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Notes -
New data from Pew on the Israel-Palestinian topic
Negative views of Israel have increased, but in a unique way according to demographics. 50% of Republican-leaning Americans under 50yo have a negative view, up from 35% in 2022. For the Dem-leaning in this age bracket, there’s been only a 3% shift toward negative views. For 50yo+ Republicans, negative views have increased by just 3% to sit at 23%; but for Dems in this age bracket, there’s been a 13% increase to 66%. Most of the shift in the public’s dislike of Israel has occurred among younger Republicans and older Democrats. This is interesting data, because there’s been an idea circulating that the shift in public perception of Israel is driven by younger minority progressives. And while that’s a big part, the data really tells us that Americans have changed their view in recent years in ways unaccounted for by demographic change, but which can be explained by the war. Because in just three years, from 2022 to 2025, we’re seeing huge shifts in regards to views on Israel while demographics have only changed slightly.
I think this shift is clear when looking at the media young people consume. Theo Von inconspicuously doing an “early life check” on the Sackler family in his interview with JD Vance; Shane Gillis on KillTony a few days ago; the popular youth streamer “iShowSpeed” refusing to talk to people if they mention they are Israeli. Pro-Israel Americans need a feasible game plan for dealing with this shift which doesn’t fall victim to the Streisand Effect. The current strategy of deporting foreign national students is bad, because the negative publicity far outweighs the tiny changes on university campuses. Zone of Interest came out in 2023, and our media reported on October 7th crimes well enough, yet these clearly didn’t move the needle on public favorability. There doesn’t appear to be any youth figure who can shift perceptions.
This is just a new round of elderly Dems imitating the radicalism of younger demos without really understanding it, as we saw with BLM. Most of the political (and entertainment) media boomer dems consume is designed to sanewash radical ideas into their existing worldview, using the "spectrum of allies" concept to activate and exploit them without requiring total ideological commitment.
The left is incredibly good at doing this, like with "abolish the police." They recruited grandmas who wanted attention, and kept them in their own separate unit with a command structure and propaganda line tuned specifically for using them as passive interference for militant units. They didn't have to be chanting "fry piggy fry" for them to be useful to the movement, they just had to be pushed one step to the left..
Coordinating this stuff is masterful work. The left can have a Quaker widows' group at protests with "Israel should be nicer!" banners, actively working alongside revcom Molotov throwers with "death to amerikkka glory to the martyrs" banners, and the people involved are so cleanly ideologically managed by their organizers that they don't even notice any contradictions in the different units' party lines.
A lot has been made of demands for "ideological purity" on the left, but imo this completely misses the mark. There is no "universal leftist consensus," and different groups are quite explicitly given different and conflicting party lines. What matters is following the line of your particular unit, because the purpose of ideology to the leftist isn't being true, but being useful for social control. That's the fundamental lesson of the critical theorists, if you actually read them, and why all their papers are about things like "overcoming student resistance to Change Narratives to nurture activism in the classroom."
I talk to quite a few "Daily Kos grandmas," and they're fascinating to listen to. They have no memory of what they used to believe or interest in what they may come to believe, only a sort of endless present of affirmation and social discipline crafted to maximize their donations to radical groups.
They don't actually "believe" in making Israel judenfrei from the river to the sea, just like they didn't actually believe in abolishing the police in 2020. But the echo chamber keeps them in that familiar permanent superposition on the topic, where they're actively pressured to avoid thinking beyond vague and shifting party lines.
One of the schism mods wrote something about being part of a Quaker team at some leftist protest that was a really interesting read, I'll see if I can find it. IIRC it was the "death to terfs" contingent that made her notice something was off.
This was an entertaining polemic, but you know, I could say the same thing about most broad political alliances, including those on the right. Now and then some Republicans will notice the cracks between atheist libertarians who want to legalize weed and don't have a problem with gay marriage but really hate taxes and foreigners, traditional American family values patriots, Jewish neocons who are pro-Israel and American empire, and the evangelical contingent who mostly want to ban abortion. But all will rally (somewhat uneasily) under the banner of a Reagan or (now) a Trump, and some will forget that five minutes ago family values and the Constitution were very important to them, and they'll all pretend they don't know the Andrew Tates and Repeal the 19th weirdos, let alone the ethnats. I know this is your conviction, that lefties are uniquely programmed and NPCed and just take marching orders from Leftism Central, but this is actually how all political machines work. The vast majority of all movements are divided into a tiny handful of True Believers, an even tinier handful of actual movers and shakers, and the vast herd who just sort of gets caught up in whatever tugs hardest on their sentiments.
I'll once again bang my "Read American history" drum. Machine politics in the 19th century were really something else (and yet also, extremely familiar). The Whigs (a coalition that really had nothing in common beyond hating Andrew Jackson, and eventually fell apart because you can only keep slaveowners and abolitionists together in one party for so long) are an illustrative lesson in political movements that incoherent if you stop to think about them for five minutes and yet persisted long enough to elect several presidents.
Your story about "Daily Kos grandmas" who literally don't remember what they used to believe in is of course nonsense (just like all those Never Trumpers who are now MAGAs do, in fact, remember what they used to believe in). People remember, they just rationalize it or else they develop coping mechanisms for the cognitive dissonance.
Republican boomers don't march next to atomwaffenfront or "put their white bodies on the line to protect brave young people doing Direct Action." The right doesn't have the organization or ideological discipline to use confused and wishy washy boomers as pawns.
When they con the elderly into sending them a bunch of money, it gets funneled to merch scammers rather than paying professional activists. You don't see leftist boomers buying AI generated commemorative trump collectible NFT digital-colloidal-silver coins like all the old Republicans are. They write checks to the ActBlue Progress Fund For Doing Progress that sends the money on to "Unicorn Riot", and it gets matched by a billionaire.
And you'll notice that old right wingers objectively haven't suddenly had their minds changed for them, so politics is obviously working rather differently on the two sides. There is no Republican activist group getting piles of cash to teach other activists how to "diagram systems of power for strategies of intervention"
That is mostly because the Republicans don't normally use marches and demos as a political tactic. (They work much better for movements with an urban base.) The last time they did was on Jan 6th 2021, and there were absolutely Republican boomers protesting peacefully on the Ellipse and Capitol lawn while Proud Boys and groypers were ransacking Nancy Pelosi's office.
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