Woke

Anyone who observes what is going on with those pro-Hamas protests in US college campuses should be impressed by the logistical support the activity benefits from.

In campus after campus where seriously uninformed protestors gather, encampments with uniform tents sprout up. The encampments are served with abundant food supplies and numerous Palestinian banners not readily available at the supermarkets are handed out. Suddenly there is an abundance of Palestinian scarves for protestors to don as a fashion statement. The logistical support follows those arrested: abundant grocery supplies are sent to the jails where they are detained.

The FBI, if they are doing their work seriously, must have inquired into this well-endowed logistical chain supporting the strange protest actions. The protestors, after all, proclaim support for a group officially designated as “terrorist” by the US government.

A speaker in this rally called for “Death to Israel” and “Death to the US.” One rally speaker openly called out for Jews to be murdered. Another mouthed support for the despotic regime in Tehran. Yet another voiced support for the malignant regime in Pyongyang.

The protestors have trashed several campuses. They have barred Jewish students from coming near occupied schools. They have spewed only hatred so far.

In interview after random interview, those participating in these protest actions exhibit gross ignorance about the history of the conflict in the Middle East. Some deny the Holocaust ever happened. Still others play down the atrocities of Oct. 7 when Hamas gunmen invaded Israeli settlement on a rampage of rape and murder. Over 1,200 Israeli civilians were murdered that day and over 200 were dragged away to be held as hostages and used as human shields in Gaza.

The protestors routinely chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” They do not seem to realize that this means the eradication of the State of Israel and the elimination of Jews.

They profess to condemn the “genocide” happening in Gaza but call for genocide against Israel. There is profound confusion in their political stance.

From all indications, the protest encampments that have mushroomed in US college campuses are manned by people from the Marxist and anarchist groups. The analyst Fareed Zakaria, whose views always impress me, attributes the wave of protests to a certain degree of alienation infecting the campuses. The alienation has been aggravated by the pandemic and the drastic decline in social interaction this brought about.

Marxism, which continues to thrive in academe as a fashionable analytical framework, provides the lenses that interpret Israel’s effort at self-defense as an extension of “imperialism.” The same analytical framework inspires American hatred for America: a rejection of its way of life and its role in the world. The outcrop is a perverse love for America’s enemies – even if they are barely understood.

These are the same analytical lenses that uncover “oppression” and “exploitation” in race and gender relations. The outcrop is grotesque historical revisionism and even an outright denial of the facts.

The so-called “woke” ideology that animates the American left is nothing more than the mirror image of the same ignorance that explains the “Make America Great Again” mantras of Trump’s political base. If the conservatives are driven by white American fear of replacement, its leftist counterpart is anti-white racism.

If it is true that the pro-Hamas campus protests sweeping American universities today is manned by those infected by “woke” ideology, then this has to be the low point for the political left. It wrongly assigns moral responsibility and elevates as humanity’s future those who murder and rape as normal political means.

The political left is now aligned with terrorism, religious fundamentalism and racial chauvinism.

In the clash of cultures that now seems to be looming as a result of major migration of Muslim populations into Europe and North America, the political left will find itself increasingly aligned with perverse anti-democratic causes. We see that in the political positions taken by the left-wing of the Democratic Party regarding recent developments in the Middle East. We see that in the perverse march of pro-Hamas activists in Germany demanding a caliphate be established in that staunchly Christian country.

A senior minister of Arab ancestry in Edinburg complained that there were too many Scotsmen in Scotland. As a result of the controversy he generated, he is due to step down from office soon.

Here in Manila, there was a feeble effort by what remains of the Filipino left to glorify Hamas and denounce Israel’s self-defense. They held a few marches waving Palestinian flags but found so little public support they decided to take the logistical support and quit the issue.

Strangely, those fringe political groups denouncing “genocide” in Gaza took no notice of the thousands of Coptic Christians violently persecuted in Egypt and the Sudan, the tens of thousands in west Africa forced to covert to Islam under pain of death and the thousands more killed and maimed fighting for democracy in Syria. They ignore the flagrant degradation of women in Iran and the brutal repression of the population by the mullah-led fanatics. Just last week, an Iranian rapper was sentenced to death for his protest music.

As a consequence of their flawed analysis of current events, those infected by “woke” ideology find themselves aligned with Islamic extremists, terror groups and every sort of potentially “anti-imperialist” constituency. It is an ideology in search of a real world social basis.