Protests, rights, and the election

The protests on campuses aren't likely to have a major impact on the election

While campus protests and administrations’ response to them are dominating much of the news these days, I don’t think they are going to have much of an electoral impact. The protests will run their course because the school year will end. Most undergraduates will go home or get a job. Campuses will largely empty and the news coverage will go away. Student activists will probably have difficulty rekindling the revolutionary spirit next fall after a three month hiatus. I suspect most of middle America is largely oblivious to the events taking place on college campuses.

I do have a lot of thoughts about the protests, though. I worry about antisemitism on the left and I really hate the whole settler colonialism concept. I also believe the students have every right to protest and trying to shut them down was often heavy-handed. I think a lot of the tactics on the left are counterproductive and alienate people instead of educating them. Finally, the rights’ attempt to wrap the protesters around Democrats is just stupid since Joe Biden and his policies are the focus of the protests.

I do not believe all or even most of the people protesting the war in Gaza are antisemitic. There are plenty of Jewish protesters. I do think there is a core of vocal antisemites who are exploiting the civil unrest and that not enough people are calling them out. I also think there are bad actors from Russia, China, and other places trying to cause divisions, especially on social media.

Calling for Israel to use restraint to protect civilians and allow more humanitarian aid is not antisemitic. Calling for Jews to go back to Europe is both ignorant and hateful. The whole settler colonialism framework is absurd, but especially so when used to insinuate Israel is an illegitimate state. History didn’t begin at the end of World War II. Humans have been displacing each other since the beginning of time.

By that standard, the whole United States is illegitimate. If we’re going to give this land back to the Native Americans, which tribes get it? They were fighting over territory and displacing and enslaving each other long before the Europeans arrived. In the 1990s, were the Serbs massacring Muslims in the Balkans colonialists taking Muslim land or was it just a final push to eradicate the Muslim colonialists who arrived 1,000 years ago?

Israel is a legitimate state that has the right to defend itself and is clearly recognized as such by the Muslim countries surrounding it. While Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan might not trust the Israelis, they prefer the Jewish state to the Mullahs in Iran. Israel is not going anywhere and will remain a power in the Middle East with or without U.S. support.

Right now, the protesters on college campuses and elsewhere want the killing in Gaza to stop. Whether you agree or not, they have the right to express their opinion collectively. Their protests should be protected by the First Amendment. Removing them by force just satisfies their desire for attention, though I think the attention shifts from the reason for their protests to their plight at the hands of police.

While I think protests should be protected, the left’s insistence on using tactics that disrupt other people’s lives is counterproductive. Blocking streets doesn’t just draw attention to the cause. It costs support of people who are inconvenienced. Twenty people shutting down a freeway angers the hundreds stuck in the traffic jam. Today’s American left is one of the most incompetent, self-defeating political movements in modern history.

While the left may be ineffective, the right is ridiculous. They keep trying to brand all of the protesters as antisemitic and wrap them around Democrats when Joe Biden and his administration are the targets of the protests. The people in the country who are paying the most attention to Gaza tend to agree that Israel has the right to defend itself and that Hamas are the bad guys. They also agree that Israel should do more to protect civilians and allow more humanitarian aid. That’s essentially the position of the Biden administration, too.

I don’t believe the election will hinge on what’s happening in Gaza, though if the situation deteriorates it could become a more prominent issue. While a small number of very vocal people are focusing on the war, most Americans are more concerned with their economic situations. Inflation, gas prices, and interest rates are more likely to play a major role in the election than what is happening in the Middle East. The protests on campuses are a distraction that will largely disappear as we move into summer.