Sunday, April 28, 2024

How We Actually Find Out About Stuff.

There'sSomethingHappening
ThereVille


I don't know about you but I've been somewhat at a loss to fully understand what the kids are up to on a number of US'ian campuses, and at least one Canadian school, these days.

Why?

Well, of course, part of it is my rapidly advancing age.

And then there is the matter of all the bombast-driven invective that makes it possible to find just about whatever you want in the sludge flooding all the media zones all the time.

Which is why I found a recent piece from Columbia University alumnus and current NY Times Opinion columnist Lydia Polgreen particularly illuminating.

It turns out that Ms. Polgreen decided to try and find out what has been happening on the lawns of Columbia University by, well, you know, reporting:

...I tried to figure this out the only way I know how: by reporting. I happened to have been on campus on April 18, the day Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, decided to call in the New York Police Department to clear the protesters from campus, and I returned a week later to spend the day reporting on the protests and the mood on campus.

What I saw were moving, creative and peaceful protests by people seeking to end the slaughter in Gaza, where more than 34,000 people have died, the majority of them women and children. I also saw things that left me quite troubled, and heard from Jewish students both inside and outside the camps navigating a campus fraught with emotions. But while reporting on the protests up close gave me insight into how unsettling some aspects of activism can be, it doesn’t mean the protesters’ actions are misguided. These young people seek a worthy cause: to end what may be the most brutal military operation for civilians in the 21st century...


Ms. Polgreen also went to the edge of Columbia's campus where the scene was decidedly different:

...Just outside the campus gates, the scene was more tense. The protests have become a destination for opportunists of all kinds. Nasty purveyors of chaos. Gavin McInnes, right- wing founder of the Proud Boys, turned up, student journalists reported. On Thursday, Christian Nationalists descended on Columbia to stage their own, ostensibly pro-Israel protest, screaming through the campus gates to the student protesters inside: “You want to camp? Go camp in Gaza!” according to a reporter on the scene...


Now.

A few of the student protestors have made statements that are problematic in the extreme, perhaps most notably the following:

...On Thursday (April 25th), video began circulating of one of the student protest leaders at Columbia, Khymani James, saying that “the same way we are very comfortable accepting that Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live, racists don’t deserve to live, Zionists, they shouldn’t live in this world,” and “be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” James later released a statement apologizing for the video...


But do isolated incidents such as the one noted above and questionable chants at rallies delegitimize the broader message of the students?

Ms. Polgreen, after considering historical precedent at Columbia, decides that they do not:

...It is easy when looking backward to remember the fight for a good cause as pure and untainted, even if it did not seem so at the time. In the same way, we now remember the Vietnam War as an American tragedy. The students at Columbia University who protested it seem, in retrospect, to have been right. But our memories elide some of their more outré tactics. A list of popular chants employed by antiwar protesters at a time when thousands of American soldiers were dying each year fighting in the war included things like “One side’s right, one side’s wrong, We’re on the side of the Viet Cong!” and “Save Hanoi, Lose Saigon, Victory to the Viet Cong!”

These slogans are sickening. But by 1968, when the protests reached their peak, the U. S. government had already realized, according to the Pentagon Papers, that the war was all but unwinnable. Yet its brutal killing machine ground on for another five years, and an additional 38,000 Americans, and countless more Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian people died pointless deaths in a senseless, futile war.

There are clear signs that Israel is prosecuting a war just as brutal, and unwinnable, as the United States did back then. Some people might not like the slogans, tactics or proposals of today’s pro-Palestine protesters. But the truth is that a majority of Americanshave qualms about Israel’s pitiless war to root out Hamas, whatever the consequences for civilians. As politicians send riot police onto campuses to try to smother a new protest movement, we’d do well to keep in mind why we’ve forgotten the ugliest aspects of the Vietnam protests: Those memories have been replaced, instead, by an enduring horror at what we did.


Actual reporting and informed context - clearly, both still matter when you want to try and get to the bottom of things.


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Earworm in the sub-header...This...Which was actually about protests of a very different kind, indeed.

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8 comments:

NVG said...

https://archive.is/JExGm ?

is the link right

NVG said...

Closing of club ignited the ‘Sunset Strip riots’

I guess it is. My apologies

RossK said...

No worries NVG--

For once, I got the link right!


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e.a.f. said...

Haven't heard that song in years. Still sounds good and still relevant today.

So now the protestors are claiming they want their universities to devest themselves of financial interests with Israeli corporations. That is not going to stop the war.

Denying people food, water, medical care is sign Benni isn't just in this to protect Israel. For Benni its a great opportunity to kill Arabs or simply get them to leave Gaza so Israel can take over the land. Its no different than the Arab countries ganging up on Israel in 1976. Given the attitude of individuals and countries towards Jews and Israel, at some level I can understand Israel's response. They want to make sure Hamas doesn't ever want to take a run at Israel again.

My concern is these protests may well become an attack on Jews. Its happened before and as Mom said, its not, "Never Again. Its, "it can happen again".

Currently there is a terrible war in Darfur, where are the protests about that? Didn't see these protestors denouncing China's actions against Muslims in their country. G.B. is going to be sending asylum seekers to Rwanda to be held there until their cases are heard in England, don't see students protesting that. (like who the hell sends people to Rwanda where hundreds of thousands of people were murdered based on their ethnic group.

I suspect a number of the demonstrators are not students at the universities but rather simply protestors who like protesting or don't like Jews. If students want to protest peacefully, no problem but non students ought to be kept out of it. They can have their own protests somewhere else, but of course having them on campuses is much nicer and they can camp.

It is hoped the demos will be over soon because if more non students continue to arrive at some point something unpleasant is going to happen. Given history and Canada's historical attitude towards Jews it is only a matter of time before violence is directed at Jewish students.

GarFish said...

A bit more on the same subject... https://zeteo.com/p/i-am-a-jewish-student-at-columbia

Anonymous said...

What we see at the American Universities is nothing more than Asymmetrical warfare, being waged by Russia, China and their proxies. Combine this with a vastly historically ignorant student population, long tired of their "basket weaving" courses, leading to degrees that are next to useless.

The war in Gaza is ghastly but Hamas's goal is to annihilate and exterminate every Jewish person "from river to the sea." with antisemitism on the rise and the questionable intelligence of the students protesting, lead to an almost lethal situation.

These students should all be forced to read about how the very politcal movent they support Hamas, treats non believers, LGBTQ, or even premarital relations.

The American education system, once vaunted to be the best in the world has declines to Evangelical anti-science education where book banning and even book burning is becoming common.

American politcans love stupid people, because stupid people do not think. International terrorists also love stupid people to do their bidding.

If I were of the Jewish faith today, I would be very worried, very worried indeed as antisemitism is more than creeping into the Canadian politic, with our provincial NDP seething with this loathsome ooze.

Just wait when our local kids begin to think they have been screwed over by government and fighting for spaces with international students, finding out that the cannot compete with the globally rich. Blaming the Jews and Soros becomes so much easier.... hell a little corporal with a funny mustache did that in 1933 and look what happened.

RossK said...

Thanks gf--

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e.a.f. and Anon-Above--

The reason I think Ms. Polgreen's piece is important is that it really looks at what is happening on the actual lawns of Columbia.

As for the extremist rhetoric, which is coming from all directions - she deals with that as well and, in my opinion, puts it in a reasonable perspective.


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JP said...

It's so nice to see how much the Zionists learned from the Nazis.....and found a way to apply it....NOT....poopsheads!