Last semester, I did a teach-in at the antiwar encampment at Princeton University. I knew that the media propaganda I’d been seeing about the protests for months was mostly nonsense. Even so, I’ve never felt such a visceral gap between the image I’d been fed and the reality on the ground. I was told the students at these encampments were violent and dangerous antisemites. The reality was that they were a curious and attentive audience. They asked thoughtful and perceptive questions. And lots of them were Jewish.
Meanwhile, it seems like every time there was a report of serious violence at the protests around the country, it was directed against the protesters. At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a mob of counterprotesters from off campus violently assaulted the encampment for hours while police let it happen. At Columbia University, a cousin of the late extreme-right-wing Israeli politician Meir Kahane engaged in what looks like an act of Charlottesville-style lone-wolf terrorism, driving his car into a crowd of protesters. Nevertheless, it was the protesters themselves who were relentlessly demonized by the media and blacklisted from future jobs by angry billionaires like Bill Ackman. There were even Joe McCarthy–style Congressional hearings demonizing the protests and demanding that college administrators crack down harder.
As the fall semester kicks off, administrations around the country are laying down new rules to prevent a revival of the protests. Some are banning “amplified sound,” which has of course been part of every protest on every issue since time immemorial. Some are prohibiting masks, which would make it easier for employers to enforce those blacklists, perhaps intimidating future job-seekers out of attending. The Washington Post reports that some campuses are also “limiting places where demonstrations can happen or requiring groups to seek permission in advance.”
In a truly astonishing…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Ben Burgis
