This shit is so wild. Large hyper-real push to define objecting to ongoing and unimpeachable military atrocities as hate crimes and anti-semitism. This then means that people objecting are either “Hamas terrorists” or “leftist fascists”. Therefore, use of snipers and para-military force must be employed. Like, all of this potential violence and oppression from a grotesque, albeit impressive, PR / propaganda campaign.
What I can’t wrap my head around, is that the claims are so insanely obviously fake/wrong. It really feels like some sort of shared delusion where the powers that be have agreed to just all agree that this absurd claim is reality, even though it looks the opposite to literally everyone else.
Whoever quarterbacked the destruction of Harvard and Penn’s presidents early on really did a whammy—the reactions at all of these universities seems so insanely disproportionate to what’s going on, it really reads as if they’re being blackmailed or otherwise compelled.
I really don’t see how you justify having snipers trained on your own students who are literally sitting on grass and singing/chanting.
Also, I assume it’s like a trespassing thing, but what is the legal basis for violently arresting students hanging out on quads? Is it just the university has “closed” these spaces, so the normal right to free movement of students is now revoked, and so being in these spaces counts as some sort of trespass?
I guess it doesn’t really matter, they can always fabricate whatever basis they need to bring in the thugs, but it just adds to the strange hyper-real feeling. Most of the protests haven’t had anything remotely approaching any definition of violence. The anti-war stuff in the 60s involved firebombing and lots of “property destruction” etc.
Anyhow, power to these kids, and glad they’re not balking in the face of all these threats and intimidation.
Side note: I realize that minorities and other marginalized groups have experienced the business end of American security state for years/decades/centuries, but is this perhaps a good example of the security state expanding its oppression and crackdown onto more privileged “mainstream” groups? I realize a lot of the protestors are minorities themselves, but I mean in the sense that these are college students at elite universities, some of them presumably from backgrounds of means/opportunity. Some dem senator did a voice clip on the news about how these college students are “leftist fascists” which is obviously garbage, but like everything else now, everything is just fascist this fascist that, with zero relation to the more academic understanding of the term.
If they somehow successfully get this hyper-real fiction to stick, there’s no limits to what they can get up to next—anything that challenges the dominant paradigm will just be labeled, targeted and removed. Not a unique occurrence, but certainly a signal that you’re well into authoritarian land.
I know this is an old, time-tested tactic against leftists and oppositions everywhere, it’s just one of the first times in my life I’ve noticed it really being used and pushed by mainstream media across the political spectrum. Similar shit was going down with BLM post George Floyd, but that was still mostly relegated to very partisan outlets, this feels much more broad-spectrum.