Pro-Palestiners Should Fight Back Against Right-Wing Bullies
There are more Democrats than Republicans, more liberals than conservatives, more progressives than MAGAs. But you'd never know that from looking at our politics. From abortion to the minimum wage to war, the Right wins the important arguments.
How do they do it? Verbal abuse. Right-wing bullies name-call, they hector, they doxx, they blacklist, they lie. Most of all, they yell. No one's louder than a conservative barking a talking point. They're REALLY loud when said talking point makes no sense.
The current discussion about the student protests at American college and university campuses over the U.S.-Israel war against Gaza is a perfect illustration of their tactics.
They also showcase how the Left can expose right-wing bullies as intellectually dishonest, ridiculous and unworthy of serious consideration about important issues. I know because I deal with these clowns every day.
The first thing to notice is that supporters of Israel have given up trying to justify the Netanyahu government's brutal blockade and assault of Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians since Oct. 7, flattened the territory and left hundreds of thousands more starving to death. They can't justify it.
So they deflect.
Supporters of Israel's war against the people of Gaza characterize protesting college students as privileged brats wasting their parents' money. Never mind that two-thirds of them pay their own way, a third borrow student loans, and many earn scholarships, hold jobs and/or don't have parents willing and able to pay.
Critics of Israel should call supporters' rhetorical bluff. OK, let's assume the protesters are all a bunch of spoiled, snot-nosed punks who wouldn't know suffering if it bit them on the you-know-what. So what? That doesn't make it OK to drop 2,000-pound bombs on civilian buildings.
Pro-Zionists portray demonstrators at the encampments as dupes of "outside agitators" funded, in some cases, by billionaire Democrat George Soros. (So ironic that the Right's obsession with Soros originated as an expression of classic antisemitic tropes about this rich Jew and his supposed web of intrigue and conspiracy.) Some protest organizers, the pro-genocide brigade brays, even get paid a salary!
Again, the proper response is: so what? Who the protesters are, where they came from and who pays them -- which, of course, is absurd, since 99.999% of them get paid not one bit -- none of these distractions address the question of whether the U.S. should ignore homeless people sleeping on its own streets in order to send billions of dollars of bombs and missiles to Benjamin Netanyahu in order to murder more innocent people.
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