We can’t acknowledge the poor shape of US pub ed and then assume most young protestors have a real handle on the history of Israel/Palestine. It’s a cultural conflict based in religious tradition & dogma. They get right/wrong, but they don’t likely get the nuance, which is key.
— Cornell Woolridge (renaissancexm on BlueSky)🦄 (@RenaissanceXM) May 11, 2024
It is more than nuance which goes unrecognized by most of the protestors. However, it is largely "a cultural conflict based on religious tradition and dogma" and Mrs. Clinton's assessment, albeit accurate, should have gone unstated.
Of course, the anti-Israel hysteria has been fed by an ignorance of Middle East history, peppered with a failure to comprehend the nature of the struggle between East and West. Clinton's statement thus bears a resemblance to a more infamous one she made eight years ago. You'll remember when the Democratic presidential nominee in September of that year stated the reasonably obvious:
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic- you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.
She couldn't have been more accurate unless she had added "insurrectionists and their supporters." Nevertheless, there is a time to hold your tongue as Clinton de facto acknowledged ("just to be grossly generalistic") even before she uttered those words.
Mrs. Clinton could have thrown caution to the wind and fully embraced political incorrectness. Ida Bae Wells argues "Did BLM protestors have to know the entire story of policing to protest what happened to George Floyd?"
They didn't, but they did need something which the campus protestors also needed. That essential element was good timing- favorable weather.
The massive, black lives matter protests were provoked by the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. However, the ubiquitous and massive outpouring would not have occurred had the crime occurred four or five months earlier, early in winter or in the dead of winter.
They transpired at a time in which people had begun to realize that Covid-19, which had kept the populace unusually sheltered in late winter and spring, was far less a threat outdoors than indoors. Moreover, good weather was- as it always is with protests- can be a powerful motivator.
By contrast, in bad weather, less-motivated persons will conclude that there probably will be few attendees, the event will be insignificant, and they may even be subject to discomfort. The spark that lit the flame was the Chauvin/Floyd confrontation- but conditions were especially ripe for associating with like-minded individuals. Or as James Carville would put it, "it's the weather, stupid."
Of course, no Democratic, and perhaps no Republican, politician or official could point to that obvious factor without blowing up his or her career. That's "blowing up" as in destroying, not merely harming. It's the dirty little secret which cannot be expressed without accusations of racism, and there would be very few defenders of the offender.
And so Hillary Clinton cites the historical ignorance of many of the protestors of Israeli and American policy in Gaza. As with the infamous "deplorables" observation, she was simultaneously right and politically inept.
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