The Pro-Palestinian Protests on US Campuses
A cross between the Occupy Wall Street movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement with possible Kremin and Iranian influence mixed in
If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.
A number of pro-Palestinian encampments have gone up on many college campuses across the US, which is way reminiscent of the Occupy Wall Street encampments from over 10 years ago. At the site of one of the encampments at Columbia University the protesters were given a deadline to take down their tents so the upcoming graduation ceremony can take place. The protesters responded by taking over Hamilton Hall, which happened to be the same building that was taken over by anti-Vietnam War protesters back in 1968. At one point one of the occupiers gave this interview to the media where she demanded that the college provided food and drink to the occupiers. The video went viral where her demands were derided.
It was obvious that those who planned the building takeover didn't consider bringing their own food and beverages in preparation for the long haul. Or even consider getting deliveries via DoorDash or Instacart. In any case, just hours after that video went viral the NYPD stormed the building arresting the protesters.
As for that woman in the above video, someone on Twitter/X found out that she was once a Trump supporter.
It makes you wonder if she is some kind of a Republican MAGA plant disguised as a progressive supporter of Palestine in an effort to divert votes towards Trump in November.
There is one interesting item about one of the encampments on another college campus. At Arizona State University 72 people for were arrested for attempting to put up an unauthorized encampment. Officials say that 80% of those arrested were not ASU students, faculty, or staff.
That last bit reminds me of this article in The Guardian that was written in 2017 by one of the co-creators of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Micah White, titled “I Started Occupy Wall Street. Russia Tried to Co-opt Me.” His experiences in dealing with groups that turned out to be little more than Russian false fronts should give all activists pause. He said that there's a new type of warfare where social protests are used as an effective alternative to conventional military conflict.
White has hit the nail on the head. The Hamas terrorist attacks happened in Israel on October 7, which also happens to be Vladimir Putin's birthday. Hamas is aligned with Iran. Iran is aligned with Russia. Just doing a Google search on “Hamas and Kremlin” or “Hamas and Russia” or “Hamas and Putin” will uncover all kinds of goodies. Within a week or two after the October 7 terrorist attacks this whole pro-Palestinian movement suddenly sprung up worldwide. These protests included vandalism with red paint being splattered on statues and other public buildings.
This whole pro-Palestinian protest movement reeks as a psyop to use the kind of social protests White described as an alternative to conventional military conflict while taking advantage of earnest people concerned about social justice issues who simply want to make the world a better place to live in. And this has been going on for the last few years. Twisted Sister lead singer Dee Snyder said that when he went to the Dakota Pipeline protests in 2017 he met a group of people who weren't Native Americans who admitted to him that they were instigators who were only there to create chaos and violence.
When the one-day protests didn't attract enough people to grow organically as a worldwide movement, they decided to copy the Occupy Wall Street movement by putting up encampments on prestigious college campuses across the United States. Which was also suspicious because a typical college student living in a college dorm would not usually bring a tent with him/her/them because of space issues plus there wouldn't be much time to go camping between going to classes, doing homework, and studying for exams. It was obvious that some outside persons or organizations had provided these tents.
These encampments are also a far cry from the Occupy Wall Street encampments. I was never able to visit the original in New York City but I had visited the ones in Baltimore and Washington, DC several times before they were dismantled. Having been to the ones in Baltimore and DC, I found that the people in the Occupy encampments tended to be very welcoming to visitors. We were encouraged to take pictures, shoot videos, make Internet posts about our experiences and we could even freely speak with the press. It's far different with these new encampments. There are reports that other people, especially Jews, are far less welcomed to visit these encampments. One such example was the very cold reception that Montana Tucker received when she tried to make a TikTok video about one of the encampments. Her video has gone viral.
These protests have spilled over into social media. Now there are posts like this one below saying not to reelect Joe Biden because of what's happening in Palestine. To her it's better to have Donald Trump unleash his threats of ruling as a dictator to burn everything to the ground and punish the Democrats for somehow letting Benjamin Netanyahu bomb the hell out of the Gaza Strip and kill tons of Palestinians.
This Lena person is apparently not a fan of democracy. She made this tweet in 2020 where she said that even if Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic nomination she might vote for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
There is the issue that the Israel-Palestine conflict has really taken hold in the most elite private universities. Most of the students tend to come from the upper classes. That's also true with the professors. I haven't heard of similar protests at the state-funded universities and community colleges. It seems like the issue of Israel-Palestine tend to draw a more wealthy elite crowd, many of whom tend not to even care about the social justice issues affecting the US, such as the increase in poverty in recent years or women having a harder time getting the medical care they desperately need because their pregnancies have resulted in complications (such as a fetus dying in the womb) and many hospitals and medical clinics are more worried about not violating a new anti-abortion law in their states. This detachment from social issues in the US to focus exclusively on Palestine results in tweets like the one from Yale University professor David Austin Walsh who said that he was going to vote for Biden but is thinking about doing so because of Palestine. Malcolm Nance really hammers in on that tweet while saying that, as a white well-off man with a prestigious job, he will be privileged enough to not be impacted by the prospect of a second Trump Administration.
What's really mystifying is that these activists are concerned about Palestine but these same activists are silent when it comes to similar atrocities that are happening in Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and Ukraine. It's like the Palestinian people are the only people we should care about and no one else (including Americans who would be negatively impacted by a Trump reelection). I wonder how many of these people are being secretly funded by Russia, Iraq, or one of their allies to just care exclusively about the Palestinians at the expense of other equally marginalized people.
How can we fight against this type of infiltration by the Kremlin and other hostile foreign countries while still engaging in social justice work? Micah White provided this answer:
Genuine social protests tend to boomerang around the world. So let’s ensure that foreign governments fear that the protests they create abroad will return home. To protect against fake activism in America we must insist that every protest be globally oriented.
That means exporting our protests to every country, especially those suspected of supporting, co-opting or controlling our movements. If Russia wants to create civil rights protests in Oakland then they must be prepared to deal with those same protests back into Moscow. From this point forward, our best defense is a global offense.
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