West-hating pro-Palestinian protests are a harbinger of much worse to come
Covid is long since over, but the protesters still wear face masks: the ignorant, entitled little delinquents running riot in so many of the world’s greatest universities are truly an embarrassment. The product of a catastrophic social experiment, of years of brainwashing and coddling, they embody all of the Western world’s most debilitating pathologies.
Their childish, self-important antics would be risible were their normalisation of hatred not so ominous, their rejection of democratic, liberal and conservative norms alike not so terrifying. Previous generations of protesters at least had a cause, sometimes a very powerful and just one; this bunch are self-loathing, inchoate nihilists who hate the West, hate America, hate Britain, hate Israel, and want to tear down everything great about our civilisation.
The keffiyeh-clad protesters claim to support the Palestinian cause, but are staggeringly ignorant about the realities of the Middle East. They entirely lack theological understanding. They don’t know any history, ancient or modern, and often readily admit as much. They have no idea how many peace deals the Palestinian establishment has rejected over the decades, and couldn’t really care less. They spout whatever fake news is fed to them via TikTok, or the latest made-up statistics from the Hamas health authorities.
They wave LGBTQ+ flags while chanting “from the river to the sea”, not realising that gay people are routinely murdered in Islamist dictatorships. They purport to care about minorities, but all too frequently have been filmed engaging in despicable anti-Semitic hate speech, such as calling on Jews to “return to Poland”. They don’t understand the difference between free speech and intimidation, trespass and violence.
They have no positive vision, no meaningful reality-based plan, nothing useful to contribute. They don’t care about Iranian women assaulted by the regime, or Coptic Christians who are being attacked in Egypt, or Hezbollah’s slow-motion religious cleansing of Lebanon. Their heart isn’t in the right place, and they should not be given the benefit of the doubt.
They claim to hate nation-states and to believe in open borders, but their encampments look strangely like the “fascistic” countries they loathe: there are borders, entry points, guards, identity checks, enforcers, and the expulsion of any member of the out-group that dares to show up – in this case, “Zionists” who are banned from libraries or going to lectures. Joe Biden has disgraced himself for doing so little about a disgusting spectacle with echoes of the 1930s.
The protesters’ problem is partly psychological, as exposed with brutal clarity by videos on social media. The most spoiled generation in history, used to being shielded from every threat by helicopter parents, they feel hard done by as the police belatedly storm their barricades.
Many young activists have been turned into self-entitled narcissists by a culture that tells them that society owes them everything, that the world revolves around them, that great institutions must change to make them feel more comfortable, that there is such a thing as “their truth”. They find it hard to distinguish between virtue-signalling and actual deeds.
They spend so long online or editing selfies that they aren’t always sure what is real life and what is fantasy. Hence ludicrous scenes of protesters play-acting what they wrongly believe to be happening in Gaza: students passing food through prison-style bars, a protester, oozing self-pity, asking for water lest she “die of dehydration”, demands for “humanitarian aid” from the university authorities.
It’s a pathetic case of weakness being turned into the only moral value, of delusional activists so detached from the harsh reality of real wars that they believe those they demonstrate against owe them free food. It is cosplay politics, protest as a performance art, made for a gullible, easily manipulated smartphone generation that cannot distinguish fact from fiction.
The protesters have been contaminated by two ideological viruses which have made them allergic to their own societies. They have swallowed the lie that the West is the fount of all evil, that we are racist and sexist, that our achievements are illusory, the product of looting and colonialism, and that we are destroying the planet. They feel shame, not pride, and believe in the need to forever atone for our sins and those of our ancestors.
It is no coincidence that we almost never see British or American flags at pro-Palestine demonstrations on the streets of London, but always spot union flags (as well as Israeli and pre-revolutionary Iranian ones) at the pro-Israel counter-protests. The conflict is a proxy battle for the soul of the West.
Young activists have been taught a simplistic theory of “social justice”: individuals, groups or countries that aren’t doing as well as they would expect are “victims” who “deserve” a lot more, and those that are doing better are “oppressors” who don’t deserve their wealth. The origins of this are partly Marxist and partly drawn from a residual cultural Christianity focused exclusively on the idea that “the meek shall inherit the earth”.
This dichotomy has bred a defeatist culture of victimhood and entitlement which downplays individual agency, promotes welfarism, confiscatory taxation and rejects hard work. It has fuelled anti-Semitic and other conspiracy theories, and successful minorities are being targeted for vicious “reverse” discrimination.
It has led to an inane assumption that all poor countries are automatically good and all rich ones inherently bad. Britain and America are uber-oppressors; China is treated with indifference or indulgence. The barbaric Iranian regime is viewed as an ally, as it opposes “the Great Satan”. Hamas, a genocidal dictatorship is, by definition, a “victim”; Israel, a multi-faith democracy, is the oppressor, even though the Israelis left Gaza in 2005 and even though Hamas raped, kidnapped and murdered Israelis.
The horseshoe theory of politics has come true: traditionally far-Left and far-Right tropes have fused into a full-service, sickeningly authoritarian woke replacement ideology lapped up by those, especially young Westerners, who are losing trust in democracy. Don’t be fooled: the protests defiling universities may be naive, amateurish and solipsistic, but they are the harbinger of far worse to come.
