Protesting for fun and profit
So looks like we’re in protest season again. Expect more, coming to a campus near you.
But what do the protestors really want? Do they actually expect Israel will disappear, “from the river to the sea”?
No. That’s not what it’s about.
(No need to attend class — I won’t have to pay my student loan anyway…)
Now any cop who has worked protests conducted by committed leftists — and there is almost no other kind of protest, really — knows that the demands are generally not remotely reasonable. “Defund All Police!” “Death to Israel!” “Socialism Now!”
Sure. Coming right up.
What many don’t realize, however, is that nearly all of this stuff is performative. While many are of course genuinely inspired by their own plight or that of their families — this is especially true of, say, the Palestinian and Ukrainian causes — a great many other demonstrators are there for more venal reasons.
For one thing: it’s their job. Professional activism is a genuine career path — in our blue cities, especially. Generally these protest leaders/organizers derive their funding from government and NGO’s (that get their funding from government and foundation donations). And it can be a pretty lucrative gig, rounding up the latest crop of uninformed co-eds to go fight the man.
Another factor to consider is the element of intimidation. This was very present at the DNC, where many of the protestors voiced warnings to Kamala Harris about what they expected of her were she to be elected. The implicit — and sometimes not-so-implicit — warning is, “we better get what we want November 5th.” And of course, their view of a possible second Trump presidency….
A final factor to consider is that, for many others, protesting is their social life. Working protests, you see people greeting each other, hugging, saying, “I haven’t seen you since that thing in D.C. six months ago!” It’s a form of networking, and it’s how progressives build their coalitions. (In NYC alone, there are thousands of non-profit “community groups” — all with their fists up and their hands out).
In the end, a main objective underlying all this (aside from supposedly “raising awareness”) is to sow chaos. The more chaos, the more hostile interactions with the police — and the more lawsuits. And you better believe they always have the lawyers on hand (often right beside them), ready to sue over any claim they can manage.
And they do this because they know the cities always settle — further funding these groups for next time.
And the cycle continues.
Ask yourself: Do all these affluent college kids really know Middle Eastern history? Have they been there? Do they even know that Hamas and Hezbollah are designated terrorist groups?
That the primary victimizer of Gazans has been Hamas? That the entity that turned Lebanon from “the Paris of the Mideast” to a war zone is Hezbollah?
As I’ve said on the air: Most of these kids couldn’t find Gaza on a map of Gaza. And whatever your position on Israel, the revolting use of October 7th as a day to protest that nation’s existence is all the proof you need of how ignorant these people really are.
And that chaos and profit is what they’re really after.
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