Why the Gaza protest “movement” fizzled
Lost hearts, minds and the plot
Jeffrey Denny
“How the Powerful Outmaneuvered the American Protest Movement.”
So goes the latest byline from New York Times columnist, Princeton professor and TED-talking political influencer Zaynep Tufekci.
While powerful herself given her influential gigs, Dr. Tufecki avers that other powerful people conspired to ring-fence, side-show and snuff the Gaza protest. Even at its Super Bowl, the 2024 Democratic convention they promised to disrupt.
But who really defeated the Gaza protestors? They did.
Tufekci’s thesis collapses because the Gaza yawp represents a mockery of the “American Protest Movement.” It’s a generative AI meta simulation — T.S. Eliot’s experience without meaning — of our nation’s proud democratic tradition of rising up for shared and righteous causes.
The Gaza protest lost our hearts and minds with its eyerolling, choir-preaching, social media-posing performance art grubbing for viral, echo-chamber relevance, likes and need for sense of belonging.
It reduced a centuries-old four-dimensional religious, nationalistic and cultural Rubik's Cube clash into a sophomoronic, logic-fluid, Manichean case of good (hate genocide) versus evil (heart genocide). With an evil genius jiu-jitsu flip labeling a people who suffered genocide as the genociders.
The Holocaust happened before the Gaza protesters were born so it’s basic skibidi Ohio toilet boring history and didn’t happen to them.
The Gaza protests would be merely silly sound and fury signifying bupkis but preening, self-satisfying narcissistic onanism fueling the wrongful Gen Z stereotype. Except that it could skibidi Ohio toilet the American Protest Movement.
A recent incident at my local Northwest Washington, DC, independent bookstore was a perfect reduction.
At Politics & Prose, “coincidentally” two doors down from Hillary’s Pizzagate pedophile dudgeon, a Gaza demonstrator crashed CNN anchor Dana Bash’s book tour appearance.
“You belong behind bars!” the protestor shouted in Bash’s face. “We know who you are, we know what you’re saying! It’s not a war, it’s never been a war, it is ethnic cleansing!” As security gently ushered her out, she screamed, “Report the truth! But instead you want millions from Zionists, you want millions from AIPAC!”
The demonstrator also showed up at Bash’s nearby home shouting at her through a bullhorn like a J6 rioter at the Capitol.
I’ll note that my community, and surely the bookstore audience, are nearly 100% Democrats with many proud Bernie progressives. But like most Americans, they hate genocide, feel terrible about the Gaza crisis, blame Hamas and support Israel’s right to exist. And have no idea how to end the conflict.
The Gaza protests failed for other reasons than for attacking allies:
1. Gaza protests aren’t like the others.
1960s civil rights protesters fought against racial segregation they personally experienced. 1970s Vietnam war protesters faced a very real personal danger that they or family and friends could be sent off to slaughter in a stupid lost-cause war. 1980s nuclear war protestors fought global annihilation that could kill us all.
From the 1990s to now, America’s greatest protests have tended to be empowered by a personal stake — women’s rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, Black rights and the right not to needlessly die from guns and climate destruction. Maybe even the post-2008 financial meltdown Occupy Wall Street was personal as people lost homes, jobs and savings.
The neo-Nazi Charlottesville Unite the Right, J6 riot and Trump rallies are mostly foolish, disturbed, clueless rebels without a decent or discernable cause. They just love to rebel.
Maybe the Gaza protestors don’t belong in this category. But while their cause may be just, it seems that few have a personal stake while the Jewish students they threaten do. Speaking of which,
2. Gaza protests are rank hypocrisy.
Funny that the activist generation most triggered and aggressive against “violence” — real or imagined — to their agency, identity, culture and personal boundaries doesn’t seem to care about making their fellow Jewish students feel unsafe by spewing neo-Nazi chants. Speaking of which,
3. Gaza protesters don’t speak for young people.
Not even most college students. Barely 100 colleges out of 6,000 in America had protests.
Students struggling to earn and pay for a degree and student loans for a decently paying job, career, home, family and life don’t have the luxury. Many hardworking students are annoyed by the Gaza disruption if not the sanctimony (and antisemitism). Speaking of which,
4. Gaza protests are led by the privileged.
Many at Ivy, little Ivy and other top protest colleges are more cosseted and prep-schooled than most of America. While hating capitalism. The 1970s radical chic limousine liberalism is alive and well. Or maybe it’s Victorian-era noblesse oblige.
It doesn’t help that the Gaza protest epicenter is Columbia University given its exclusive 3.5% acceptance rate and $400,000 for a BA in Interrogating, Interpolating and Extrapolating White Western Patriarchal Phallocratic Colonial Instrumentalization of ur-Hegemonic Cultural Violence by Weaponizing Anglo-Saxon Dictates of Grammar in “Bachelor’s” Theses. Speaking of which,
5. Gaza protests won’t change anything.
Imagine the nerve: A nation established as a safe space for a people who’ve faced and survived genocide because of their religion and culture is fighting for its life against mortal enemies that surround and vow to erase them from the river to the sea.
By the way, those mortal enemies are sworn to dominate, subjugate and kill their own people who question authority, terrorize, kidnap, rape, behead and slaughter innocent infidels, pledge and spread holy war against “enemies” of their faith, and use their own women and children as human shields.
Yes, that threatened country goes way too far to protect itself. But it surely doesn’t give a kakn what safe, privileged, righteous Columbia students who tacitly side with Hamas think. Speaking of which,
6. Gaza protestors are useful tools and fools.
Not just for Iran and Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS terrorists it funds, but mostly for Donald Trump and his threat to everything the protestors care about.
Every Gaza protest daring law enforcement to keep the peace is a gift to Trump, his enslaved and bootlicking GOP and media, and MAGAs who already hate liberals and education and exaggerate any imperfection while thrilling in Trump’s worst depredations. Speaking of which,
7. Gaza protests might as well be Trump rallies.
They feed the false narrative that Democrats — especially our black woman presidential nominee from San Francisco — are militant radicals, turning off the sensible independents we need.
Note this, Gaza protestors: If Trump wins with your help, he’s pledged to punish colleges that fail to indoctrinate students with regressive Christian Western values.
Speaking of which, as Nov. 5 approaches, let’s continue to outmaneuver the Gaza protest movement.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
