nat waj

My basic model of student protests is that in general students don't know shit about what they're protesting against, they do it because it's cool, makes them feel like they're part of something important and they want to be with their friends. In the vast majority of cases, their beliefs on the topic are very superficial, they just repeat slogans they don't really understand, but that's not a problem for them because it's primarily about signaling group membership rather than loyalty to specific ideas. That's why it's mistaken to read any deep ideological commitment into their utterances. It would be mistaken even if many of the claims people make about the meaning of those utterances, such as the idea that "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is a genocidal slogan, were not total nonsense, which they are. In a way, students are just an extreme illustration of a more general fact, which is that most people are not ideologues and identify with groups before they identify with ideas. The ideas they defend flow from the groups they identify with, much more than the other way around. This is true to a significant extent even of people who are way more ideological than average. For instance, think about how many Never-Trumper pundits, despite being long-time conservatives, started to embrace liberal tropes after Trump took over the GOP.

The same place, before & after Israel’s ongoing genocide of Gaza

lock me up