{"id":141822,"date":"2024-05-10T15:18:27","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T22:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=141822"},"modified":"2024-05-10T15:18:27","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T22:18:27","slug":"norman-solomon-when-students-are-a-shock-to-the-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/05\/10\/norman-solomon-when-students-are-a-shock-to-the-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Norman Solomon, When Students Are a Shock to the System"},"content":{"rendered":"

TomDispatch.com<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

May 9, 2024<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Once upon a time, in another era, maybe even another universe, the head of a university refused to call on the police, the National Guard, or even federal troops<\/a> in the face of student and other protests. Instead, he opened<\/a> the doors of his school to the demonstrators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m thinking of Kingman Brewster, who was the president of Yale University on May 1, 1970, as peaceful<\/a> protests over racial justice and against the Vietnam War were taking place in New Haven, Connecticut. It was just days before, thanks to the killing<\/a> of four demonstrators by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University, anti-Vietnam War protests would — rather like the present Gaza ones — spread across<\/a> hundreds of college campuses nationwide. Yale avoided the worst of it, when Brewster, among other things, said<\/a>: “I am skeptical of the ability of Black revolutionaries to receive a fair trial anywhere in the United States. In large part, the atmosphere has been created by police actions and prosecutions against Panthers in many parts of the country. It is also one more inheritance from centuries of racial oppression.” I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Republican Vice President Spiro Agnew promptly and publicly called for Brewster’s ouster, while the students united behind him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No such luck these days, of course. The police are being called onto ever more campuses, starting with Columbia University where the Gaza demonstrations were first launched<\/a>. Had its president, under pressure from the Spiro Agnews of this day, not called in the police to arrest students, there might be no nationwide Gaza protest movement today. Instead, as I’m writing this, more than 2,000 students<\/a> have been arrested across the country, including — yes! — 44<\/a> for “trespassing” at Yale. Rare indeed has been Brown University<\/a>, where “only” 61 were arrested after two sit-ins and a hunger strike before its president finally agreed to let its governing body vote this fall “on a proposal to divest the school\u2019s $6.6 billion endowment from companies affiliated with Israel” and the Gaza Solidarity Encampment there ended peacefully. With that in mind, let TomDispatch <\/em>regular Norman Solomon<\/a>, author of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine<\/em><\/a>, fill you in on the ways in which American students have bravely risked their college careers and their futures to reject what he calls an all-American death culture amid a horrifying war in Gaza to which this country continues to supply<\/a> the most devastating of weaponry. Tom<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

War Culture Hates the Ethical Passion of the Young<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

In the Thrall of a Dominant Death Culture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

BY NORMAN SOLOMON<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Persisting in his support for an unpopular war, the Democrat in the White House has helped spark a rebellion close to home. Young people \u2014 least inclined to deference, most inclined to moral outrage \u2014 are leading public opposition to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. The campus upheaval is a clash between accepting and resisting, while elites insist on doing maintenance work for the war machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote the above words recently, but I could have written very similar ones in the spring of 1968. (In fact, I did.) Joe Biden hasn\u2019t sent U.S. troops to kill in Gaza, as President Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam, but the current president has done all he can to provide massive quantities of weapons and ammunition to Israel \u2014 literally making<\/a> the carnage in Gaza possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A familiar saying \u2014 the more things change, the more they stay the same\u201d \u2014 is both false and true. During the last several decades, the consolidation of corporate power and the rise of digital tech have brought about huge changes in politics and communications. Yet humans are still humans and certain crucial dynamics remain. Militarism demands conformity \u2014 and sometimes fails to get it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Columbia University and many other colleges erupted in antiwar protests during the late 1960s, the moral awakening was a human connection with people suffering horrifically in Vietnam. During recent weeks, the same has been true with people in Gaza. Both eras saw crackdowns by college administrators and the police \u2014 as well as much negativity toward protesters in the mainstream media \u2014 all reflecting key biases in this country\u2019s power structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic,\u201d Martin Luther King, Jr., said<\/a> in 1967. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disrupting a Culture of Death<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This spring, as students have risked arrest and jeopardized their college careers under banners like Ceasefire Now,\u201d Free Palestine,\u201d and Divest from Israel,\u201d they\u2019ve rejected some key unwritten rules of a death culture. From Congress to the White House, war (and the military-industrial complex that goes with it) is crucial for the political business model. Meanwhile, college trustees and alumni megadonors often have investment ties<\/a> to Wall Street<\/a> and Silicon Valley<\/a>, where war is a multibillion-dollar enterprise. Along the way, weapons sales to Israel and many other countries bring in gigantic profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new campus uprisings are a shock to the war system. Managers of that system, constantly oiling its machinery, have no column for moral revulsion on their balance sheets. And the refusal of appreciable numbers of students to go along to get along doesn\u2019t compute. For the economic and political establishment, it\u2019s a control issue, potentially writ large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the killing, maiming, devastation, and increasing starvation in Gaza have continued, month after month, the U.S. role has become incomprehensible \u2014 without, at least, attributing to the president and the vast majority of Congressional representatives a level of immorality that had previously seemed unimaginable to most college students. Like many others in the United States, protesting students are now struggling with the realization that the people in control of the executive and legislative branches are directly supporting mass murder and<\/a> genocide<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late April, when overwhelming bipartisan votes in Congress approved \u2014 and President Biden eagerly signed \u2014 a bill sending $17 billion in military aid<\/a> to Israel, the only way to miss the utter depravity of those atop the government was to not really look, or to remain in the thrall of a dominant death culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Buy the Book<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his final years in office, with the Vietnam War going full tilt, President Lyndon Johnson was greeted with the chant: Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?\u201d Such a chant could be directed at President Biden now. The number of Palestinian children killed so far by the U.S.-armed Israeli military is estimated to be almost 15,000<\/a>, not counting the unknown number still buried in the rubble of Gaza. No wonder high-ranking Biden administration officials now risk being loudly denounced whenever they speak in venues open to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mirroring the Vietnam War era in another way, members of Congress continue to rubberstamp huge amounts of funding for mass killing. On April 20th, only 17% of House Democrats and only 9% of House Republicans voted against the new military aid package for Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Higher learning is supposed to connect the theoretical with the actual, striving to understand our world as it truly is. However, a death culture \u2014 promoting college tranquility as well as mass murder in Gaza \u2014 thrives on disconnects. All the platitudes and pretenses of academia can divert attention from where U.S. weapons actually go and what they do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly, precepts readily cited as vital ideals prove all too easy to kick to the curb lest they squeeze big toes uncomfortably. So, when students take the humanities seriously enough to set up a protest encampment on campus and then billionaire donors demand<\/a> that a college president put a stop to such disruption, a police raid is likely to follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A World of Doublethink and Tone Deafness<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

George Orwell\u2019s explanation of doublethink<\/a>\u201d in his famed novel 1984<\/em> is a good fit when it comes to the purported logic of so many commentators deploring the student protesters as they demand an end to complicity in the slaughter still underway in Gaza: To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laying claim to morality, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has, for instance, been busy firing media salvos at the student protesters. That organization\u2019s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, is on record flatly declaring<\/a> that anti-Zionism is antisemitism\u201d \u2014 no matter how many Jews declare themselves to be anti-Zionist.\u201d Four months ago, ADL issued a report<\/a> categorizing pro-Palestinian rallies with anti-Zionist chants and slogans\u201d as antisemitic events. In late April, ADL used the antisemitic\u201d label to condemn<\/a> protests by students at Columbia and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have a major, major, major generational problem,\u201d Greenblatt warned in a leaked ADL strategy phone call<\/a> last November. He added: The issue in the United States\u2019 support for Israel is not left and right; it is young and old\u2026 We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen-Z problem\u2026 The real game is the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with thinly veiled condescension toward students, a frequent approach is to treat the mass killing of Palestinians as of minimal importance. And so, when New York Times<\/em> columnist Ross Douthat wrote<\/a> in late April about students protesting at Columbia, he merely described the Israeli government\u2019s actions as failings.\u201d Perhaps if a government was bombing and killing Douthat\u2019s loved ones, he would have used a different word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A similar mentality, as I well remember, infused media coverage of the Vietnam War. For mainline news outlets, what was happening to Vietnamese people ranked far below so many other concerns, often to the point of invisibility. As media accounts gradually began bemoaning the quagmire\u201d<\/a> of that war, the focus was on how the U.S. government\u2019s leadership had gotten itself so stuck. Acknowledging that the American war effort amounted to a massive crime against humanity was rare. Then, as now, the moral bankruptcies of the political and media establishments fueled each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a barometer of the prevailing political climate among elites, the editorial stances of daily newspapers indicate priorities in times of war. In early 1968, the Boston Globe<\/em> conducted a survey of 39 major U.S. newspapers and found that not a single one had editorialized in favor of an American withdrawal from Vietnam. By then, tens of millions of Americans were in favor of such a pullout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This spring, when the New York Times<\/em> editorial board finally called for making U.S. arms shipments to Israel conditional \u2014 six months after the carnage began in Gaza \u2014 the editorial<\/a> was tepid and displayed a deep ethnocentric bias. It declared that the Hamas attack of October 7 was an atrocity,\u201d but no word coming anywhere near atrocity\u201d was applied to the Israeli attacks occurring ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Times<\/em> editorial lamented that Mr. Netanyahu and the hard-liners in his government\u201d had broken a bond of trust\u201d between the United States and Israel, adding that the Israeli prime minister has been deaf to repeated demands from Mr. Biden and his national security team to do more to protect civilians in Gaza from being harmed by [American] armaments.\u201d The Times<\/em> editorial board was remarkably prone to understatement, as if someone overseeing the mass killing of civilians every day for six months was merely not doing enough to protect civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning by Doing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thousands of student protesters encountering the edicts of college administrations and the violence of the police have gotten a real education in the true priorities of American power structures. Of course, the authorities (on and off campuses) have wanted a return to the usual peaceful campus atmosphere. As military strategist Carl von Clausewitz long ago commented with irony, A conqueror is always a lover of peace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporters of Israel are fed up with the campus protests. The Washington Post<\/em> recently featured an essay<\/a> by Paul Berman that deplored what has become of his alma mater, Columbia. After a brief mention of Israel\u2019s killing of Gazan civilians and the imposition of famine, Berman declared that ultimately the central issue in the war is Hamas and its goal\u2026 the eradication of the Israeli state.\u201d The central issue.<\/em> Consider it a way of saying that, while unfortunate, the ongoing slaughter of tens of thousands of children and other Palestinian civilians doesn\u2019t matter nearly as much as the fear that nuclear-armed Israel, with one of the most powerful air forces<\/a> in the world, is in danger of eradication.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pieces similar to Douthat\u2019s and Berman\u2019s have proliferated in the media. But they don\u2019t come to grips with what Senator Bernie Sanders recently made clear in a public message<\/a> to the Israeli prime minister: Mr. Netanyahu, antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to millions. Do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

College protesters have shown that they will not be distracted. They continue to insist \u2014 not flawlessly, but wonderfully<\/a> \u2014 that all people\u2019s lives matter. For decades, and since October in a particularly deadly fashion, the U.S.-Israel alliance has proceeded to treat Palestinian lives as expendable. And that is exactly what the protests are opposing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, protests can flicker and die out. Hundreds of U.S. campuses shut down in the spring of 1970 amid protests against the Vietnam War and the American invasion of Cambodia, only to become largely quiescent by the fall term. But for countless individuals, the sparks lit a fire for social justice that would never be quenched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of them, Michael Albert, a cofounder of the groundbreaking Z Magazine<\/em><\/a>, has continued with activist work since the mid-1960s. A lot of people are comparing now to 1968,\u201d he wrote<\/a> in April. That year was tumultuous. We were inspired. We were hot. But here comes this year and it is moving faster, no less. That year the left that I and so many others lived and breathed was mighty. We were courageous, but we also had too little understanding of how to win. Don\u2019t emulate us. Transcend us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He then added:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The emerging mass uprisings must persist and diversify and broaden in focus and reach. And hey, on your campuses, again do better than us. Fight to divest but also fight to structurally change them so their decision makers \u2014 which should be you \u2014 never again invest in genocide, war, and indeed suppression and oppression of any kind. Tomorrow is the first day of a long, long potentially incredibly liberating future. But one day is but one day. Persist.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Persistence will be truly essential. The gears of pro-Israel forces are fully meshed with the U.S. war machinery. The movement to stop Israel\u2019s murderous oppression of Palestinians is up against the entire military-industrial-congressional complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined<\/a> (and most of them are allies), while maintaining 750 military bases<\/a> overseas, vastly more<\/a> than all of its official adversaries put together. The U.S. continues to lead<\/a> the nuclear arms race toward oblivion. And the economic costs are stunning. The Institute for Policy Studies reported<\/a> last year that 62% of the federal discretionary budget went to militarized programs\u201d of one sort or another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., described<\/a> this country\u2019s spending for war as a demonic, destructive suction tube,\u201d siphoning tremendous resources away from human needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more things change, the more they stay the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With transcendent wisdom, this spring\u2019s student uprising has rejected conformity as a lethal anesthetic while the horrors continue in Gaza. Leaders of the most powerful American institutions want to continue as usual, as if official participation in genocide were no particular cause for alarm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, young people have dared to lead the way, insisting that such a culture of death is repugnant and completely unacceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright 2024 Norman Solomon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Featured image: Students protest to support Gaza outside the Israeli consulate in New York City<\/a> by Joe Catron<\/a> is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0<\/a> \/ Flickr<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter<\/a> and join us on Facebook<\/a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer\u2019s new dystopian novel, <\/em>Songlands<\/a> (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky\u2019s novel <\/em>Every Body Has a Story<\/a>, and Tom Engelhardt\u2019s <\/em>A Nation Unmade by War<\/a>, as well as Alfred McCoy\u2019s <\/em>In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power<\/a>, John Dower\u2019s <\/em>The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II<\/a>, and Ann Jones\u2019s<\/em> They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America\u2019s Wars: The Untold Story<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Norman Solomon<\/strong> is co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His books include War Made Easy<\/em>, Made Love<\/em>, Got War<\/em>, and most recently War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine<\/em><\/a> (The New Press). He lives in the San Francisco area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TomDispatch.com May 9, 2024 Once upon a time, in another era, maybe even another universe, the head of a university refused to call on the police, the National Guard, or even federal troops in the face of student and other protests. Instead, he opened the doors of his school to the demonstrators. I’m thinking of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}