Land of the Free and the Home of Hypocrisy
Nothing quite signals the land of the free like the utilization of state violence to repress student protests. In the month since the student protests against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people began at Columbia University in New York City, more and more solidarity encampments have popped up across the United States. These peaceful student sit-ins echoed similar student movements that opposed the Vietnam War decades ago. The demands of these student protestors were simple. All they asked was for their universities to withdraw investment funds from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, or in other words, divestment. This was an extremely reasonable demand, which the media would surely cover in a similarly reasonable way.
Who are we kidding, of course they didn’t! Since the inception of these protests, the media has done their utmost to paint the students as incompetent, violent stooges of foreign regimes. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough so courageously covered the protests as follows, “I’ve got to say, it makes as much sense in 2024, having 18 or 19-year-old people running college campuses, as it did in 1968. Which is to say, it doesn’t make any sense at all. You do wonder where the adults are…” There are just two tiny issues with Joe’s take. For one, these protests actually do make as much sense today as they did in 1968! While students today are protesting the school’s investment in companies connected to the Israeli occupation, one of the reasons the students protested in 1968 was because their universities were doing weapons research to aid the nation’s war efforts in Vietnam. The similarities are striking! Now it is entirely fair to hold the position that we should have both continued the war in Vietnam and continue funding the genocidal Israeli regime today, but you cannot hold that position and also proclaim yourself to be a defender of freedom. Those two positions are mutually exclusive. One cannot be free while supporting a war against decolonial struggles like Vietnam and Palestine. Those who take the side of the oppressor whether outright or through enlightened centrism, are in all actuality playing defense for genocide. The second point that Joe seems to have missed is that those 18 to 19-year-olds ARE the adults on campus. They see the blatant oppression in the Middle East and their university’s complicity in supporting it, and they have stood up to their authority - those that hold the keys to their future - and have said enough is enough! Those ‘kids’ are more mature than Joe Scarborough and his infantile mind could ever hope to be.
Surely the anti-woke, constitution-hugging, freedom-loving, free-speech advocates of the far-right media are coming to the defense of these students’ First Amendment rights… right? Of course not! They are far too busy painting these encampments as undercover jihadist training grounds. Fox News reports on the protests not as Anti-War or Pro-Palestine, but as Pro-Hamas, Anti-Semitic, and Pro-Genocide. The words “Vile anti-Semitic protests continue to wreak havoc on college campuses.” managed to slip out of the empty skull of Sean Hannity, who would be outdone only moments later by the ‘Great One’ Mark Levin, who said, “… the Hitler Youth on our college and university campuses” Yeah… Hitler Youth, famous for its ranks being filled with Jewish students standing up against genocidal regimes; Mark Levin hasn’t found a fascist boot he wouldn’t lick from toe to tongue.
And it’s not just these two. You would be hard-pressed to find a Fox News segment that does not decry these protests as ultra-violent mobs bloodthirsty for the genocide of the Jewish people. They label them as Nazis and Terrorists for the crime of using their first amendment right to assemble and speak freely. After spending the last eight years crying about wokeness and cancel culture, the right-wing media are now the ones crying racist and demanding speech be canceled with the force of the law! It’s the most blatant hypocrisy imaginable, but that shouldn’t be surprising to you in the slightest.
Last night, the constant barrage by the media pleading for the First Amendment rights of these protestors to be trampled over finally paid off, as the NYPD arrived at the Columbia campus at the request of the university, armed in their militarized riot gear to squash the student encampment. Over one hundred arrests have already been made and as tensions continue to escalate, we expect more and more arrests to be made. Though these protests may be squashed here, the U.S. once again utilizing state violence to repress protesters, especially in the social media age, will do devastating damage optically, particularly amongst the youth. And in the social media age, optics are everything.
The protests compared to those in 1968 are much smaller. If the university didn’t want to meet the students’ demands, they could have treated them like a grease fire and put a lid on it letting it suffocate itself. Ignoring the students, playing for time, testing the strength of their organization and their mental resolve, would have given the university an almost guaranteed victory with no to minor damage in public opinion. But they couldn’t help themselves. The neoliberal institution cannot refrain from using the agents of state violence readily available to protect their interests and property!