https://thespectator.com/topic/gaza-not-uighurs-china-college/
The Babylon Bee, “the newspaper of record” for anyone with a sense of humor, posed a more interesting thought about the campus demonstrations than anything you can find in the New York Times or Washington Post. The Bee’s headline proclaimed, “Uighur Slaves Struggling to Keep Up with Demand for Palestinian Headscarves.”
Dark humor indeed. The headscarves, like the masks, serve one obvious function: they hide the faces of demonstrators. That’s why bank robbers wear masks, too. Students know they are breaking the rules and professional agitators know they are breaking the law, so it’s smart to hide their faces.
But the scarves have one additional advantage that bank robbers’ masks don’t: the keffiyeh is a visible symbol of Palestinian identity. “Pardon me,” they say, “my virtue is showing.”
The Babylon Bee also picked up another interesting point the legacy media missed. The keffiyehs worn on campus today come from China, like so much clothing. Ah, globalization. Palestinians used to produce the scarves themselves but cheaper Chinese production squeezed them out of the market. The protesters’ attire is a hidden mark of the international trade they loath.
Another symbol of that global commerce is the vast number of international students involved in the protests and often leading them. Have you seen objections to that aspect of globalization? No. But then no one ever accused the mob of intellectual coherence.
What is it about Gaza that excites such large, ferocious and often violent demonstrations? Why are there no massive demonstrations about other human-rights atrocities around the world? Why is the campus silent about Hong Kong and the prisons in Siberia? Why such intense focus on Israel, which often bleeds into open antisemitism?
A few reasons top the list. The first is the nature of the hard-left coalition on campus. It centers on two groups, both of which position themselves as righteous victims. The number one domestic victims are African Americans. The number one international victims are Palestinians, plus Muslims more generally. Other victims run the gamut, Native Americans, queers, transgenders and others. White students and increasingly Asian Americans are labeled as the oppressors or victimizers. Their only chance at salvation from their “sin” is to make common cause with the putatively oppressed and follow their lead. Hispanics are rarely part of this coalition, even though their professors are.
The word “sin” is important here. The ideology has the intensity of a religion and the hatred of apostates.
The coalition would crumble if it emphasized positive issues, such as “gay rights in Gaza.” So they focus on common hatreds. Those are what hold the coalition together.
