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I don't understand the US obsession with the fact that college students sometimes hold foolish political views or do foolish things. They are barely adults, and a tiny proportion of the population.
Around a third of the US population believes utterly crazy things like the claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Many more are willing to v…
I don't understand the US obsession with the fact that college students sometimes hold foolish political views or do foolish things. They are barely adults, and a tiny proportion of the population.
Around a third of the US population believes utterly crazy things like the claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Many more are willing to vote for a candidate who makes this claim. But most political discussion just treats this as a fact about political preferences, to be taken into account in horse-race discussions of electoral politics.
In the specific case of Israel/Palestine, the situation is much worse. The overwhelming majority of the US polity, including the Biden Administration, is willing to assist the Israeli government in committing war crimes with the aim of main taining an illegal and oppressive occupation, and to ally itself with murderous dictators like MBS to pursue this policy. The rationale is a combination of misguided realpolitik and unquestioning emotional support for Israel similar in kind to that of the Del Valle supporters. This goes almost unquestioned. But we get lengthy denunciations of a handful of young people adopting the mirror-image position regarding Hamas terrorism.
"Is willing to assist the Israeli government in committing war crimes with the aim of main taining an illegal and oppressive occupation." I think there's plenty of criticism to be leveled at successive administrations' stances towards the occupation of the West Bank but this isn't it. And the dynamic Josh is referring to is indeed represented in its purest form on college campuses but is seen elsewhere all throughout society. I find it hard to believe anyone paying attention doesn't know this.
To be clear, you're claiming that attitudes like those discussed by Josh (support for Hamas terrorism, or for people like Del Valle) is widespread enough to be comparable to Republican election denialism (70 % of Repubs, 30% of all US citizens). I'd suggest on the contrary that these attitudes are held by less than 1 per cent of college students, and a much smaller fraction of US citizens.
Or is "in its purest form" doing a lot of work here, implying that anyone who objects to racism in US society or to the bombing of Gaza is implicated in the activities of a handful of silly college students.
I feel like there are a couple issues that are getting rolled into one here. If you go back to Oct 7 there were already, before any Israeli reprisals, literal marches in multiple cities supporting Hamas’ attack. This sentiment is what is being referred to in the article and is separate from, in my opinion, entirely justified criticisms of Israel’s conduct in their current operation. And of course election denial and Covid nuttery is a massive problem, but I don’t see why we can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.
Your perception of how widespread the views Josh mentions is also totally off. Basically every large organization has a tier of DEI czars with only marginally more sophisticated perspectives.
As I said "in its purest form" doing a ton of work, saying DEI differs "only marginally" from support for terrorism. Your comments are a prime example of the distorted perspective I'm complaining about.
That’s not what I’m saying so perhaps this medium is limited in discussing this. However, the bottom line is that I do think this is a subject worthy of attention.
But that’s just the point. If it’s just 1% of the population, as OP suggests, and everyone else agrees it’s nonsense than there’s no profits to pander to. It’s not. These ideas are widespread. That’s why Ibran Kendi is a bestseller despite his ideas being ludicrous and he had a center band after him too.
Here's Lindsay Graham arguing for unlimited war crimes https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/01/lindsey-graham-israel-hamas-war-civilian-casualties