “This is not what students bring to school. This is what professionals bring to campuses and universities.” What Sheppard was holding up was a common chain bicycle lock. As The New York Times’ Eric Toler noted, “This bike lock is/was available for sale on campus via Columbia’s Public Safety department.”

The current crackdown is predicated on the idea that pro-Palestine protesters are violent and pose a unique threat to academic well-being. This is the core lie, and it is spread by both Adams and Biden. But the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful, with much of the violence that has occurred coming from cops and pro-Israel counterprotesters—very notably at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The police violence can be seen in shocking videos such as one from Dartmouth, where the police threw to the ground professor Annelise Orleck, who is the former head of the Jewish studies program at Dartmouth and 65 years old.

A report by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a think tank that tracks conflict, concluded: “While some notable violent clashes have recently taken place, such as on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus, where demonstrators and counter-demonstrators fought at a student encampment overnight on 30 April, the overwhelming majority—99%—have remained peaceful.” ....

 

 

[Zorral]

Following from Jeet Heer's investigative piece where the violence comes from:

Quote

 

.... The violence at UCLA is instructive. The pro-Israel counterprotesters were organized by a group funded by billionaire Bill Ackman and friends, including Jessica Seinfeld (wife of the comedian Jerry Seinfeld). Many of the hired protesters seem to have been Iranian monarchists—a group that tends to be pro-Israel because of the old alliance between the deposed shah of Iran and Israel.

As both the Los Angeles Times and The Forward have reported, the pro-Israel counterprotesters were extremely violent. According to the LA Times:

Four student journalists who work for the UCLA Daily Bruin were attacked shortly before 3:30 AM. Wednesday by Pro-Israel counterprotesters during a campus demonstration that turned violent.

Daily Bruin news editor Catherine Hamilton, 21, told The Times she recognized one of the counterprotesters as someone who had previously verbally harassed her and taken pictures of her press badge. The individual instructed the group to encircle the student journalists, she said, before they sprayed the four with mace or pepper spray, flashed lights in their faces and chanted Hamilton’s name.

As she tried to break free, Hamilton said, she was punched repeatedly in the chest and upper abdomen; another student journalist was pushed to the ground and beaten and kicked for nearly a minute. The attack was first reported in the Daily Bruin.

The pro-Israel counterprotest is complex, since it has elements of both an organic movement and an AstroTurf campaign. Surely the logic behind it is to turn a peaceful protest violent in order to bring in the police—which is exactly what has happened. It is notable that this violent pro-Israel agitation has not received any widespread political criticism. ....

 

 

Edited May 3 by Zorral

[kissdbyfire]

10 minutes ago, Zorral said:

It is notable that this violent pro-Israel agitation has not received any widespread political criticism. ....

It also should be notable - but isn’t anymore - that none of the above has ever happened if you go by reports by the MSM… I’m curious now to see if Joy Reid said anything. But others at MSNBC only mentioned, in passing, of course, that there had been violent clashes between protesters and counterprotesters. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

Over 100 student protesters arrested at SUNy New Paltz

https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/news/article/suny-new-paltz-palestine-encampment-arrests-19436848.php

 

 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

6 hours ago, Zorral said:

.

Let us keep our eyes on the ball, i.e. the reasons people are protesting -- the continuous murders, bombings, starvation, ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Right this minute. 

 

  Absolutely.  It is pretty telling how the media coverage of so many protests tends to focus on every aspect of the protests except the why.  

 

 

 

 

Insert bland apology for the double post here if that's something that matters.

[Zorral]

2 minutes ago, Larry of the Lawn said:

  Absolutely.  It is pretty telling how the media coverage of so many protests tends to focus on every aspect of the protests except the why.  

 

 

 

 

Insert bland apology for the double post here if that's something that matters.

Isn't it just!  There are reasons . . . .

The NYPD busted out the few protestors here, while self-identified Jewish students stood around weeping about unsafe and cruel it's all been for them

They skies are shredded by cop choppers.

Edited May 3 by Zorral

[Altherion]

2 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

By vindicated I just mean "were proven right that the thing they were against was bad" -- so those protesters against the invasion of Iraq were absolutely correct, about the phony justifications for war, the intentions of Bush's government, and their incompetence in managing everything after.

That said, the rest of your examples don't really apply, because I am not making an argument about how effective their protests were. The righteousness of a cause doesn't really seem to have much impact on its success.

If you are doing something bad enough to inspire widespread student protests, you are probably going to be known as an asshole in fifty years.

In that case, the 1940 Peace Strike satisfies your criteria. Those students were against any US involvement in the already existing war -- including even assistance to the UK. Their actions were ultimately futile, but their cause was absolutely awful (imagine what the world would have been like had the US not entered WWII).

[Spockydog]

38 minutes ago, Larry of the Lawn said:

  Absolutely.  It is pretty telling how the media coverage of so many protests tends to focus on every aspect of the protests except the why.  

 

 

 

 

Insert bland apology for the double post here if that's something that matters.

It's exactly the same with climate change protesters. The media will crow and crow about the evil terrorists of Extinction Rebellion making you late for an utterly pointless meeting or sum shit, whilst having far less to say about the chances of your great grandchildren literally cooking to death because there will be nowhere to escape the heat. Some of the prison sentences being meted out in the UK for entirely peaceful climate protest is shocking and terrifying. 

 

Edited May 4 by Spockydog