by Christopher Roach
When I was in college, one of my professors wrote a dissertation on the topic cultural aspects of the post-war militia, organizations that evolved into today’s National Guard. These units multiplied during this time to give men living in the shadow of their fathers and grandfathers’ Civil War service a chance to emulate their exploits. When the Spanish-American War began in 1898, soldiers of this militia volunteered en masse. They finally had a chance to prove themselves worthy of their ancestors and do something bold and risky.
My professor suggested that she and other faculty members were in a similar situation. For them – and almost all of them were on the left – missing the 1960s meant they missed a period of revolutionary change and ferment. For leftist scientists, the 1960s were an era of breaking rules, smashing idols, and coming up with novel ideas and methods to confront the abandonment of venerable authorities. This period saw the debut of influential prophets of “unmasking”, so common in academic life today, such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Herbert Marcuse
If the 1960s were a time in which we on the right saw the decline of order, reason, and tradition in the academy and beyond, for the far left, these same events symbolized the march of progress: a time in which a novel respect for racial equality emerged, venerable and oppressive traditions collapsed, imperialism receded, and a lively and emotive youth culture prevailed.
The anti-war and civil rights movements converged in the 1960s. Similar anti-colonial and anti-fascist movements swept across Europe. In all these cases, gigantic public demonstrations played an significant role, symbolic manifestations of human power.
Anti-Israel protests are not half as gigantic and violent as the BLM riots in 2020.
The left’s latest cause for celebration is opposition to Israel’s counterterrorism operation in Gaza. Many supporters of Israel were horrified by the size and scale of these protests, openly wondering why students spending so much time protesting at all and after years of promoting freedom of speech, they call for censorship to end anti-Semitism.
Protests on college campuses are nothing novel. They have taken place over the last 20 years in opposition to the Iraq War, against globalism, in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and many other leftist initiatives. In the 1980s, there were mass protests on campuses oppose apartheid and support withdrawal from South Africa AND protest against American foreign policy in Central America. And of course, a generation earlier, there were huge protests against the Vietnam War.
Current protests include: a fraction of the size and scale of the violence surrounding the BLM protests in 2020. The class of those vilified has also shrunk. BLM attacked white people as a whole and called for violence against the police; the current protests are aimed at Zionists, i.e. supporters of Jewish nationalism in the historical homeland of the Jews.
In addition to violence, there was also lots of foul language associated with BLM. Many critics of the Gaza protests seem to have missed this crime, banditry and the genocidal language of leftist protests until theirs own group he was targeted. Welcome to the party.
Let me start by emphasizing that there is a difference between protest and targeted harassment and that the latter should not be protected as free speech. That said, our foreign policy towards Israel should be up for debate and accepted as a target of protest as much as anything else. Suggestions that such views exist beyond the pale and justify expulsion simply because they are unpopular is incompatible with the First Amendment and more general American principles of free speech.
There were many of them overwrought AND unfair criticism of recent campus protests, but they do not seem any more violent or sinister than other protests in recent years. For the most part they seem to be tranquil sessions. While violence or threats of violence have no place on campus, part of academic freedom and the college experience is being exposed to ideas you disagree with. Like most protests, these rallies consist of a law-abiding, pro-free speech majority and a much smaller minority of livid, anti-social agitators. And this division is obvious wherever you look.
Young people in search of a reason
We should try to understand what is happening in the world around us. People who are focused on practical matters such as money, power and personal development often do not understand those that are characterized by a more romantic sensibility. While many people attend college to earn credentials to further their careers, others are motivated by a desire to live a meaningful life and dedicate themselves to serving a cause.
We live in a time where there are fewer opportunities for heroism and adventure than in previous generations. We are not in the middle of a great fight like World War II; it no longer has any manifest destiny, and we no longer even have a major space program. Most of our struggles are mundane and personal: careers, acquiring wealth, navigating indifferent bureaucracies, and having fun with travel and dining.
Protests have a mighty psychological aspect that goes beyond their formal goals. Like post-Civil War militiamen, participants hope to gain the same high reputation and self-esteem as the people they learned about in school.
For today’s college kids, history is simply a long tale of Western perfidy interspersed with a few outside heroes like Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King. Like the zealous volunteers in the Spanish-American War, living in the shadow of giants inspired these students to take risks to meet the demands of a historic moment. The actual content of the case is largely irrelevant to protesters. They stand on what they believe is the right side of history: the side of the oppressed.
Beware of giving your opponents the martyrdom they desire
Heavy efforts to suppress these protests it will almost certainly be a boomerang. The arrests and police actions will strengthen protesters’ sense of being part of an significant and potentially risky cause, and will escalate their credibility among the anti-establishment left.
Although there were certainly excesses and terrible behavior in the face of the recent wave of protests, this seems normal, even benign. Unfortunately, most critics of the protests in Gaza equate peaceful protests with anti-social harassment and do not provide facts or information For a long time they based their accusations on emotionsand deliberately ignore them the presence of a significant Jewish contingent among anti-Israel protesters. Dropping the hammer on protesters for ordinary offenses – such as the draconian sanctions imposed on protesters on January 6 – will arouse sympathy and discredit the authorities.
Borrowing an idea from public health, sometimes the best approach is “harm reduction.” Trying to suppress all protests in Gaza should not be the focus of universities, politiciansor police departments. Americans have the right to think what we want about Israel, the Gaza Strip, foreign policy and politics, and it is not the job of universities or the government to police “hate speech” or suppress unpopular opinions. Universities are supposed to provide a forum for the exchange and exploration of ideas, and the government’s job is to maintain public order.
Violence should not be rewarded, but rather the protests of all parties should be directed in a reasonable and peaceful direction, where the main function is communication, not intimidation of others.
After all, opponents of protests also have the right to education, to respect for their physical safety, and to not be victims of harassment and threats. University administrators can and should expel people who disrupt classes, shout over speakers, threaten or commit violence against other students, direct insults at individuals, and otherwise violate content-neutral policies regarding intrusion, violence, harassment, and the like. But these restrictions do not extend to freedom of speech protecting supporters of Israel from thoughts and ideas with which they disagree and calling all such criticism prohibited anti-Semitism.
Focusing on these minimum goals will lower the heat, avoid creating martyrs for participating in peaceful protests, and prevent the creation of a perpetual machine of complaints and novel protests regarding law enforcement behavior.
So much for “Facts don’t care about feelings”
For many years, Ben Shapiro and others on the neoconservative right have professed pride in their resolve, summing up their worldview as follows: “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” That’s why the news from him and his traveling companions is a bit surprising How terrible the point is that supporters of Israel must endure hearing ideas they find offensive, unpleasant, and “hateful.”
If Israel and its policies are so great, they should be able to win the battle of public opinion with facts, logic and their own protests. In many ways, yes. Americans are overwhelmingly pro-Israel. But there is life not always black and white. Some of Israel’s supporters as well as many Israelisthey also express opposition to the scale of destruction in Gaza and the apparent inability of this military operation to ensure long-term security.
AND moral panic beyond mere expressions of political dissent, controversial views and crude language is not the way to go. Such a policy would be hostile to free speech, based on a distorted record, and would only give progressive left activists the validation they are looking for. University and government policies should be based on a sound, content-neutral basis distinguishing permissible free speech from prohibited criminal violence and harassment.
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Christopher Roach is an adjunct professor at the Center for American Greatness and an attorney in private practice based in Florida. He is a double graduate of the University of Chicago and has previously been published by The Federalist, Takimag, Chronicles, Washington Legal Foundation, Marine Corps Gazette and Orlando Sentinel. The views presented are solely his own.
Photo “Pro-Palestinian Protest” by Gayatri Malhotra.
