Student Protesters Are the Newest GOP Boogeyman

The people who ignore antisemitism in their own midst would like you to believe that nonviolent students calling for their universities and government to stop giving Israel money and weapons to obliterate the whole of Gaza is the same as when Nazis attempted to exterminate the Jewish people.

Following Ivy league university crackdowns on student encampments aka, the 21st century sit-in, right wing politicians and pundits are rushing to anywhere a TV camera might be found to denounce violence and antisemitism. The nation is all-too-often hearing these protests are in support of Hamas, Hezbollah, or any other form of middle east terrorists. 

Make no mistake about this, while there are anti Semites across the political spectrum, the now worldwide wave of pro-Palestine activism is not about religion or otherizing humans. It’s about a government leader and his followers who have come to embody the worst characteristics of the entities they say they oppose. 

Critics of the protests and the protesters themselves realize that the current campus political conflicts are being taken advantage of by bad actors. Following right wing logic, antiwar activists of a half century ago were supposed to denounce communism and North Vietnam prior to displaying a peace symbol.

Although the vast majority of participants on and off campuses have been non-violent, we’re being told that they should be proscribed from future citizenship, banned from attending classes, college administrators at protest sites should resign or be fired, and funding will only flow to institutions adhering to the “Israel is always right” point of view. Central to the “Israel is always right” point of view is the assertion that any protest not supportive of that nation is anti Semitic.

The truth of the matter is college presidents are caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between politicians and donors who frame the protests as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic and demand suppression, and students who see them as pro-Palestinian protests and, increasingly, pro-free-speech. I should also note there has been sparse coverage of the fact that many protests have been initiated and run by Jewish students.

These politicians and wealthy folks are espousing the same sort of over-top-response that students and others are protesting. First up, most of the demonstrators are students, largely unencumbered with the demands of existing in society for a few years; actions outside the norm are what many of them have always done. It’s called being young. 

Secondly, apparently the First Amendment goes out the window when it comes to this particular conflict. The same Texas Republicans who refused to take action about officials consorting with known Nazis (Nick Fuentes) were cheering as Gov. Greg Abbott sent in police to clear the campus.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, while saying his orders to the military are about retribution for the October 7 Hamas (and allied groups) attacks, is responsible for war crimes of the first order. Younger people especially see what’s going on and think the extent of the Israeli response is wrong.

According to the latest polling from Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans (53%) have little or no confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ability to make the right decisions regarding world affairs. I realize this isn’t the same as expressing support for Palestinians, but I think it confirms my suspicion that an ever-increasing number of Americans are shifting their viewpoints.

Since the immigration crisis along our southern borders has been at least partially neutered as a GOP organizing tool –thanks to Dear Leader’s intervention against once in a lifetime bipartisan legislation– so called student radicals are the next thing they’d like voters to fear.

Right wing propagandist Ira Stoll has even gone so far as to pen a Wall Street Journal piece claiming Some Anti-Israel Protesters Are Being Paid. By George Soros and the Rockefellers. (Not joking).

Representative Jared Moskowitz dropped by the Columbia University campus in the company of some Christian Nationalists and compared support for Gaza to white nationalist rallies.

This fear mongering is a (maybe) sure-fire tactic hailing back to the Richard Nixon playbook used to portray mostly white anti-Vietnam War protesters as a threat to civil society. 

Here’s Walter Shapiro at the New Republic:

• Then, as now, social class envy played a major role in turning student protesters into archvillains for the general public. Pioneering campaign journalist Theodore White, who became the voice of the establishment as he aged, made a shrewd point in The Making of the President 1968. White, with a bit of hyperbole, called “the revolt of the students ... novel not only in American history but world history. They, the group to whom society offered most, repudiated what society offered.” That’s why threats to mar the job prospects of any student who is arrested for protesting Gaza are so ineffective—they assume that every student at an Ivy League university wants to work for a hedge fund. 

• There are hints that the Columbia administration is slowly moving towards some form of an accommodation with the protesting students. But rumors—aggressively denied by Columbia—are also spreading about calling in the National Guard. In 1971, in a horrendous overreaction, the Ohio National Guard killed four students and wounded nine others at Kent State. That is the powder keg that Johnson (following the lead of Senators Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton) lit with his loose talk about the National Guard. 

• For more than a half-century, there has been an unalterable rule of higher education: No good ever comes out of politicians meddling on college campuses, especially during times of crisis. 

I have no doubt that we’ll see a continued spread of actions supportive of the plight of Gazans. And I’m also sure we’re about to see this hating on protesters going lowbrow. It’s just a matter of time before somebody on NewsMax (or wherever) cranks up the fear machine to include something along the lines of “they’re coming for your [fill in the blank].” 

Finally, Dan Moynihan wrote an essay, Manufacturing Dissent - Turning Campuses into Theaters of Disorder, asking people to think twice before accepting propaganda flooding the airwave.

• Get ready for a new wave of opinion pieces about how campus unrest reflects how universities have become sites of indoctrination, how the protest is driven by neocolonial teachings, about the narcissism of the students and faculty. It cannot be acknowledged that a great many people, not anti-semitic, not in thrall to Marxist theories, are deeply troubled by a a massive death toll in Gaza, and a deepening conflict in the Middle East, and their government’s role. Many of these people are Jewish students and faculty. They have a right to be heard.

• These critiques serve two purposes. First, they erase the subject of the protest. The fundamental question of whether the protestors have a point is elided.

• Here is a very simple test: The next time you read an opinion piece about protests on campus, ask yourself if the author bothered to engage in the basic question of whether the war should continue, and whether the US government should continue to provide arms for it.

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Thursday’s Noteworthy News Links

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Former San Diegan Christina Bobb Faces Criminal Charges on Ariz. ‘Fake Electors’ via Ken Stone at Times of San Diego

• La Jolla’s Harry Litman said on X: “Not just the electors but a bunch of Trump insiders — including Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bobb — will be indicted in Arizona.”

• On MSNBC, Litman told “All in” host Chris Hayes that it was Bobb’s first criminal indictment — even though she faces a civil suit in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case.

• The San Diego State University MBA and former One America News correspondent — who went on to become an attorney for Trump — insisted in her book “Stealing Your Vote” that “Kari Lake clearly won” the Arizona governor’s race.

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FCC reinstates net neutrality via Politico

• The rules, which prevent broadband providers from blocking and throttling consumers’ internet traffic, were repealed in 2017 during the Trump era. The order also reclassifies broadband as a telecom service, as the 2015 rules did, expanding the agency’s authority to regulate internet networks. An earlier version of the rules was struck down by a court in 2014.

• “I think in a modern digital economy we should have a national net neutrality policy and make clear the nation’s expert on communications has the ability to act when it comes to broadband,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said ahead of the vote. “In our post-pandemic world, we know that broadband is a necessity, not a luxury.”

• Democratic commissioners stressed that the plan is not an effort to regulate the prices that broadband providers charge consumers, which has been a source of telecom industry anxiety for years.

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Tennessee Parents Question Whether Arming Teachers Is the Answer via the New York Times

• Even in a state as conservative as Tennessee, the reaction to the bill has included unease and disappointment. The skepticism has come not just from those who want tighter restrictions on firearms but also from some who generally believe strongly in gun rights. Their reluctance was rooted in doubts about the wisdom of placing such a daunting responsibility on teachers and other school workers.

• Four Republicans broke party ranks in the State House and voted against the measure, which still passed by an overwhelming margin.

• “I’m concerned the bill, even though its intent is to make schools safer, might in fact complicate the logistics of neutralizing an active shooter,” said State Representative Charlie Baum, one of the Republicans who voted against the bill