I don’t think this is quite right. The protesters with SJP and PSL wanted to punish Biden and hurt liberal Zionism, and that was very effective.
I also think there’s a lot of New Left thinking animating the protest. The idea being that activism isn’t just a means to an end, but an end in and of itself. You saw a lot of this during Occupy
The students en masse might be disorganized, but SJP was ready to leverage Hamas’ butchery into a spectacle.
It sort of dovetails with your post about Rap Beefs: Now it’s made personal, with the worst accusations landing the hardest. Even if we find cries of “genocide” to be rich coming from supporters of a group dedicated to wiping out Jews, because it’s the worst accusation imaginable it has resonance.
I wish these protests could be dismissed as meaningless, but they have only strengthened the “oppressor” narrative: Jews bad (unless you renounce Israel), Palestinians good, “From The River To The Sea” is morally right. The twenty some-odd year project of sites like Mondoweiss is bearing fruit, what on earth makes you think they’ll slow down now?
Enjoyed the essay, Jeremiah. I would add to your good remarks--not only are the protestors acting mostly as virtue signaling viralists; they've also done a lot of damage--not just physical--but also to the educational purpose of the universities that enrolled them as students. Their acts are not just zero impact; they're net negative. Or so I argued in another Substack I write: https://open.substack.com/pub/civicbargain/p/campus-protests-hijack-our-democratic?r=87rjc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
The universities here have some of the same bad political thinking as the students.
Protests generally don't do anything except in very specific circumstances (for Civil Rights, to get the violent response to them on TV, otherwise usually to target a specific person who both feels shame and is empowered to change something), but Americans got the wrong conclusions from Civil Rights and Vietnam and think they actually just work all the time. (The Vietnam one is weird because those activists didn't do anything.)
So Ivy universities have actively been recruiting high school protestors because they think they're effective future political leaders. But the actual result is they got a bunch of annoying ineffective theater kids.
Couldn't agree more. I can't tell you how many people took issue with my post about the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, objecting that I didn't understand how inspiring it was to see young people daring to voice their protesting opinions; and also that "somebody has to try to put a stop to Israel's policies today." I have no problem with such opinions d, but not to the point (via occupations and even some violence) that they shut down a university and deprive the majority of access to their education. You add the good point that, by the way, such demonstrations don't really make a difference in the end. David Brooks wrote an essay in NYT a few weeks ago pointing out that the protests in the 1960s in some way "backfired" in that many otherwise liberal Americans drifted to the right in reaction to the chaos they saw.
Great essay, as usual. And congrats for landing on a third party publication.
This stood out:
> Social media plays a key role here. Given two actions—one quiet but effective, and one loud but ineffective—the latter will be a thousand times more viral than the former. Loud but ineffective actions, like throwing soup on a famous painting in the name of climate change, often dominate social media discussion of activism. And once the attention flywheel has gained momentum, it’s hard to stop.
Spot on. Symptomatic of a wider phenomenon where we seem to be chasing quick wins and forgetting the need for hard work day after day.
I don’t think this is quite right. The protesters with SJP and PSL wanted to punish Biden and hurt liberal Zionism, and that was very effective.
I also think there’s a lot of New Left thinking animating the protest. The idea being that activism isn’t just a means to an end, but an end in and of itself. You saw a lot of this during Occupy
Yup. I think of these protests as what was described as Phase 1 of the Vietnam War protests: Increase awareness:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/opinion/vietnam-antiwar-movement.html
The students en masse might be disorganized, but SJP was ready to leverage Hamas’ butchery into a spectacle.
It sort of dovetails with your post about Rap Beefs: Now it’s made personal, with the worst accusations landing the hardest. Even if we find cries of “genocide” to be rich coming from supporters of a group dedicated to wiping out Jews, because it’s the worst accusation imaginable it has resonance.
I wish these protests could be dismissed as meaningless, but they have only strengthened the “oppressor” narrative: Jews bad (unless you renounce Israel), Palestinians good, “From The River To The Sea” is morally right. The twenty some-odd year project of sites like Mondoweiss is bearing fruit, what on earth makes you think they’ll slow down now?
Enjoyed the essay, Jeremiah. I would add to your good remarks--not only are the protestors acting mostly as virtue signaling viralists; they've also done a lot of damage--not just physical--but also to the educational purpose of the universities that enrolled them as students. Their acts are not just zero impact; they're net negative. Or so I argued in another Substack I write: https://open.substack.com/pub/civicbargain/p/campus-protests-hijack-our-democratic?r=87rjc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
The universities here have some of the same bad political thinking as the students.
Protests generally don't do anything except in very specific circumstances (for Civil Rights, to get the violent response to them on TV, otherwise usually to target a specific person who both feels shame and is empowered to change something), but Americans got the wrong conclusions from Civil Rights and Vietnam and think they actually just work all the time. (The Vietnam one is weird because those activists didn't do anything.)
So Ivy universities have actively been recruiting high school protestors because they think they're effective future political leaders. But the actual result is they got a bunch of annoying ineffective theater kids.
Couldn't agree more. I can't tell you how many people took issue with my post about the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, objecting that I didn't understand how inspiring it was to see young people daring to voice their protesting opinions; and also that "somebody has to try to put a stop to Israel's policies today." I have no problem with such opinions d, but not to the point (via occupations and even some violence) that they shut down a university and deprive the majority of access to their education. You add the good point that, by the way, such demonstrations don't really make a difference in the end. David Brooks wrote an essay in NYT a few weeks ago pointing out that the protests in the 1960s in some way "backfired" in that many otherwise liberal Americans drifted to the right in reaction to the chaos they saw.
Great essay, as usual. And congrats for landing on a third party publication.
This stood out:
> Social media plays a key role here. Given two actions—one quiet but effective, and one loud but ineffective—the latter will be a thousand times more viral than the former. Loud but ineffective actions, like throwing soup on a famous painting in the name of climate change, often dominate social media discussion of activism. And once the attention flywheel has gained momentum, it’s hard to stop.
Spot on. Symptomatic of a wider phenomenon where we seem to be chasing quick wins and forgetting the need for hard work day after day.