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PaperclipPerfector  22d ago (text post)   25860 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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Students from various campuses have occupied the Columbia University campus in New York City in protest of Israel. There reports and videos circulating of protestors harassing Jewish students on or near campus grounds. The NYPD has deployed officers to surround the campus and has established filtration checkpoints to prevent outside agitators from entering campus. Various Columbia alumni have expressed concern with Columbia’s handling of the situation. All classes are now online at least for today. Similar protests are happening at Yale and various other campuses across the country.

Edit: Congressman Josh Hawley has called on President Joe Biden to deploy the National Guard to Columbia and other universities to protect Jewish students on campus.

Edit: NYU has ordered their encampment to disperse and the NYPD is moving in to clear the demonstrators.

Edit: I’m seeing footage of NYU professors being marched out of the campus in zip ties. Cal Poly Humbolt students have barricaded themselves inside a campus building with furniture.

Edit: University of Texas, Austin student protestors are being dispersed by police. And possibly vanned. Protests now seem to be nationwide.

Edit: Mass arrests beginning at USC protests.

Edit: Tasers and rubber bullets being deployed against protestors at Emory University in Georgia.

Edit: There appear to be police snipers monitoring protests at Ohio State University.

It looks like riot police may be going in to physically remove the protestors from the Columbia campus, with the National Guard to possibly be activated if the Riot Police is unable to clear the campus.

In other news, the forced TikTok divestment was passed along with the huge aid package to Israel, on the heels of the Jewish lobby pushing for the bill in order to censor criticism of Israel.

So we have:

  • Mass arrests of protestors against Israel, unlike the treatment we saw with the BLM protests.
  • Huge handouts to Israel in rare bipartisan consensus.
  • Forcing a divestment of TikTok because the Jewish lobby claims it is too anti-Israel.

All within the past week. This is what real power looks like by the way.

It would be remiss not to say that the national mood around leftist riots has shifted considerably since 2020.

It would be remiss to say that, the behind the scenes political machinations shows this is not at all whatsoever about the national mood of leftist protests in general, it is specifically about the fact that the establishment does not support these protests whereas they unanimously supported anti-White demonstrations.

Look at the lengths Nemat Shafik went to in order to try to appease them:

Dr. Shafik, an international finance expert with few prior connections to Columbia, has conceded the university was unprepared for the outpouring that followed Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. She had been ceremonially inaugurated just days before. But as the protests escalated, and the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania lost their jobs after botching their own appearances before Congress in December, she slowly began clamping down.

In the fall, the university suspended two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, whose rolling protests repeatedly violated its policies. This month, it suspended students who it said had been involved in an event called “Resistance 101,” where speakers openly praised Hamas.

By the time she was called to testify before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Work Force this month, it looked as though Dr. Shafik might avoid the fate of the other Ivy League presidents targeted by Congress.

Columbia spent months preparing for the hearing. Shailagh Murray, a former adviser to President Barack Obama who oversees the university’s public affairs office, recruited a large team of lawyers, old political hands and antisemitism experts to prep Dr. Shafik. It included Dana Remus, President Biden’s former White House counsel; Risa Heller, a crisis communications guru; former Republican congressional aides; and Philippe Reines, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton.

Many team members gathered in the Washington offices of the law firm, Covington & Burling, beginning the Saturday before the hearing for mock testimony.

Dr. Shafik was determined not to make the same mistakes as her Ivy League counterparts, according to the people familiar with her preparation. Where their testimony came off as haughty and convoluted, she wanted to project humility and competence.

The university handed the committee thousands of pages of documents, including sensitive records that almost never become public. They showed that Columbia had suspended more than 15 students and removed five professors from the classroom, including at least three facing accusations that they had made Jewish students feel unsafe.

Though her testimony on the disciplinary cases made supporters of academic freedom furious, the approach appeared to work inside the hearing room. Dr. Shafik defended free speech rights, but said universities “cannot and should not tolerate abuse of this privilege.”

Grudging Republicans largely accepted the answers.

This has nothing to do at all with national mood over leftist protests in general.

It's funny, Shafik is still probably not going to survive this despite the fact she's obviously trying to play ball, meaning that all 3 of the only non-Jewish Ivy presidents are going to be kicked to the curb in only the past six months.

The real question (one of them, anyway) is how differently things will play out at UToronto and other universities in the UK and Canada. If Pro-Palestine protestors can make/hold some gains there, that would be geopolitically meaningful if it serves to provide a contrast to the US.

Princeton and Brown both have gentile presidents (their names are Christian and Christina, respectively).

Christina Paxson converted to Judaism (her husband is Jewish).

Eisgruber is Jewish and identifies as a "nontheist Jew".

Greg Abbott, by the way, just called for all students engaging in protests against Israel to be expelled:

Arrests being made right now & will continue until the crowd disperses.

These protesters belong in jail.

Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period.

Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.

There's just no way to ignore the elephant in the room at this point.

How strange that two Jews named after Christ should run Ivy League universities. I stand corrected, though I think both are pretty noncentral examples of Jewish Americans, especially when Eisgruber had no knowledge of his Jewish identity until well into middle age and Paxton has no Jewish ethnic identity at all. On another note, do you really think Abbott is getting rid of pro-Palestine protesters as a favor to Jewish donors? That seems unlikely. Almost all of the protesters (and I’d wager that, certainly in Texas, they’re disproportionately Jewish compared to the population average) are enemies of the GOP and American conservatism regardless of their views on Israel, so this seems more like something that provides a useful pretext than something driven by Jewish policy preferences.

In New York City, especially at Columbia University, things are different; the UWS (and NYC really) is the capital of the Jewish world and Columbia has long been and perhaps remains the most Jewish Ivy, it’s fair to say that neither Hochul nor Adams want to annoy the state’s Jews in an important year for the party.

With Dems increasingly opposed to Israel, this makes me wonder if we'll see a broader realignment of American Jews towards the Republican party. Most are currently overwhelmingly leftist, although Orthodox Jews (a small minority) are conservative.

The Democrats are fumbling the ball, but Republicans still need to recover it, and as of yet they show few signs of being willing or able to do so. Jews moving away from the Democrats need to go somewhere. And the GOP is not offering a welcoming environment at this time. Some Jews who come to the conclusion that Right Wing Antisemites are merely harmless morons while Left Wing Antisemites are powerful and dangerous will make the switch, but I doubt it will be a mass exodus.

Richard Hanania predicted exactly this in December. https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-great-jewish-realignment-of-2023

I remember reading this a few months ago. Yeah, he makes a pretty compelling case.

Are they? Let's look at the votes on the Israel aid package

Actually hilarious on a number of grounds:

  • Chip Roy and Rashida Tlaib voted on the same side
  • Despite months of protest, the progressive movement can't even get 20% of Democrats to side with them

I remain surprised that there aren't more people that want Israel to win, but don't want to give them $26 billion.

How much of that $26 billion is going to be spent with US arms manufacturers with large numbers of employees in politically important states/districts?

Probably a similar amount to what we'd expect if American glazers were responsible for replacing all of the windows broken in Israel. But yes, I grant that these are largely wealth transfers within the United States as much as they are funding for Israel.

Me to, it’s a ridiculous sum of money, especially when considered in the context of our previous spending

Protest doesn't actually move votes from politicians. It's merely a tool for power plays for non-politician actors, such as ngos.

It's hard to say. The east coast had always been the center of the Jewish business/neocon republican wing. The really kind of excessive coverage of the Columbia stuff may simply be a product of proximity to this compared to the other universities with similar protests.

To the extent that this Jewish republican wing had been trending away from the GOP, I fully expect that to reverse.

I don't. Jews who are paying attention can see the rising anti-semitism on the right. (And in particular, Jews who care about Israel know who was blocking the aid bill). Left-wing anti-semites are more dangerous individually (because they are more violent) but the anti-semitic right arguably includes people like Elon Musk and has far more access to the corridors of power than the Columbia protestors do.

Will more anti-semites be invited to the White House in a second Trump term or a second Biden term (not counting Gulf Arab diplomats etc. who are discreet about their anti-semitism)? It is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

but the anti-semitic right arguably includes people like Elon Musk and has far more access to the corridors of power than the Columbia protestors do.

On one hand this is fair. Elon definitely has more strings to pull than the protestors right now, but that's a pretty short-sighted view. In 20 years, the current class of Columbia isn't going to have access to the corridors of power, they're going to occupy them. The attitudes at Columbia are going to be beltway consensus in 20 years. That's a much bigger issue than people mouthing off on twitter.

On one hand this is fair. Elon definitely has more strings to pull than the protestors right now, but that's a pretty short-sighted view. In 20 years, the current class of Columbia isn't going to have access to the corridors of power, they're going to occupy them. The attitudes at Columbia are going to be beltway consensus in 20 years. That's a much bigger issue than people mouthing off on twitter.

If the situation in the Ivies is anything like my experience of Oxbridge, students who are going to grow up as pillars of the establishment have always LARPed as anti-establishment rebels on campus, and "Free Palestine" has been the hardy perennial of anti-establishment left issues since I was in primary school. The views of the pro-establishment left in the US on the I-P conflict have not materially changed during this time, despite the modern pro-establishment left incorporating a generation of kids who went on Free Palestine marches for campus-left clout as undergraduates 20-40 years ago. There is a lot of media coverage indicating that the average non-Arab attendee at the pro-Palestine protests doesn't understand the conflict and is just showing up in order to support the Current Thing - this is an example of social copying, not successful indoctrination.

That's a fairly reasonable explanation, but there's been a ton of things that started out as "a thing dumb college kids are doing" and ended up in the wider world. Some take longer than others.

Interesting thoughts. I’d say that outside of hardcore Siege-reading wignats, Jews aren’t a primary concern on the Anglophone right. There is certainly residual antisemitism, and there will always be Hitler fans on the Western far right, and there will be edgy teenagers on Discord who share /pol/ infographics, but I think the embrace of arguably antisemitic views by some mainstream figures is pretty temporal.

On the left actual antisemitism is more rare (the majority of it really is just anti-zionism, American leftists don’t have genuine ethnic hostility to Jews as a race; they just think Jews are white). But as the Muslim population increases rapidly and as hostility towards perceived ‘whiteness’ increases in fervor, I think anti-Zionism will cement itself as an intractable position on the left. I don’t think there’s a way back from that. It’s also a quick spiral, because as Jewish donors move to the right the left cares less about the Jewish vote (Florida is now solidly red, and NYC and California won’t stop being blue anytime soon) and more about the Muslim vote.

I think there’s also another aspect to this, which is that in domestic politics Jewish men (who are obviously the vast majority of big-ticket Jewish donors and political lobbyists) are considered by the left to be White Men™️. It’s not like Dems are ever going to consider Mark Zuckerberg a POC. After the current Gaza fiasco that is especially unlikely to change, leftists aren’t going to carve out a new space for white Jewish guys while “they” are “genociding Gaza”. This inherently pushes Jewish donors to the right, as Hanania noted.

Yeah. I feel the majority of Right wing antisemites might feel that Jewish influence is way larger than their population share should facilitate, but would also take Jewish neighbors in their suburb over other outgroup neighbors all day, every day.

Likewise with Israel-Palestine I get a sentiment of 'Israel are probably breaking international norms/active unethically, but also Palestine being Lebanon 5.0 would be a negative for all involved compared to illegitimate Jewish occupation'

Anti-semitism on the right really seems to be restricted to a bunch of fringe characters no one in power really wants to be publicly associated with, whereas it's now fully sanctioned by the portion of the left that sees life as a struggle between oppressors and the oppressed. That's not even mentioning that it's probably the driving political issue for the left's most sanctified group (Muslims).

Elon Musk also seems a strange example of someone who might deter Jewish voters - my impression is that since his takeover X/twitter has been far less committed to maintaining the liberal party line and has consequently allowed lots more coverage of left-wing anti-semitic behaviour than would previously have been tolerated.

I would also imagine the possibility of Trump inviting the occasional weirdo to the WH is of less important to the Jews than the fact that he wouldn't keep publicly dressing down Israel like Biden's team has done.

Anti-semitism on the right really seems to be restricted to a bunch of fringe characters no one in power really wants to be publicly associated with

Have you paid attention to the comments and voting patterns on this very forum? I have the impression that this place is pretty representative of the intellectual parts of the right and antisemitism here tends to be an upvoted and therefore not at all fringe position.

There are certainly antisemites here but I’d say they get more downvotes than upvotes much of the time.

Can you provide some examples?

I'm equally sure that pro-Israel Jews would prefer someone who moves aid forward while delivering a mild dressing-down for PR purposes to someone who praises Netanyahu to the skies while using aid as a lever to extract concessions elsewhere from his domestic political opponents. The Biden administration is significantly less critical of Netanyahu's policy in Gaza than the Israeli opposition, which most centrist American Jews find a lot more sympathetic than Likud.

American Jews would certainly prefer for Netanyahu to be deposed and a moderate Labor-led coalition that includes the Arab parties to come to power and recommit to immediately reopening negotiations about a two-state solution and the return of most West Bank settlers.

That is, however, a ridiculous pipe dream. The Israelis have radicalized and international pressure will radicalize them further still. The Israeli left is crushed utterly. Nobody believes peace is possible short of crushing the enemy now. That means American Jews will face a choice between disavowing Zionism utterly and embracing at least lukewarm support for a staunchly pro-Likud agenda that embraces Religious Zionism. Some will pick the former but Israel is important to most Jews and I suspect they will change politically rather than abandon Zionism.

The Israelis have radicalized and international pressure will radicalize them further still. The Israeli left is crushed utterly. Nobody believes peace is possible short of crushing the enemy now.

Could you go into this in more detail? It might be worth a top-level post.

It's kind of an old conventional wisdom at this point, but the basic point is that late last century, the Israeli right and left were significantly divided by the question of how to deal with the Palestinian territories, and the Israeli left was discredited when withdrawal from militarily occupying Gaza led to its takeover and militarization by Hamas, ruining the Israeli-left security policy that peace could be achieved by making unilateral concessions to the Palestinians in the name of peace.

For a more extended version-

When the Israelis occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the Six-Day War in 1967, one of the reasons for seizing the territory was both as a military buffer, but also that they could be traded back for peace in the future. This is what happened with the Sinai Peninsula and Egypt, but for various reasons did not happen with the other territories.

Said reasons variously involved the fracturing of Pan-Arabism and the growing divides between the Palestinians and regional Arab states.

During the early cold war pan-arabism was a movement for a common Arab state which even saw some states voluntarily try to associate/join eachother, but ultimately inter-elite disagreements and the shocks of the Arab-Israeli wars fractured that movement to the point that Egypt, which had been one of the leaders of the Pan-Arab movement earlier, refused to take the Gaza Strip when it regained the Sinai as part of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The Egyptian position was that it's refusal was because it had never held Gaza as part of Egypt before the war, but a not-uncommon belief is that this was because Egypt didn't want the trouble of governing gaza / having to deal with the Palestinians / it made a useful thorn in Israel's side.

In the West Bank, Jordan renounced claims to the West Bank (which it had previously annexed) in the aftermath of the Black September civil war, when the PLO (who was present in Israeli-occupied Israel as well as Jordan) attempted to overthrow the King of Jordan in 1970. The Kingdom of Jordan won that, but the PLO remained in the Israeli-occupied territories, and in 1974, the Arab Leage recognized the PLO- and not Jordan- as the sole representative of the Palestinians, and compelled Jordan to recognize a Palestinian independent of Jordan. Jordan would later formally renounce claims in 1988, as part of cutting monetary expenditures and dissolving a lower house of legislature that was half composed of constituencies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, i.e. Palestinians. Jordan and Israel would go on to establish relations in 1994, without needing any sort of concession of the West Bank back to Jordan, who it had been captured from in the first war.

What this meant is that come the 90s, when the Cold War was ending and there was no US-Soviet context to the middle east conflict, Israel had achieved peace with its immediate neighbors it had conquered Palestinian territory from, without having actually to trade back Palestinian territory as part of the deal. However, this peace between states wasn't the same as peace: the First Intifada at about the 20 year anniversary of the 1967 war in 1987-1990 was years of violence / murders / increased unrest, and it was clear that it could happen again. As a result, Israeli politics shifted to a question of how to resolve the Palestinian issue. This was the... not start, but how the Two State solution took new life in the post-Cold War environment, with the Left and the Right disagreeing on how to approach it, or whether even if it should.

An oversimplification of this is that the Israeli left was vehemently onboard with the two state solution, and more associated with making compromises- or even unilateral concessions- to advance negotiations. The Israeli right was far more skeptical, alternatively wanting terms that would functionally limit Palestinian sovereignty in their own state (no military allowed, right for Israeli incursion against groups attacking from Palestinian soil) or not wanting to have to do it at all. Then there was how settler politics played into both parties, as settlers were both a way to secure territory that might not have to be returned due to changing facts on the ground (the Israeli right), but also a bargaining chip that could be traded away at the negotiating table (the Israeli left), and of course an actor in their own right.

The so-what here is that in the late 90s, the Israeli left had an politically ascendant moment. Prime Minister Ehud Barak of the Labor Party came into office, at the same time that Bill Clinton was still in office, and they were relatively like-minded enough to put together the Camp David Summit... whose failure was one of the triggering events for the Second Intifada. The exact reasons why it failed are subject to dispute / position / your belief on what Yasser Arafat could actually deliver on behalf of the PLO, but from a more common Israeli perspective, this was a sincere effort with politically-damaging offers at the sort of land-swaps that had been a functional base of negotiations for a good while, and it not only failed, but it blew up into another 5 years of violence.

Part of what ended the 5 years of violence was the Israeli-PLO Sharm El Sheikh Summit of 2005, where President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority- the same Abbas still in power today- had assumed power from Arafat. And this was in part because not only had Arafat died in 2004- and so robbed the Palestinian movement of one of its unifying figures- but in 2004 the Israelis had also done a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

While the Second Intifada was a blow to the credibility of the Israeli left, the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is what I'd consider to have been the fatal blow to the Israeli left.

While it was conducted by Ariel Sharon- who at the time was part of the conservative/right-wing Likud party- it was so controversial a policy that Sharon's faction left Likud and established the central-liberal Kadima party, which attracted a number of the Labour party members as well. It was as such a policy that was identified with the left/center-left in spirit and practice, as not only was it's proponents the dominant leftist political force of the era, but it was a quid done for no quo. Israeli infrastructure was left behind, including things like greenhouses, and while for awhile it could have been argued that it set conditions for the cease fire the year after, which probably had something to do with Kadima's victory in 2006 to top the government- i.e. the political reward for ending the Second Intifada through good leftist political wisdom, bravery, and...

...and a year later, in 2007, Hamas completed its takeover of Gaza Strip after its own 2006 electoral victory by throwing PLO officials off of skyscrapers, and began a sustained rocket campaign into Israel. By January 2008, it was up to hundreds of rockets a month. The rocket campaign would more or less go on until the Gaza War of 2009-2010, after which the rockets... never went away, but were more varying, and a constant source of tension and unease. For as bad as the Intifada was, it wasn't that degree of regularity in rocket attacks on a weekly basis.

As a result, in Israeli politics, the Gaza Withdrawal became the political kryptonite of the left, a sort of feckless concession that made things worse. Prime Minister Netanyahu first assumed power in 2009 as a result of running on a tough-on-security policy, and ever since the decades of 1990s and 2000s have been the death knell of the Israeli left. After running and winning on the post-cold-war optimism of the 90s, the ideological basis of the leftest approach to Palestinian negotiation/conciliation was discredited. Not only were perceived-as-sincere offers of trades and concessions not only rejected but answered with an Intifada, but further unilateral concessions to amoliate even that only served to facilitate even more violence by even more dedicated partisans.

The Israeli left, associated with both conciliatory approach to the Palestinians (that visibly failed) and a commitment to a two-state solution lost a political generation as Netanyahu spun in power. In so much as they could define themselves still as an alternative to the right, the Israeli left was still defined by its commitment to a Two State solution, and thus as the respectable political faction that outsiders (like various US administrations) could like and work with...

And Oct 7 has rendered even that an albatross, because arguments for a two-state solution with the people who relished in their own ISIS-level brutality doesn't go down well with the electorate. For all that Netanyahu is unpopular and is unlikely to survive the death of his reputation as an effective security providor, Netanyahu is unpopular as a man. The two state solution is now unpopular as even an idea, and that is practically the most defining distinction of the Israeli left in some circles.

Or so the story goes. Perspectives and recollections may differ.

More comments

rising anti-semitism on the right.

Anti-semitisim has historically come from the right, but is it "rising" still, especially compared to what's going on in the left?

Also, what exactly has Elon Musk done that's so anti-semitic?

Blocking $26 billion in aid to an extremely wealthy country that also has the wealthiest per capita diaspora community is now anti-semitism? When the country sending the money has a $1.5 trillion budget deficit?

I’m pro sending money to Ukraine because they are a poor country fighting out geopolitical enemies but I don’t understand sending money to a wealthy nation like Israel especially not when we are essentially funding both sides.

Blocking $26 billion in aid to an extremely wealthy country that also has the wealthiest per capita diaspora community is now anti-semitism?

No, but it is something that rich centrist American Jews care about. There is a reason why AIPAC is as powerful as it is. The sort of Jews who might switch from D to R in response to left-wing campus idiocy are exactly the sort of Jews who support aid to Israel most.

I support third countries getting the feck out of the I-P conflict (my gut feeling is that foreign support for both sides is net escalatory, although I understand the argument that the US paying for Iron Dome specifically is de-escalatory). But I am not American, and my views on this issue are not socially acceptable in elite American social circles. Apart from short-term humanitarian aid while the mess made by the current war is being cleaned up, the only use of donor money in the area I would support is bribing other majority-Muslim countries to take in Palestinian refugees.

You specifically cited anti-semitism of the right three times and accused Elon Musks of it but the only evidence was GOP votes against an Israel aid bill.

I have no idea what you mean be anti-semitism on the right (I can take some guesses). And then there is the ADL definition which seems like anything they don’t like is antisemitism. You did make a specific reference to Columbia protests so I have an idea what you are accusing the left of.

Probably Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens type stuff. Tucker and Musk obviously alluded to it. You don’t have to far on Twitter to find right-wing antisemitism.

I wonder how much of this is just boredom? It’s a slow news cycle. The Iran stuff turned out to be a nothingburger. What are the politically-active class supposed to get riled up at this week, Trump’s courtroom farts? (I’m not kidding. That was the other option here.) The masses demand a current thing at all times. I mean really, endowment divesture? Would anyone care about this if there were a salient mass shooting anywhere in the country over the weekend?

I agree, the American public only cares about foreign policy when there’s literally nothing else of interest going on. (GWOT was obviously different since 9/11 was very much domestic.)

BLM and Defund are over, and Jan 6th fizzled out. Time to search for new causes to absorb excess religious energy.

This should pivot to a domestic focus fairly soon; arresting local Americans is much more interesting than continued kvetching about brown sand people killing each other.

Something like that…maybe. Evidence: the number of alternate topics in this thread.

Calling it class interest or even a cohesive demand is a bit much, though. It’s not the same people protesting every time. I’d say there’s a background temperature of discontent which, this week, happened to be hottest around Columbia. Even if we had known that Iran’s launch would blow over, we could never have predicted that this was going to top the leaderboard for today.

It’s not the same people protesting every time.

I'm not directly familiar with US protest culture, but in the UK it so is. Sometimes they forget to change the protest signs and people march against student funding cuts behind a "Free Palestine" banner. We have a single-digit number of activist groups experienced in organising this kind of noisy, disruptive protest, and until the SWP collapsed due to sex scandals most of them were SWP front organisations.

Even if you look at people rather than orgs, we are talking about a subculture (strictly two subcultures because the socialist-anarchist split hasn't gone anywhere) involving a few thousand people split between a small number of big cities (mostly London and Bristol in the UK) which is cohesive to have its own values. The tribal values of the subculture that is socialist protest includes a hierarchy of issues, and Palestine is number 2 on the list after opposing US foreign policy.

Interesting.

I could see US protests operating the same way, but I don’t really have any statistics. @gattsuru gave examples of larger groups which would credibly show up at, or at least contact the organizers of, protests across the country. Even though we’re much larger than the UK, a core of protest enthusiasts could be doing that.

I don't know any statistics, but I do remember reading multiple articles to that effect during the Black Lives Matter protests of groups bringing in out-of-state protestors who were regularly playing the role of agitators.

There are absolutely career activist networks as well, generally parts of political machines whose job it is to organize protests using established channels. They're the sort of people who work with the people who do things like bus students to protests. The student isn't necessarily showing up for any given protest, but the network behind the mobilization is regularly being tapped and exercised.

There is something distinctly humorous about the CUNY machete lady being at the Columbia protest, at least, but a lot of what we do see is a mix of local students and professional activists.

In my experience it could be best stated as there's a subculture of anarchists/communists who basically participate in every left-aligned protest, but many of the protests (particularly bigger ones on popular subjects like anti-austerity or LGBTQ+ rights) will also attract a changing crowd of other, more normie types, which means the anarchist/communist contigent is less notable.

Also the folks who bring Palestine flags to every protest tend to be Middle-Easterners, often actual Palestinians, themselves.

In my experience it could be best stated as there's a subculture of anarchists/communists who basically participate in every left-aligned protest, but many of the protests (particularly bigger ones on popular subjects like anti-austerity or LGBTQ+ rights) will also attract a changing crowd of other, more normie types, which means the anarchist/communist contigent is less notable.

From a UK perspective, the problem is that the SWP crowd have the necessary skills to organise large protests which skirt the boundaries of legality, and the normies don't. So unless the protest is organised by some other group with access to those skills (like a union), it inevitably becomes a SWP-led protest. I became something of a meme in left-wing student circles after I was identified as "the Lib Dem who turned up at a demo in a black cab" - I had 50 protest signs with Lib Dem sympathetic messages to dish out to Lib Dem supporters and a taxi was the only way to get them from the sign printer to the protest in the time available. The SWP had pre-distributed 2 or 3 protest signs each with SWP-sympathetic messages to the 100+ activists they had milling around the start, and lots of non-SWP-supporters ended up carrying because they thought they were just picking up a spare sign from another protestor.

Also the folks who bring Palestine flags to every protest tend to be Middle-Easterners, often actual Palestinians, themselves.

In the 1990s most of the Middle Easterners in the UK were either rich Arabs (who didn't go on protests) or Turkish Cypriots (who don't care about Palestine). The "every demo is about Palestine" dynamic back then was definitely driven by white British lefties. Looking at media coverage, I think that 2024-vintage pro-Palestine protests in the UK are dominated by people from predominantly-Muslim ethnic groups, although I see more South Asians than Middle Easterners.

One of the particularities of Finnish protest culture is that most activist-led protests, probably due to anarchist influence, will announce that political party signs and flags should not be brought in the protest, presumably to combat potential protest takeovers like that. Also there's no major Trotskyist groups to speak of, and the closest equivalent as a communist group that's experienced in organizing protests, the Communist Party of Finland, tends to have a subdued profile in the protest themselves.

During the BLM protests in 2020+, a lot of ... extremely enthusiastic partisans ... from both sides converged on Portland (OR). It seemed like the cause was President Trump choosing Portland as an example in a speech, which caused people who wanted to fight the good fight (whichever fight it was) to converge on Portland like a Schelling point. I wonder if somehow Columbia has fallen into the same role? The reports of activity on other campuses argue against it, but then, college students and faculty are tied to their location in ways that random street fighters aren't.

It's not just students. Faculty are now showing up in force to support the protests. And protests at Yale are if anything even bigger. New encampments are spreading to NYU, Michigan and others.

I've pointed out in the past that when liberal America slowly coalesces into a new consensus on a topic, then any opponent of that new consensus better have a great political machine. The only two examples I can think of are gun rights and pro-life activists. Both have scored important victories against liberals.

So how does things look for Israel? Well, AIPAC is certainly very formidable. But the support for Israel is cracking among the younger conservative crowd (e.g. Candace Owens), let alone the hard right (e.g. Nick Fuentes). It's not like Israel will start losing votes in Congress. If you look at the history of Apartheid South Africa, they still had a lot of support from the WH right up until the end. The political scene will be the most reactionary. In the case of Apartheid South Africa, the huge protests on universities began already in the 1970s. It would take 15 years for serious political change. And they never had a lobby as strong as the Israelis.

So I suspect political change will be slower, but I also think we're crossing a rubicon as I write this. I don't see things ever going back to normal for Zionists henceforth in the West, certainly not among leftists or increasingly many liberals. The Israel lobby always wanted and sought bipartisan support. They were remarkably successful in that for many decades. But that era has now decisively ended.

I think some share of goodwill from American liberals will be lost irreversibly, but it'll result in little more than Israel gaining more independence in its actual environment. It's not Ukraine.

On a longer time horizon, demographics will change towards less favorable for progressive causes except the anti-white ones specifically (as it's largely the fascination of low-fertility urban whites and not exciting to new growing strata), and Americans will largely forget this issue, or embrace a new paradigm, because they don't have awareness of long time horizons and Israelis do.

And, honestly, everyone is tired of victimhood Olympics. Jews can afford to embrace and feel pride in their natural social aggression, so prominently visible across the spectrum, in Dershowitz and Finkelstein both. But when it becomes normalized, Finkelstein's argument for treating Palestinians magnanimously is less coherent.

If you look at the history of Apartheid South Africa, they still had a lot of support from the WH right up until the end

The end of Apartheid coincides with the collapse of the USSR, not some sudden shift in external political pressure on behalf of activists. That there was relative certainty that South Africa would not immediately turn into a Soviet satellite regime because the USSR was too busy collapsing was what enabled a consensus on ending Apartheid. That they'd later turn into vaguely anti-western, mixed political system basket case anyway wasn't really a concern.

That they'd later turn into vaguely anti-western, mixed political system basket case anyway wasn't really a concern.

There was also a lot of confidence that liberal capitalist democracy was the natural state of countries, as long as there wasn't some special interfering factor. I think that didn't really start to fade until the Iraq War.

So how does things look for Israel?

Frankly, I blame Israel, either for failing to discipline the IDF, or for failing at PR. Those videos of Palestinians being shot dead for no apparent reason ought to have been treated like the pictures of naked human pyramids from Abu Ghraib, as a national scandal. Instead, what I've seen is justification via showing worse atrocities committed by Hamas. Maybe I've missed a debunking or something, but for someone who is essentially pro-Israel because they're a modern liberal democracy, this has been extremely disheartening.

Foreign protests and eventually sanctions didn’t really kill apartheid. The South Africans could have held on and non-aligned countries (Israel, amusingly, being a central example) would have continued doing business with them. The main reason apartheid failed was that it never had buy-in from the non-Afrikaner (largely Anglo, in some cases Jewish) white elite in South Africa who actually ran the economy and who had repeatedly chafed with the Afrikaners who controlled the entire politics of the country for fifty years via the national party (which was for much of its history not merely white nationalist but Afrikaner Calvinist ethnonationalist). Young whites, particularly urban, particularly in the middle and upper middle classes, increasingly and ever more earnestly opposed apartheid. The system lost the will to function, the older Afrikaners (who had steadfastly opposed non-Dutch European immigration well into the 1950s) no longer had the a popular support to maintain the system as it was. That process began in the 1970s, long before the US and UK implemented major sanctions (which were themselves not comprehensive in practice and which were - as you note - strongly opposed by Reagan and Thatcher at the time).

Rhodesia is a better example of a country that was more crippled by sanctions, but Rhodesia peaked at 300,000 whites while South Africa had 5.2 million, a number much more capable of maintaining autarky with high living standards and extensive domestic industry. In Israel, the domestic economic and social elite is much more aligned with ethnonationalism than was ever the case in South Africa, where Anglos never really cared for apartheid (which, pointedly, was never strictly implemented in Anglo-majority African colonies even if they had some segregation; even Rhodesia did not actually have codified apartheid like South Africa did).

The fall of apartheid was as much about domestic politics in SA after centuries of conflict between the Anglos and the Boers as it was about international pressure. If all white South Africans had been firmly aligned behind Afrikaner ethnonationalism it’s quite possible they would still be in charge today, but of course they were not.

Not to mention, of course, whites were something on the order of 10% of SA's population at the end of apartheid- total. Jews are 60% of Israel's population.

Spot on. And when South Africa became one of the dominions of the British Empire in 1912, her population was already less than 1/3 White. Racial minorities have never practiced settler colonialism with success. Apartheid was never going to work long-term.

One of the scariest things from my point of view is watching some Jewish progressives I know choosing, after a period of internal struggle, to take the side of Hamas. I could see that something had to give when they started being attacked by what they viewed as their own side. And I would have been surprised to see them abandon pretty much their whole progressive social networks and worldview under any circumstances, even to defend themselves. But it seems like many of them chose to thread the needle by simply becoming "one of the good ones".

I think it's simply the case that if you're a typical liberal Jew, you're probably reading sources like the NYTimes or the Guardian that underplay the gang-rape/civilian murder aspect of Oct 7th and choose instead to focus relentlessly on dubious claims of Israel deliberately targeting children (leaving aside that covers 15yo Hamas recruits armed with assault rifles), blowing up hospitals etc. It's not terribly surprising that they'd end up with a skewed view of the conflict.

It just points to the shallowness of these friendships. Others downthread point to the many charitable reasons people may choose to abandon their self-interest, such as @2rafa citing naivete and @FirmWeird citing personal growth, but you wouldn't have to abandon it if your friends had your own interests at heart. The progressive constantly eats its own as the cause celebre changes, and the it is simply the Jews turn on the chopping block once again. Black men, Hispanic men, Asians, and White Gays will be on back the block soon enough.

Scary? What exactly is scary about that? I'm not trying to get an own here, I'm legitimately curious because the only thing that comes to mind is that you're scared of changing your own mind after a period of internal struggle. Changing your mind over a serious or contentious issue as a result of a period of internal struggle is generally regarded as a positive development by most people, and they use terms like "personal growth" to describe it.

You seem to have missed...the second sentence?

I could see that something had to give when they started being attacked by what they viewed as their own side.

Unless, you didn't miss it, and "internal struggle" is a totally outta pocket euphemism?

I actually just interpreted "attacked" as the sort of attacks I've actually seen - shouting, protest signs, criticism, dialogue etc. I haven't seen any jews getting murdered or brutally assaulted in the west by left-wing activists in order to change their political views, though I'll happily update my post if it turns out there's actually a brutal pogrom taking place on American university campuses. Additionally, "internal struggle" is directly from the post I was quoting.

'People experiencing "internal struggles" and changing their minds, as a result of being attacked(shouted at, protested against, and criticized by their social groups), is good actually.' is what I was alluding to.

Compare.

Changing your mind over a serious or contentious issue as a result of a period of internal struggle is generally regarded as a positive development by most people, and they use terms like "personal growth" to describe it

and

Changing your mind over a serious or contentious issue as a result of a period of internal struggle --after being shouted at, protested against, and criticized by your social group-- is generally regarded as a positive development by most people, and they use terms like "personal growth" to describe it

I am, skeptical, that 'most people' would agree with the second formation.

I am, skeptical, that 'most people' would agree with the second formation.

Ever spoken to any vegetarians or vegans? Most of them would be more than happy to tell you about how much their life was improved by someone hostilely and aggressively telling them about the actual suffering their food choices were responsible for. I personally have changed my opinion on some issues because partisans actually showed me the cost in human suffering of my prior stance, and I don't think those people harmed or hurt me in any way.

They don’t typically think they’re taking the side of Hamas (some do but they’re in the extreme minority), they think they’re taking the side of a rainbow future one state solution where Jews and Muslims live together in peace, harmony and democracy. That is indeed hopeless naïveté, but no moreso than ‘defunding the police will reduce crime’, which they almost certainly also believe.

There have always been some Jews who’d rather not be part of the Jewish community. Some succeed, and we never hear of them as Jews again. Some are carried away by the Gestapo.

Every year, and as it happens it’s on this day specifically, we think of them briefly. From the parable of the four sons:

The wicked one, what does he say? "What is this service to you?!" He says “to you,” but not to him! By thus excluding himself from the community he has denied that which is fundamental. You, therefore, blunt his teeth and say to him: "It is because of this that the L‑rd did for me when I left Egypt"; `for me' - but not for him! If he had been there, he would not have been redeemed!"

There have always been some Jews who’d rather not be part of the Jewish community. Some succeed, and we never hear of them as Jews again.

Of course, the Early Life always remembers.

What do you mean by this?

The "Early Life" section of Wikipedia; it's a meme among the sorts of people who use (((echos))).

Right. Real classy.

videos circulating of protestors harassing Jewish students

Where are these videos?

Twitter has some: https://twitter.com/olilondontv/status/1782167337682006209

They all seem pretty tame to me. “Group of protesters tries to exclude person who disagrees with them from their protest,” isn’t exactly the kind of thing that made “mostly peaceful” a meme.

Yeah, it’s a shame that Universities cancel classes at the drop of a hat nowadays, but Kristallnacht this ain’t.

Looks like they are stopping that (Zionist) student from recording the faces of the protestors, by preventing him from entering into the protest square with his phone recording. This would be evidence that Zionist students want to harass the protestors, but not evidence of protestors harassing Jewish students.

Recording a public assembly is harassment now? I am having serious trouble imagining you apply the same standard towards any situation where your sympathies are reversed.

I can help you imagine. If a group of BLM protestors have sequestered themselves into a square to do their BLM chants and so forth, then someone dressed in a police uniform with his phone out to record is clearly the provocateur if he attempts to enter the zone when there is clearly no interest in the zone other than provocation. (Notice the square is densely packed and it is evening.) It is crybullying to call it harassment if the BLM people hold their arms to prevent your incursion. Of course, I’m saying this as someone who thinks BLM was the height of American stupidity. This is why it’s ubiquitous during protests to separate the two sides, and the police will often prevent a member of one side from entering the other side.

So you're saying that refusing to let students enter common areas that they have a right to be in is not harassment, but recording video in a public area (as is your right) is harassment?

A Muslim man in a Palestinian keffiyeh and thobe is attempting to enter the sequestered area of a vigil held by Jewish students for October 7th victims, desiring to record all of their faces on his phone. It’s 8pm and there’s no other reason for him entering the area. If Jewish students passively prevent him from entering the grounds of the protest, do you want the Jewish students charged for harassment?

In both of those examples, you've added implicitly threatening traits to the "trespasser" (a cop protected and abetted by the power of the state; "desiring to record all of their faces") that weren't as present in the original scenario.

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"recording a video in public while being Palestinian" is not a crime, last I checked.

There is no way to "passively" prevent someone from going where they please, and if that place is a public place, you have no right to do so. You also have no right to claim a public place, and in doing so deny it to your ethnic, religious or political enemies.

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Yes, obviously (assuming that harassment is a chargeable offence, which I don't think it is).

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Is there any evidence that the student is a Zionist?

Yes, Chabadnik hat + phenotype + context clues (smirking as recording a group of Palestinian protesters).

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That's evidence that the student is a Jew, not a Zionist.

The dress of that particular Orthodox Jew tells us more about his identity than merely “Jewish”. How many Chabadniks would consider themselves unaligned with the interests of the Israeli state? While they may not be religiously Zionist (maintaining that the current instantiation of the nation is the long-awaited true return from exile by G-d), it would be very rare if one of them were to protest alongside Palestinian activists. The orthodox groups who do that (like 1-2) are totally ostracized from mainstream orthodoxy, and few in rank.

That would mean that he's a Jew who supports Israel. If you want to claim he's a "Zionist", you're going to have to explain how you distinguish between that and a Zionist.

"Zionist" isn't a swear word meaning "anyone who wants Israel to exist".

What's your opinion on Nick Sandmann?

I mean, what do these people hope to accomplish? Like what are their demands?

Surely they know that Columbia university can’t actually affect any Israeli policies.

You can't really talk about protests like they're a unified group with a specific plan. It's like asking "what are those people on the Motte hoping to accomplish?" There's a lot of them, and they're all different.

I think a big part of protests is to improve the cohesion of the protestors. They start out as just a mob of dissatisfied individuals who hate the current status quo, but they'll talk to each other, march together, chant slogans together, and eventually figure something out. Over time they turn into a unified, coherent political activist group. They might alienate a lot of neutrals, but those random neutrals don't have much political power either. A small, committed activist group can wield disproportionate power. See for example: AIPAC on the other side.

In a general sense, I think university leftists have done a great job convincing college students that being anti-Israel, pro-Palestine is the default "leftist" "intellectual" position. That's going to have ripple effects down the line.

In a general sense, I think university leftists have done a great job convincing college students that being anti-Israel, pro-Palestine is the default "leftist" "intellectual" position.

I think this is the wrong level of generality to look at it. Someone has convinced the students that the default leftist intellectual alignment is anti-establishment, despite Columbia being an establishment institution that largely exists to train the pro-establishment left. The pro-establishment left has been mostly pro-Israel since the Holocaust and solidly pro-Israel since before I was born. The anti-establishment left has been mostly pro-Palestine since the Nabka and solidly pro-Palestine since kibbutzim stopped being a useful example of really existing socialism. The changing views of leftwing students on Israel-Palestine is downstream of their changing views on the centre-left establishment.

In a general sense, I think university leftists have done a great job convincing college students that being anti-Israel, pro-Palestine is the default "leftist" "intellectual" position. That's going to have ripple effects down the line.

I actually disagree here - that is and always has been the default "leftist" "intellectual" position (sic). You don't need to posit some conspiracy among campus left-wing activists to explain why modern left wing political thought takes a dim view of white-passing ethnostates that convert American tax dollars/weapons into dead brown people.

modern left wing political thought takes a dim view of white-passing ethnostates that convert American tax dollars/weapons into dead brown people

True, but I don't think they were so anti-Israel as they are today. Maybe some of the more radical leftists were, but most mainstream democrats (like Joe Biden) were still staunchly pro-Israel, and of course anti-semitism is one of the great bogeymen of leftists everywhere.

Mainstream leftists (including Joe Biden) still are staunchly pro-Israel. Congress just passed a bill to provide military aid to Israel with mostly-Democratic votes.

Those college campuses still had actual conservatives on them, don't forget that. The radical left and leftists in general, were a minority of a minority then. Conservatives and centrists still dominated the campus. Now the radicals are the minority of the leftist majority, bolstered by the foreign and immigrant Islamic student population.

Also, the radical minority from before is now running the asylum. They pushed for the creation of 'studies' programs that could only accept leftist professors and pushed out conservatives and moderates wherever they could. They use DEI initiatives to further marginalize anyone who would go against them even in STEM fields.

The march through the institutions is almost complete, now we just have to wait for perestroika and glastnov in 3 generations, if we're lucky, maybe I'll still be alive then.

For the most part I agree, but there are still quite a few old Jewish faculty and administrators in the institutions to put a check on this. And I'm sure Sergey Brin and Larry Page have a few connections at Google they can use to help clamp down on the protests there.

You can't really talk about protests like they're a unified group with a specific plan.

Of course they are. This is all planned.

By whom?

I'm sure you can find any number of groups who are proud to participate. I don't think any of them deserve much credit.

If the signs are like those at other student protests, A.N.S.W.E.R. has something to do with it.

Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, along with a couple other umbrella groups, have jointly claimed credit for both the Columbia-specific protest and the follow-on encampments at a number of other schools. There's a fair criticism that there's at least a few rando Garbage People in the hradzka sense running around, or even agent provacateurs, but this isn't some Stand Alone Complex where the simulacrum had no real original version.

((The less charitable take on 'umbrella group' is that they're both just front groups for the actual coordinating organizations, but by definition I can only point to the subchapters and related organizations giving extremely similar messaging on short notice, or other more subtle signs that they've got intercampus communication going on that doesn't match the paper or training from the public faces.))

By whom?

I don't know, I'm not on their mailing lists (or Discords as the case may be)

Then how do you know it exists?

The bailey, I mean, where these discord servers somehow distinguish their members from "a mob of dissatisfied individuals." Anyone can give out an email address. That puts them roughly on par with a local HOA. Scary.

I see what appears to be co-ordinated protests, I know protests have been co-ordinated in the past, I infer the existence of a co-ordinator. It's not rocket science.

I would gently posit that your level of conscientious organization is slightly higher effort than these flash mobs. Occupy Wall Street and Chaz exhibit hallmarks of being coalescing of disparate bedfellows rather than a coordinated mobilization effort. Coordinated efforts if anything exhibit geographical dispersion to maximize visibility, like deliberate disruptions of uninvolved parties and events by the pro-pal protestors. Staying in a single region to protest dance is just a magnet attracting the crazies, and those tend to dissolve the moment a power struggle arises.

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The vast, top-secret sinister conspiracy of... college student protesters?

It is at least 80 years too late to sneer at that in the United States alone.

Hopefully, they can pull US military aid out of Israel. Israel will have to resort to using more dumb bombs, until local industry catches up with demand. With less leverage on Israel, the Arabs in Gaza will suffer more - and hopefully some will be forced out, though that’s more of a longshot.

Since the American defense lobby likes money, all this probably won’t happen.

Hold on.

Are you suggesting Arab suffering is a means to some end? Or is it the goal?

Neither. It’s a result of less US restrictions on Israeli actions, which generally prioritize safeguarding Arab lives much lower than accomplishing military objectives. E.g. going into Rafah now, is something the US is preventing Israel from doing for such humanitarian reasons.

They're going to pull US military aid out of Israel...by protesting at Columbia?

Even if their protest is successful, how is Columbia University going to pull that off?

What does the location of the protest have to do with it? If protesters are marching in the streets, it’s not because they’re making demands of the HOA. They’re speaking to a national audience, which is exactly why we know about it at all.

In theory, they could get Columbia to completely cave and put out a sufficiently groveling statement that it triggers a respectability cascade, causing all the other universities to cave and put out groveling statements. This would be followed by major media outlets, and finally the White House.

It's unlikely, but theoretically possible. It would be less crazy than the stuff that happened in 2020.

Except Columbia can't do that because they've got pressure from the pro-Israel left which would result in the ouster of Columbia's Muslim female president, the Baroness (yes really) Nemat Shafik, if they did so. She doesn't want to be treated like Claudine Gay.

It's unlikely, but theoretically possible. It would be less crazy than the stuff that happened in 2020.

...a university putting out a statement that causes a chain reaction that leads to the President of the United States and a majority of Congress to change their position on providing military aid to Israel?

What happened in 2020 that was crazier than that?

I don't see a world where the US decides to stop providing military aid to Israel within the next decade, let alone in time to have an effect on the current conflict. Even if literally all the universities put out statements saying that they should! In my experience a university statement on a hot button political issue has never come close to anything like that kind of impact.

What happened in 2020 that was crazier than that?

American sports was completely canceled for 48 hours because a domestic abuser in the process of kidnapping a child and holding a knife was shot by police.

Who was that?

here ya go. He just gave the cliffs notes for the shooting that started the Kenosha riot which Kyle Rittenhouse more or less ended.

See though, that strikes me as much more probable than the university statement thing. That fits within my understanding of how the world works. American sports has a recent history of doing stupid stuff, and people freak out about criminals being killed by police all the time. When was the last time a statement from a university affected anything?

divestment is a pretty clear goal. it's worked before

I think divestment is certainly a viable goal (afaik various bodies have already divested from the fossil fuels industry, the arms industry, the tobacco industry and so on for progressive political reasons) but it’s not really the reason they’re protesting. Columbia could divest from “corporations that profit from Israel’s war in Gaza” tomorrow and it wouldn’t stop the protests.

Note that the argument that the students are making for "Columbia is profiting from Israel's US backed war in Gaza" is not the sane version of that argument. They are going after Columbia for holding index funds which contain regular American companies which do business in Israel. Apparently Microsoft is "providing surveillance infrastructure to the IDF" and therefore QQQQ is a hate stock. The kind of divestment the students are asking for is not a serious demand that they want met.

I think they actually do have a chance to influence policy on this. Normally I think protesting is a waste of time, but Biden needs the progressive left to win this election. It is very close and maybe they can get some serious concessions out of him and his administration.

As far as Columbia goes, I think they want them to divest from Israel. From Al Jazeera: "The protesters are calling for Columbia to divest from corporations that profit from Israel’s war on Gaza".

but Biden needs the progressive left to win this election

Unironically, I don't think this was true two years ago. If he'd have played Bill Clinton's playbook from the 90s and governed as center-left, I think he could have a high enough approval rating that we wouldn't be taking a rematch of the 2020 election seriously. But it seems, to me at least, that the current administration doesn't want to moderate its positions to appeal to the median voter: I'm hard pressed to think of many cases where it's been willing to push back against progressive partisans.

My standing thesis is that the Congressional Progressive Caucus successfully convinced Bidens team that the momentum of BLM was permanent and that the CPC as the champion/stewart of BLM was on the ascendancy. A few specific events lent credence to this calculus in the early days of Bidens presidency such as Stacey Abrahms mobilizing Georgia for Biden and the Senate, and the Rittenhouse trial among other BLM items made the CPC advocacy seem relevant and thus their political power was enshrined. Opponents to the CPC like Abigail Spanberger and Obama and consultants such as Ruy Texiera and James Carville have repeatedly complained that the progressives still have too much influence, and tbat is squarely aimed at the CPC.

Minor setbacks like Jayapal being smacked for advocating Ukraine 'negotiate' seemed to dull some of the CPC influence, but the CPC has always been explicitly pro palestinian. With youth support for pro palestine being more visible than AIPACs feeble efforts to change public perception of voters, Biden is beholden to the CPC if only to maintain a pretense of strength to the wider electorate.

The Clinton center-left voters are gone; they follow NPR and NPR has moved along with the progressive left even further leftward.

The normie Clinton era voter is listening but not absorbing this leftward shift. Most of them are vaguely democratic insofar as the republican options remain as noxiously stupid as they currently are; Trump is bad enough but Majorie Taylor Greene is a trainwreck to anyone wishing to express even mild dissent from the Democrats.

I doubt the voters are gone. Even subreddits like /r/bayarea have taken a notable anti crime turn over the past few years, to the point where it's rare now to see highly upvoted comments in favor of criminal law reform, rent control, or other progressive hobbyhorses.

Bayarea is a notably young subreddit, as that whole website is. If anything this is a new crop of normies emerging, having seen the consequences of the soft touch and unwilling to continue blindly down this evidently rocky path to the progressive future. There is usually an interesting splitting of subreddits in regionals, with sanfrancisco and bayareahating each other just as seattle and seattlewa or publicfreakout and actualpublicfreakouts or unitedkingdom and ukpolitics all hate each other for being pussies and racists respectively. The split has been getting worse over time, likely because of the increasingly visible failures of progressives. Should be fun to see these spirals continue and see which side the banhammer falls on. Gendercritical got axed, but so did chapotraphouse

It can affect US policies?

Remember that everyone said this exact same thing about BLM protests in 2015. The movement was a joke, just some crazy college kids.

This is just another loop on the death spiral.

Which of BLM’s goals did it achieve? Stuff like the bail/justice reform movement long predates BLM and wasn’t the focus, so that doesn’t count.

Diverted uncounted billions of dollars to leftist activism to give sinecures to hordes of useless college graduates, putting fringe "critical theory" activists in charge of university hiring, science funding, and formerly apolitical NGOs with massive endowments and prestige.

I don't know what goals you think they had other than "all power to us, loot the system for our ingroup"

How can people still pretend the institutional takeovers of 2020 just didn't happen?

That’s just institutional leftism, it isn’t BLM in particular. That was a specific movement with goals like “defund the police”.

BLM was the previous vehicle for institutional leftism to take over everything. "Decolonization" is the new one.

Got some of those in the 'leadership' positions independently wealthy.

They got Starbucks locations to act as a public restroom for a few years. Not even that was able to stick.

Looser sentences was absolutely a key focus of BLM. The fact that those demands predated BLM does not negate the fact. As for achievements? That's another story. But I think the goal for BDS is more tangible since most people don't really care much about Israel one way or another. That's why the Zionist lobby has been successful. It's enough for a small but passionate minority and you can have outsized impact on foreign policy. Domestic policy is trickier.

I agree, Zionism is the default in the US because most people don’t care except (most) Jews and some Evangelicals and this leads to policy by default, unlike issues like abortion and gun control with strong views on both sides. As the Muslim population rises in the West, the constituency strongly ideologically opposed to Israel, who consider opposition to Israel a central religious and moral imperative, grows with it.

That said, the route to BDS’ actual goals (which, most pointedly, include sanctions as a central element) is much harder. Fifty something representatives out of 435 voted against the current Israel aid bill; 20 of those were Republicans protesting the related aid for Ukraine and that some of the money would go to Palestinians (and even the NatCon faction definitely wouldn’t vote to sanction Israel in support of Palestinians, they just wouldn’t vote to send it money). Of the few dozen Dems most just thought Israel went a bit too far in Gaza. The US Muslim population is much smaller than those in major Western European countries per capita, and is highly concentrated in a few house seats. Even countries that have been more skeptical of Israel’s war in Gaza, like China and Russia, don’t sanction Israel. Even many Muslim lands do not.

BLM turned out and had specific demands of people near enough to have to listen to them. Those demands were, at first, fairly reasonable(cops wear body cams) so they were met.

By contrast the pro-Palestine protestors are demanding Israel dissolve itself. Not only is this a much bigger ask than ‘put cameras on your police’ Israel really doesn’t care and doesn’t have to listen at all.

I don't recall anyone actually being against body cams, aside from some griping about the cost. IME most cops want to wear them because they're great at rebutting false accusations of misconduct and brutality.

I haven't noticed the sibling's comment that BLM is actually against them now, though maybe I haven't been paying enough attention. I suppose it wouldn't surprise me all that much though. I still recall the case where the cops shot a black teenage girl who was actively in the process of stabbing another girl, it was caught on bodycam quite clearly, and BLM still threw a fit, though a bit more muted.

fairly reasonable(cops wear body cams)

I am all for this. But then when it started to be implemented, BLM's rhetoric turned around, at least locally. The stated rationale was privacy. But cynically, I think it was because too many (but not all!) of their rallying cases wound up having video evidence that contradicted the simple narrative that spun out of the initial reports.

I remember articles from the activist groups demanding that body cam footage be sealed and only released at the request of the accused. Remind me to find them later.

Yeah, that sounds familiar. If you happen to come across those links, it'd be nice to have them here for reference, but no worries if not. :-)

As far as I know, BLM always opposed body cams.

BLM is just a three word slogan. To the extent that it became a real-world organization it was largely a grift.

People then, as now, were attracted to the movement for all sorts of reasons. Some people made reasonable demands. Most did not.

As usual, the communists showed up as they do whenever people are angry about something.

There was no "good BLM" that got corrupted. It was always just an organic blob that was fanned by street anger, irresponsible news media, and Marxist organizations. The white people who were at those protests in 2014 are the same as the white people at the anti-Jewish protests today. Eventually they'll get bored and move on to the next thing, looking for self-actualization that will never arrive.

BLM is just a three word slogan. To the extent that it became a real-world organization it was largely a grift.

I agree, but I would say that the lack of specific demands was also one of its strengths.

If you make a specific demand, it ties you down. It reveals your cards. The other side can respond in various clear ways. They can give you the demand, which immediately ends the negotiation. They can negotiate, aiming for somewhere in the middle. Or they can refuse, and offer various reasons why those demands are unreasonable. Either way, it gives them a logical path out.

Instead of making demands, it's pure "id." It keeps the other side guessing, pleading. "Just tell me what you want!!!" "No." The classic example is the wife who is angry at her husband, but won't tell him why she's angry or what she wants him to do. "If you really loved me, you'd know without me telling you." It keeps him guessing, keeps him on an endless treadmill of trying to do things for her in a futile attempt to satisfy her that will never end. Plus, for a political movement, it brings together all sorts of people who probably wouldn't agree on any one specific demand.

looking for self-actualization that will never arrive

Seems like it does arrive for them, in the sense that they get to be a part of a change in zeitgeist. I imagine it feels pretty fulfilling to get in early on the next big political thing.

Ego satiation doesn't put food on the table. Once there material wealth was present for the taking, the infighting crippled the movement. The BLM formal organization milked the feel-good donations dry before collapsing, immediately calling the general public racist for not continuing to support Buy Large Mansions. While the grifter and the do-gooder may be seperate bodies, neither side manages to get their preferred outcome.

The charitable answer (extremely charitable IMHO, but I'm sure accurate for at least a few of them) is that they do have some non-zero chance of influencing US policy, specifically the amount of aid we give to Israel, the conditions we put upon it, and the tenor of our relations with Israel. If they can change the tenor of relations even slightly from "We got your back" to "Reign it in a bit, our support isn't unconditional" they could see that as a win.

If they can change the tenor of relations even slightly from "We got your back" to "Reign it in a bit, our support isn't unconditional" they could see that as a win.

They have already done so. POTUS administration has used messaging to suggest support is conditional, begging restraint, etc. For example, the reporting after Iran strike on Israel, it was widely reported afterwards Biden had talked to Bibi and said the US won't participate in any retaliation. "Take the win." Coordinating an impromptu air defense network between several regional partners to down Iranian missiles and drones is not lukewarm support. It is exceptional support. I don't think the general public is aware or cares about these kinds of details. It was also support defensive in nature which I guess makes it less useful to activists to point at.

It is unclear exactly what Biden could do to satisfy this arm of his party without ceasing all financial and military support for Israel. A politically isolated or more desperate Israel is probably not a better Israel for Palestinians to live next to. Nor would it be better for America to have to deal with and it would likely increase domestic pressures on Biden. So signals for restraint and (probably) coordinated public messaging is about all POTUS is willing to do. It is an election year after all!

I mean, what do these people hope to accomplish? Like what are their demands?

Can't you ask that about most protests?

I never really "got" protesting. I have to assume that the main purpose of it is just to serve as a social activity for the protesters themselves. If it's something like workers going on strike, where the group in question actually has some leverage, that's a different story, but a bunch of random people just gathering in public to "support a cause"? It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Sometimes I've heard it justified as a way of building positive publicity. You're supposed to see the police or other authority figures mistreating the protesters, and that's supposed to make you support their cause more. But usually it just makes me end up supporting the cause less, because the protesters are obnoxious. Their own actions make me want them to lose more.

Protestors in general come off like cringe idiots to me. Willing to inconvenience you for their cause, that they believe is so obviously right that the only reason you won't join them is because you're either an irredeemable bad person or are incredibly ignorant and actually being educated by their protest.

I participated in some minor protests which were held and they were useful as they were used as "see, people actually care about this issue".

They helped to result in changes at local level.

Protests can be seen as kind of mini-referendum - and give sign to politicians they should at least pretend to care about given topic. Or maybe even care and do something.

In last local elections all politicians actually pretended to care about this topics, some seem to actually care about this topics.

Protest is better sign of actual strong interest than FB petition.

I never really "got" protesting. I have to assume that the main purpose of it is just to serve as a social activity for the protesters themselves.

I don't remember where I read it, but I recall someone arguing that a group of sign-waving protestors sends two messages — one written on the signs, the other the sticks to which those signs are attached. Picture any particular mob of protestors, shouting and chanting slogans, only now they're also wielding the proverbial pitchforks and torches.

There's all sorts of goals one could have. Often the goal is to make enough of a nuisance of yourselves so that you force the news to mention your cause, maybe sparking some conversations in the public. Sometimes, as you say, it's specifically to taunt the police so you can get some pictures of them hitting you in an attempt to take the moral high ground reserved for those oppressed by authority. Some protests are pure practice, every year here there a day of protest "against police brutality" and it's just a rallying cry for all the people who want to practice rioting (and for the police to practice their riot suppression) for when they'll have an actual cause they want to strategically riot for. If your protest is elite-supported, it can be to intimidate or to launder unpopular opinions for the elite by making them seem a lot more popular than they are.

Except that I’ve never ever seen this drive more people to support these causes. In fact, it’s almost always a negative publicity to the point that it would often do the cause better to not protest at all. Your protest blocked a road, now everyone is pissed because they were late to work, or missed a flight, or other activities they needed to get to. Are people talking about the cause as in “does this idea have merit” or in terms of “what a bunch of inconsiderate losers making people late for work and making people miss their flights. It’s negative at least around me. People outright cheered when the people blocking roads in Europe got pushed out of the way by SUVs or were manhandled to the side of the road by outraged drivers. Not one person seeing the souping of the Louvre paintings got curious about the cause, they were upset about the destruction of the art. So on net, it’s more likely to turn people away.

Except that I’ve never ever seen this drive more people to support these causes.

I am aware of such cases. In one case because people cared, were willing to take being late or risking beating or prison sentence or being thrown out of work and take minor risk of being assassinated by regime - but they were not aware that such opinion was widely shared.

So protests sparked strikes and so on.

Note that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_warning_strike_in_Poland basically failed - despite 12 million people participating in strike - in country that had 36 million people! Imagine 111 million people on strike in USA! Strike included regime television, all TV went out for 4 hours.

But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Polish_strikes were final trigger for regime change.

On other side: for minor issues even minor protest can cause results, especially for local government issues when noone really opposes them. Or opposing group will happily go away and try to take less defended victim rather than fight this specific battle. In sufficiently minor cases things as simple as single person mailing local government can work.

Other model: it is demonstration of power and one step away from armed mob/uprising/terrorism. This also sometimes works. Sometimes by progressing into outright revolution.

See Ukraine in 2014 (president run away, no full scale civil war*) or how Tzarist Russia ended (ended in a full scale civil war).

*or ended in a civil war if you treat what happened in East as civil war rather than Russian invasion.

How old are you, roughly speaking?

Because this was famously, visibly effective in a few historical situations. The Civil Rights movement is in living memory.

It's often negative in the short term, but there are a lot of small causes that the news just doesn't care about and wouldn't mention if it weren't that some people made themselves a nuisance. It's a long term play, to not let your cause be forgotten or ignored. It's better to make people angry about you than let them ignore you.

For those specific examples, climate protestors have full elite backing now, the strategy is different. It's intimidation, they're used by the elites to show what they are willing to destroy if people don't bow down.

Hasn’t climate protest worked because the earth has actually gotten warmer the last 20 years so it feels true?

PETA hasn’t taken off. The only real change in that space is picking up some rationalists.

And environmentalist have benefited from tech costs curves while nothing like that has kicked in for PETA (cheap lab meat).

Hasn’t climate protest worked because the earth has actually gotten warmer the last 20 years so it feels true?

Something being true doesn't explain the dynamic he's describing. On one hand there's plenty of things that are true and feel true, and are opposed by the elites, rather than having their full backing. On the other hand the climate protest movement offers no solutions, and as he said are only used as a way to consolidate power, and to show what the elites are willing to destroy.

The term often used is "demonstration" rather than "protest". This is because by existing, these "demonstrations" demonstrate the power of those running them, and thereby convince all involved they'd better get in line.

If they don't actually have that power, sure, they get pushed out of the way and they lose. But anyone messing with these "protestors" will certainly receive the full force of the law, while the "protestors" will be handled with kid gloves, so it is clear they do have the power.

I think this captures the tenor of many protests. It's about power and intimidation. We can burn your buildings, tear down your monuments, loot your stores, and YOU are powerless to stop us.

Demonstrations have worked this way forever, going all the way back to ancient Rome, but perhaps most saliently in the street battles between fascists and communists in Weimar Germany.

Winning hearts and mind is one way to gain power. But any good communist knows that silencing and intimidating your enemies works much better. Here in America, we're so used to the MLK/Gandhi model which is designed to appeal to the hearts of a kind and powerful master. But demonstrations which carry the threat of violence are far more typical. I mean, would you dare to carry a drawing of Muhammad around Columbia's campus right now?

That said, I don't think these protests will go very far. The establishment is NOT on the side of protestors as they were during BLM. Even in San Francisco and Seattle, protestors are being charged for blocking traffic. If any protestors attempt real violence, they will be prosecuted.

Jews are still sacred in America.

Jews are just a white ethnicity now. Sacredness is gone.

What they do have is power.

They also have a strong in-group bias which is a huge reason that power exists in the first place.

More comments

I think in this specific case the protestors are annoying enough that sending in the veterans of Ken state wouldn’t lead to realignment towards their cause.

Most protests do have some chance of efficacy by changing the hearts and minds of local officials, or at least softening opinions. This seems like it has no connection to anything.

Ken state

The Barbie movie has left a lasting impression on our cultural consciousness.

In all seriousness, I don’t think protests have to have direct efficacy. The important thing is when people in power think about aiding Palestine/Israel, they think “people care enough about this to push the envelope of speech.” It’s literally about sending the message.

Ken state

The Barbie movie has left a lasting impression on our cultural consciousness.

Horses involved; checks out.

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