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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   25270 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'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.

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".

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.

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