The violent crackdown on campus protests reveals an alliance between the Right and mainstream elites who are driven by reactionary impulses and status anxieties
I would like to know why all these millennial white leftist writers are tut-tutting in some way or other over the protests. It’s never exactly because they claim to oppose the cause, not exactly, or the idea of protest, exactly, etc. But they either have to say they are doing it wrong and they simply cannot bring themselves to respect or even SUPPORT it. Are they looking after their bottom line, given the media environment, are they just having a middle age reaction? Do they simply believe nobody can ever do anything right, and fundamentally mistrust political action? Or does respect for struggle mark a person as not serious in our culture?
Are they the future Jonathan Chaits? Centrist in orientation?
I wonder. Maybe this always happens. But if all power moves to the right, I expect many people who want safety and success who say they believe in freedom and equality or even left egalitarian principles to hedge their bets. It’s such a shame.
I am glowing with validation now to see someone as smart as you coming to many of the same conclusions I came to myself this week while contemplating the protests and backlash.
Particularly paired with the sham of the Supreme Court arguments this week, the facade fell away completely, to expose a right wing movement in the US that is openly exercising “rules for thee, not for me.”
I reread Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to steel myself from any danger of joining the comfortable center “who values order more than justice.”
Thanks for the necessary deep dive into the context of the assault on peaceful demonstrators. The irony of Trumpian politicians ordering assault on demonstrators in the name of fighting anti-semitism is a glimpse into a second Trump term. The right requires violence - for it has been promised to them.
In 2020, I wrote two of my brief daily prose texts about the Harper’s “Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” which this whole thing has reminded me of, not least because John McWhorter himself signed that letter but is now against free speech for the student demonstrators (and changed his course planning to not listen to John Cage’s “4’33”, which of course does not drown out the chanting of the protestors as other music in his course presumably does). I basically did a close reading of the text of that 2020 letter and drew out that the signatories were not defending free speech for all but defending their speech against the speech of others.
If all student speech were eliminated MAGA and the right wing, and perhaps a good portion of the left wing, would feel much safer. I’m thinking it’s not as much about what students are saying as it is that they are speaking and letting their thoughts be known publicly because the status quo in America has evolved to “don’t rock the boat and do as you are told, but do continue to shop,” notwithstanding all Constitutional rights to the contrary.
The WCN voices within the “law and order” crowd are all about submission and subservience to higher authority whether it’s religion or the state. Their collective use of antisemitic speech descriptions is merely incidental in this instance. Use of force and arrests to curtail student speech highlights their fear of a breakdown in the status quo.
The inability of mainstream, liberal, American society to disentangle anti-semitism from anti-Israel-ism is proving to be disastrous.
The people who marched in Charlottesville in 2017, led by people like Richard Spencer, are unabashedly antisemitic, yet Spencer himself is supportive of Israel as an ethnostate project - he wants to replicate it in the US, but for white people.
I have not seen any in the mainstream media grapple with this seeming contradiction. One can be pro-Israel and anti-semitic, and vice-versa. There are those of who disapprove of Israel as an ethno-theocratic state (same as we disapprove of the US as an ethno-theocratic state) and would get behind a secular, multiracial, pluralistic, democratic Israel.
This is a good point James. I often wish our "media" spent just a little more time investigating and discussing people's motivations.
People like Richard Spencer and Chris Rufo are *known* chaos agents, provocateurs, who often *openly discuss* their bad faith agenda to subvert/invert the narratives around current events to further their White Supremacist agenda. To see their opinions laid out in places like the New York Times as if they are serious & earnest people who actually stand for anything except chaos in service of gaining power is completely irresponsible.
I find myself constantly asking now, "Who does this narrative benefit, and what is their motive or agenda?" about what I'm reading and seeing.
As often as not, we are being subjected to the firehose of falsehoods by actual bad faith actors and centrist institutions that enable them by trying to maintain an illusion of even handedness while dealing with people who we should all know by now are not operating under the same norms & expectations about truth, civility, fairness, and non-violence as the rest of us.
Yes, yes and yes again. I certainly agree that most of the people who condemn student protests because they believe there's a "woke" radical left indoctrination going on haven't been in a college classroom. I remember the Vietnam War protests and numerous other protests on campuses. Most students who participate in these protests are learning about the issues from news sources and from friends, not as much in the classroom. I taught accounting and tax law and I guarantee you that I never talked about social issues in the classroom. I was an Associate Dean in a business school and there was no business course that covered these issues. The university I taught at the longest was a private university in CT, a very Blue state, but we had faculty and students from all over the country and the world, all with different views. We also had 7 different schools and colleges (business, arts & sciences, engineering, music & theatre, education & health services, an art school and a two-year college). Such discussions would have occurred in several humanities courses for general education courses and for certain majors, but not all over campus. Universities aren't teaching radical "woke" ideas but they should be a place where different ideas can be discussed and even protested against.
I don’t support Hamas but when you’re looking directly at the situation of Palestinians it gets harder and harder to claim that they should never use violent resistance. They have no rights whatsoever. In the West Bank, you can be walking home from school and get picked up and thrown into prison for an indefinite time, on no charge, or be locked inside your home, or lose your home completely. And of course you can be killed. There aren’t any rules you can follow that will definitely keep you safe. They usually do remain peaceful when this stuff happens but is it reasonable to claim that this is required by morality? Nobody else on Earth would ever have that said of them.
It’s likely a no-win situation either way, since violence is not effective, Palestinians are very weak, and if Israeli civilians are killed for it, this may be unjust, but that is probably why some people do not condemn the Palestinian reactions since the only way the problem can be resolved justly is if outsiders put weight fully on the Palestinian side.
These protests aren’t chaotic. Most protesters are using civil disobedience, they aren’t throwing anything into chaos by protesting—things got chaotic when they called in the cops.
And in the US, we cannot NEVER use protest or speech just because of media spin. How would we protect our own rights or others’ rights when they are violated? The media will misrepresent every situation as chaotic for clicks; rights would be meaningless if nobody defends them.
David, this is the comment section - meaning: It is space for *comments* on the essays I wrote. There is, obviously, room for people to get into a back-and-forth, and I am generally willing to let most things go. But this is not the space for people to present their counter-essays and overall worldview in thousands of words. Even purely from a moderation standpoint, that doesn’t work - as I can’t read all that, but I am, justifiably, asked to keep an eye on what’s being said on my comments. Moreover, what you are doing is not “commenting,” it’s capturing. And you have been doing that for days now. I would like to ask you to find a different outlet for that. I will not accept hosting other people’s newsletter in the comment section to mine.
I would like to know why all these millennial white leftist writers are tut-tutting in some way or other over the protests. It’s never exactly because they claim to oppose the cause, not exactly, or the idea of protest, exactly, etc. But they either have to say they are doing it wrong and they simply cannot bring themselves to respect or even SUPPORT it. Are they looking after their bottom line, given the media environment, are they just having a middle age reaction? Do they simply believe nobody can ever do anything right, and fundamentally mistrust political action? Or does respect for struggle mark a person as not serious in our culture?
Are they the future Jonathan Chaits? Centrist in orientation?
I wonder. Maybe this always happens. But if all power moves to the right, I expect many people who want safety and success who say they believe in freedom and equality or even left egalitarian principles to hedge their bets. It’s such a shame.
Very timely, and very important words. Hopefully this kind of work can help us disentangle the very complicated mess we find ourselves in.
I am glowing with validation now to see someone as smart as you coming to many of the same conclusions I came to myself this week while contemplating the protests and backlash.
Particularly paired with the sham of the Supreme Court arguments this week, the facade fell away completely, to expose a right wing movement in the US that is openly exercising “rules for thee, not for me.”
I reread Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to steel myself from any danger of joining the comfortable center “who values order more than justice.”
Thanks for the necessary deep dive into the context of the assault on peaceful demonstrators. The irony of Trumpian politicians ordering assault on demonstrators in the name of fighting anti-semitism is a glimpse into a second Trump term. The right requires violence - for it has been promised to them.
Very thought provoking.
In 2020, I wrote two of my brief daily prose texts about the Harper’s “Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” which this whole thing has reminded me of, not least because John McWhorter himself signed that letter but is now against free speech for the student demonstrators (and changed his course planning to not listen to John Cage’s “4’33”, which of course does not drown out the chanting of the protestors as other music in his course presumably does). I basically did a close reading of the text of that 2020 letter and drew out that the signatories were not defending free speech for all but defending their speech against the speech of others.
https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-signatories-of-harpers-letter.html
https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-illusion-of-inclusive-we-in-harpers.html
The whole thing led to some interesting experiences, as I noted a year later:
https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2021/07/one-year-after-harpers-letter-on.html
Thanks as always, Thomas, for your superb in-depth analysis of what’s going on here.
If all student speech were eliminated MAGA and the right wing, and perhaps a good portion of the left wing, would feel much safer. I’m thinking it’s not as much about what students are saying as it is that they are speaking and letting their thoughts be known publicly because the status quo in America has evolved to “don’t rock the boat and do as you are told, but do continue to shop,” notwithstanding all Constitutional rights to the contrary.
The WCN voices within the “law and order” crowd are all about submission and subservience to higher authority whether it’s religion or the state. Their collective use of antisemitic speech descriptions is merely incidental in this instance. Use of force and arrests to curtail student speech highlights their fear of a breakdown in the status quo.
The inability of mainstream, liberal, American society to disentangle anti-semitism from anti-Israel-ism is proving to be disastrous.
The people who marched in Charlottesville in 2017, led by people like Richard Spencer, are unabashedly antisemitic, yet Spencer himself is supportive of Israel as an ethnostate project - he wants to replicate it in the US, but for white people.
I have not seen any in the mainstream media grapple with this seeming contradiction. One can be pro-Israel and anti-semitic, and vice-versa. There are those of who disapprove of Israel as an ethno-theocratic state (same as we disapprove of the US as an ethno-theocratic state) and would get behind a secular, multiracial, pluralistic, democratic Israel.
This is a good point James. I often wish our "media" spent just a little more time investigating and discussing people's motivations.
People like Richard Spencer and Chris Rufo are *known* chaos agents, provocateurs, who often *openly discuss* their bad faith agenda to subvert/invert the narratives around current events to further their White Supremacist agenda. To see their opinions laid out in places like the New York Times as if they are serious & earnest people who actually stand for anything except chaos in service of gaining power is completely irresponsible.
I find myself constantly asking now, "Who does this narrative benefit, and what is their motive or agenda?" about what I'm reading and seeing.
As often as not, we are being subjected to the firehose of falsehoods by actual bad faith actors and centrist institutions that enable them by trying to maintain an illusion of even handedness while dealing with people who we should all know by now are not operating under the same norms & expectations about truth, civility, fairness, and non-violence as the rest of us.
Yes, yes and yes again. I certainly agree that most of the people who condemn student protests because they believe there's a "woke" radical left indoctrination going on haven't been in a college classroom. I remember the Vietnam War protests and numerous other protests on campuses. Most students who participate in these protests are learning about the issues from news sources and from friends, not as much in the classroom. I taught accounting and tax law and I guarantee you that I never talked about social issues in the classroom. I was an Associate Dean in a business school and there was no business course that covered these issues. The university I taught at the longest was a private university in CT, a very Blue state, but we had faculty and students from all over the country and the world, all with different views. We also had 7 different schools and colleges (business, arts & sciences, engineering, music & theatre, education & health services, an art school and a two-year college). Such discussions would have occurred in several humanities courses for general education courses and for certain majors, but not all over campus. Universities aren't teaching radical "woke" ideas but they should be a place where different ideas can be discussed and even protested against.
A 21st century Kent State atrocity can’t be too far away if this is the reaction of colleges and universities to benign, ethical, peaceful protest.
Fantastic!! Thank you
You complain that the members of a community control what's deemed acceptable and compare heckling to force.
Please write comments shorter than the original post.
I don’t support Hamas but when you’re looking directly at the situation of Palestinians it gets harder and harder to claim that they should never use violent resistance. They have no rights whatsoever. In the West Bank, you can be walking home from school and get picked up and thrown into prison for an indefinite time, on no charge, or be locked inside your home, or lose your home completely. And of course you can be killed. There aren’t any rules you can follow that will definitely keep you safe. They usually do remain peaceful when this stuff happens but is it reasonable to claim that this is required by morality? Nobody else on Earth would ever have that said of them.
It’s likely a no-win situation either way, since violence is not effective, Palestinians are very weak, and if Israeli civilians are killed for it, this may be unjust, but that is probably why some people do not condemn the Palestinian reactions since the only way the problem can be resolved justly is if outsiders put weight fully on the Palestinian side.
These protests aren’t chaotic. Most protesters are using civil disobedience, they aren’t throwing anything into chaos by protesting—things got chaotic when they called in the cops.
And in the US, we cannot NEVER use protest or speech just because of media spin. How would we protect our own rights or others’ rights when they are violated? The media will misrepresent every situation as chaotic for clicks; rights would be meaningless if nobody defends them.
David, this is the comment section - meaning: It is space for *comments* on the essays I wrote. There is, obviously, room for people to get into a back-and-forth, and I am generally willing to let most things go. But this is not the space for people to present their counter-essays and overall worldview in thousands of words. Even purely from a moderation standpoint, that doesn’t work - as I can’t read all that, but I am, justifiably, asked to keep an eye on what’s being said on my comments. Moreover, what you are doing is not “commenting,” it’s capturing. And you have been doing that for days now. I would like to ask you to find a different outlet for that. I will not accept hosting other people’s newsletter in the comment section to mine.
Hamas is not and never will
be an existential threat to Israel.
Maybe you should write fewer long concern-trolling comments? Just a thought.
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