I'm still thinking about the protests and why they're happening on some campuses and not others.
I know quite a few college students -- and though they don't like the war and violence, not one of them is feeling moved to protest. Not one.
And, the protests of the Vietnam war were driven largely by the fact that people were getting drafted and killed. That's not the case here.
There's a pattern, and I don't know what it is.
Although, talking to people around me, i notice a general belief among regular people that what's happening is in fact genocide. By Israel, not by Hamas. 🤨So naturally, people don't support that -- who would? But still, there is a noticeable lack of protests happening at many schools, and the protests that are happening are not this natural groundswell of outrage that happened during Vietnam, because students were being directly affected. It's not the same.
Morning Jan,
With love, it's very strange to see people to suggest it isn't "natural" for youth to protest. The kind of protest in Columbia, for instance, isn't new. When my school partnered with the UAE, Jewish students, women's groups, & LGBTQ student groups united in protest, because a UAE satellite campus wouldn't be a safe place for any of them. Didn't work! Our uni claimed the contracts were too far along. But it's a normal site of student action even outside times of war. /×
What I see here is a lot of people reacting to a news cycle whipped up by Columbia university escalating rapidly to police violence (a move that infuriated Columbia profs across the spectrum, and brought them in solidarity to the protest spaces).
Solidarity protests emerged, but even they have coherent sites of local action. In Atlanta, for instance, Stop Cop City has long protested police modelling their training ground on an IDF training site, so that shapes their uni protest. /×
@MLClark
Of course people disagree, that's clear, but there aren't nearly as many college students being moved to protest as it may currently seem like. There are also plenty of college students who aren't big fans of Hamas either. It's not this clear cut situation where college students all want the US to stop supporting Israel.
But people are comparing it to the protests in the 60s, where college students were literally being sent to die in a war.
This is not the same, not at all.
@MLClark So I'm not saying protesting as a college student is unnatural.
I am saying protesting for this particular reason is not something that is widely embraced among the actual college students I personally know, and that comparing it to the protests in the 60s is inaccurate for a number of reasons.
Agreed. Columbia is a *very* left-wing school to begin with, so I wasn't surprised to see a giant protest there, but not all are!
And if not for other major schools reacting in defense of the right to protest after Columbia's escalation to police crackdown, it probably would have stayed that way. From local student papers, it's clear that many of the other protests' explicit aims are solidarity with Columbia students and faculty, as much as about anything directly related to war.
Ah, I understand what you're responding to: the media hype that's made these university protests seem larger than they are.
I agree that the media has hyped this up, and the panic cycle has been terrible and counterproductive re: de-escalation.
The hard part is that it's just one panic cycle after another. A few weeks ago, it was overwhelming fear around Iran, without legacy media providing context for those actions, either.
Corporate media is doing well, preying on our fears!
I am reacting to the media I've read, but I'm not so much panicking, personally, this is not about my fear. I'm not actually afraid.
This is more about my reality and the behavior and beliefs and words of the people around me -- who include a large number of college students -- being dramatically different from the news I'm seeing.
Yes! Exactly! And that's a fantastic site of observations on which to grow media literacy. I wholeheartedly agree: legacy and some social media are whipping us into a froth disproportionate to real-world action.
I really appreciate you sharing the fruits of your personal check-ins with students you know! That's the kind of "touching grass" we could all benefit from doing more of. :)
@MLClark
I do think it's a psyops, partly.
I absolutely do.
I do think people are being manipulated to see it as "Israel Bad, Hamas Good" and I also think it's very different from the protests in the 60s. It just is.
Oh, it's been psyops since the start of the war. I've mentioned repeatedly that in war one cannot trust any "side" to tell the full truth - because info is an important weapon in any arsenal. With Ukraine and Russia, both sides lie routinely *to the world* to protect troop movements and whip up morale / demoralize the enemy.
The problem is that few people are ready for infowars of this magnitude. They want to believe that their "side" is always right, and the other is always wrong.
Honestly, Jan, this was my first interaction of the day, and I'm very grateful for it. Thank you for your thoughtful articulation of a body of data that wasn't fitting the narrative, and your thoughts on why that might be.
I deeply appreciate your careful reflections on a difficult topic. I hope the rest of your Sunday is filled with many lighter and lovelier things, as well.
@MLClark
You too! Better things exist, and better possibilities exist, and I definitely don't think either of us is going to end this war from where we sit.💔 I hope someone does, soon.
I definitely don't think there's any "always right" in any war, but I do know trying to completely destroy a country such as Israel and destroy a whole religion is always wrong.
People, I think, understand this generally, even though they may not understand or agree with every aspect of this war, or even want war in the first place.
@janallmac
I also see a lot of folks more concerned with consequentialism, and working backwards. If this might affect Biden and the election, it *must* by psyops.
But it's an argument from incredulity not to allow for the possibility of people cogently disagreeing - on war policy involving US funding and reaping massive deaths and suffering especially! - without simply being sleeper agents.
This war is awful to watch.
The way it leads us to presume everyone not with us is against us is too.