US Politics, May 2024: They Shoot Puppies, Don't They?

as someone who was heavily involved in the "divest from South Africa" college protests from spring 1986 to fall 1987 m/l, and was on the front lines of an encampment, I have been having a very strong sense of "same shit different decade", except the contrast between how we were treated then (at Indiana University) and how they have been treated now is stark and brutal. Back then, the police and administration were largely hands off, but the harassment came from rural KKK types (not kidding) who firebombed, teargassed, and otherwise harassed the encampment. Today, the admins won't even talk to the kids, and I wonder how many of the racists who fucked with us back then are now on the same police force that came down on the new kids this week.

The thing i realized the other day is these shitheels in charge of… most things… are no longer boomers but x-ers

Yeah. Who came of political age under Rush Limbaugh etc.

Why do the protesters wear masks outside

What’s the deal with protesters wearing maaaaasks

maaaaan

those posts are condescending

I've become unsympathetic to the protesters. There seems to be a significantly increasing aggrandizing amount of antisemitism within the protests and here on ilx, really. I wish it would stop

I've become unsympathetic to the protesters.

quelle surprise

I haven't detected much antisemitism here... i.e. against Jews or Judaism. Loads of critiques of Israel's governmental policies, but not of their larger population's ethnicity or faith

Maybe you see something different

Maybe not here, but all I can see with the encampments and skirmishes is that it's kids acting out, and it seems very chaotic and antisemitic and frankly childish to me, sorry. They want people to look at them, they want to be the center of attention, but it doesn't seem to me they know anything about gaza or what the issues are or how to solve them except to encourage university divestment and speak badly of Jewish people

I also think there are a lot of outside agitators on all campuses

ok boomer

plz read one summary of one article on the history of "outside agitators" ffs

yeah caping for white supremacy by using a phrase originating in white supremacist organizations is not a great look, step back Dan S

well the dude cosplaying a hamas fighter at Stanford was not going to win any friends or influence people, but that's one campus kook

ok

Gfy

Dan S, there was in fact an excellent article on this topic published— TODAY!— in the Nation. Here it is: https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/outside-agitator-false-narrative/

and here is a choice excerpt:

College students are not stirred up because an adult shows up, bullhorn in hand, telling everyone to gather in the quad with tents to risk arrest, future career prospects, and state violence. They are stirred up by mass graves in Gaza; the killings of civilians, journalists, and children; and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. They are repelled that this genocide is being underwritten with our tax dollars. That’s what pushes people into action, not some imaginary outside agitator.

What the media elites and DC warmongers cannot compute is that they believed this generation was apathetic at best. Now seeing them rise up on college campuses across the country is causing them to malfunction. When Biden proclaims, “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent” while professors are being thrown to the ground and led away in handcuffs, it doesn’t take an “outside agitator” for students to see that something is rotten in our democracy.

I’m sorry , but that just seems like a lot of purple prose to me. I agree with the protests fwiw

You just said you’re ur unsympathetic

what’s that tweet that’s like I hate problems but love their causes, anyways that’s a good tweet

I will gladly defer to people with more history in organizing, however, in my limited experience… it’s more like the sincere organizing attracts kooks and “extremists” who are drawn to the excitement and energy.

I have sat in too many meetings about organizing “a thing” where some rando shows up who says things that are kinda wtf but there is an impulse to inclusion and building momentum/people power so they stick around

Protests are for idiots and achieve nothing. Terrorism doesn't work as well as you'd hope, either, and outcomes are unpredictable at best. Political goals are most often achieved through bribery, extortion, and occasionally assassination.

Some of them develop a toxic dependency and end up being “helpful” and “valuable” so there is an aversion to kicking them out even when their behavior is alienating… sometimes there are cops/infiltrators, but I feel like it’s usually kooks

Protests are for idiots and achieve nothing. Terrorism doesn't work as well as you'd hope, either, and outcomes are unpredictable at best. Political goals are most often achieved through bribery, extortion, and occasionally assassination.

The reason people are still talking about the Civil Rights Movement 60 years later is that it was the one time that protest marches and sit-ins and whatnot actually fucking worked. It's been diminishing returns ever since.

And even then, everybody hated those people at the time. Martin Luther King had like a 25% approval rating in polls while he was alive.

They often are more effective at the local level, like recently people protested outside the place of business of a local “slumlord” and demanded he fix the building… and it worked

Everything works better locally. That's why people who are tempted to run stupid vanity campaigns for president, for example, should try running for city council instead. It's why people who think America should be a socialist country should try establishing socialism in their town, or even their neighborhood, and build outward from there. But that's too much like work.

The DSA is actually trying to do that work fwiw

I think organizing and protesting can make an impact and often do. There wouldn’t be so much backlash if they weren’t having any impact. Having really good protest leaders and organizers is especially good, tho kind of hard to come by. (Alinsky’s whole project, right?)

I have a good friend who's heavily involved in DSA work in Chicago. I have tremendous admiration for that, and tremendous irritation about how much time he wastes bitching about Biden online.

Trust me, we’re all tired of hearing people simp for Biden, too

Exactly how anyone evaluates Biden and his value depends entirely on the frame within which they view his policy goals and achievements. The more the frame is enlarged to encompass an ideal outcome, the smaller and more inadequate his actions appear.

Whenever there is a conversation about his administration, even when both participants share the same ideals (which I think describes almost everyone posting here), the disagreements always center on the size of the frame placed around him. To those whose frame is uncompromising and satisfied with nothing less than justice in all aspects of society, he is going to look wholly unsatisfactory, puttering around the edges of social justice and making slight tweaks.

To those whose frames are only the size of what they see as possible to achieve, Biden looks more than passable, he's above average. To which the idealist will retort that 'above average' is no different than 'dismally insufficient'. To which the (for want of a better term) pragmatist will retort that no matter how grand one's wishes, you can't fly to your desired ends on the power of wishes, without turning those wishes into a series of concrete intermediate steps. So, taking insufficient steps is always built in to the process.

The successful protests (i.e. Brown) have forced administration to at least consider divesting from funds to Israel. I can't believe we're having these chats here. I've been arguing this shit for 48 hours.

protests that involve obstruction, destruction, and/or violence are the only ones that work.

it's always this endless cycle of 'work within the system' shouted largely by large pockets of people who haven't experienced the bad side of said system.

not that I'm calling anybody out specifically here but....the general attitude towards protests.

Fwiw, I was impressed by the discipline and organization of the protests and I thought they were on the whole effective even if they may not achieve their stated divestment goal (in part because unless divestment is narrowly defined, markets are too complex today to completely disentangle Israel-tied investments)

The reason people are still talking about the Civil Rights Movement 60 years later is that it was the one time that protest marches and sit-ins and whatnot actually fucking worked. It's been diminishing returns ever since.

I don't think this is true at all. It may even be possible one is happening right now in Tbilisi! Otherwise we could look at EDSA, Maidan, Stonewall, Solidarinosc off top of head, arguably Vietnam, depending how you measure these things

protests that involve obstruction, destruction, and/or violence are the only ones that work.

i agree that obstruction, destruction, and/or violence are powerful influencers of society, but they are hard tools to use constructively and if used destructively they work best if concentrated on the specific salients are blocking progress and coupled with some kind of suggested direction toward a positive alternative.

this endless cycle of 'work within the system' shouted largely by large pockets of people who haven't experienced the bad side of said system.

the real system that matters is society and our common humanity, which are much bigger and more basic than laws and government. if you place yourself outside that system you will fail totally and abysmally. (I'll note here that, while both society and humanity are obviously not reliably sociable or humane, that if you seek a more humane society, then using inhumane means to reach your goal produces very bad effects.)

it’s more like the sincere organizing attracts kooks and “extremists” who are drawn to the excitement and energy.

I think this makes sense, but to me its a question of scale. Protests and movement are always going to attract a certain type of early adopter regardless of what the issue is, as they are opportunities for self-aggrandisement and influence the same as any other newly formed social structure. But beyond a certain scale they're diluted - and protests become more universal.

I think for protests to succeed (which they absolutely do!), they need two things, a) a clear goal, b) substantial numbers. Destruction/Violence aren't a necessary component, they can work depending on the context, but can also work without. Clear discrete goal and numbers are what matters

I guess maybe I don’t understand what an “outside agitator” is

aiui, the key phrase for defining an outside agitator is "stirring up trouble", but those who decry political agitators conveniently overlook that the necessary precondition for an agitator to stir up trouble is for there to be existing widespread unresolved grievances and dissatisfaction. instead, it is always claimed that the grievances and dissatisfaction were somehow magically produced in a calm, happy and peaceful population by the agitator, which is absurd, but is part of the mythology.

right, and in the case of college students who may have never participated in a protest other than a few hours marching, it's useful to get advice on tactics from someone with experience in these things. The Eric Adams version of this is that some mustache-twirling radical showed up to say, "hey kids, put down the Tiktok, I know of something even better!"

I don’t see how anyone says “outside agitators” with a straight face in 2024, but I guess we’re gonna play all the hits.

Its a clumsy phrase but any protest movement is susceptible to outside influence of agent provocateurs, in this case they would presumably come from Israel, but there could be others that either want to try present protests a particular way, or even just heighten division

I don't get the hand wringing over "outside agitators." Protests need older, more experienced hands too.

The successful protests (i.e. Brown) have forced administration to at least consider divesting from funds to Israel. I can't believe we're having these chats here. I've been arguing this shit for 48 hours.

I don't get the hand wringing over "outside agitators." Protests need older, more experienced hands too.

It's also paternalism: administrators like parents don't want to believe their kids would do this shit on their own.

i think colleges might be quick to blame outsiders just to avoid liability. i'm sure they have lots of lawyers telling them what to say. if some kid gets hurt at a protest and the parents sue the school the school can blame trespassers. maybe. i wouldn't put it past them.

the only way kids are getting hurt at these protests are when administrators collude with the police to crack some heads, scott. The violence is being directed by the university administrators and their collaborators in police departments, not by "outside agitators."