Let’s have a little humor before the trouble starts on the quad.
These are tee-shirts put up by those in our Encampment, and shows how incredibly clueless, both historically and culturally, these participants are. The photos were taken by a member of the university, who assures me that these were not put up by jokers outside the Encampment.
Maybe instead of changing bird names and pretending that a person with a penis can be a woman, the colleges should concentrate, at least for a few days, on advising their so-called students as to the nature of middle-eastern muslim society, and its opinions of and actions toward women, gay people, Jews, Christians, Hindus, atheists–and other muslims belonging to the wrong “denomination” or “sect” (or whatever a group of sunnis or shiites is called).
I suggest Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel as a starting point.
Useful website here.
Or perhaps a showing of that documentary on rape committed by Hamas on October 7, mentioned by our esteemed host here.
The last time I had to fill out a form for permission to leave the city (and therefore, enter the restricted areas of the country – the desert oilfields), the term they used was “sept”.
The first time I was faced with that form, I was delayed for several days – to my Boss’s considerable annoyance – because I put “atheist” into the “religion” box.
Quoth the Boss : “You’d have been better saying you were a Jew – they’re no challenge!” I was lucky that the country didn’t have “atheism” in the criminal code (ex-British accident, I guess) – certainly I checked after that before accepting jobs and filling out landing passes.
Riffing off the old joke from Northern Ireland …
Ah yes, but were you a Sunni atheist or a Shiite atheist?
One of my best friends as a student was an Ulster-born-and-bred Protestant Republican.
Which should, of course, surprise nobody – as the Republican movement in Ireland was, in it’s origins, a Protestant movement. Ohh, the offence that caused “Red Hand Les”, a later colleague, on being told that story. He was appalled that a Protestant – from his own town, even – could be such a traitor.
During the last part of my Civil Service career, I had to make quite a number of visits to Riyadh. I was solemnly informed that, since I was not a Muslim, the only acceptable entry in the ‘Religion’ bit of the visa application form was ‘Christian’. I filled it in with gritted teeth every time.
I assume that my Boss (the UAE version) had that conversation with later staff we sent there. He’d been in-country for so long, he’d forgotten the routine hypocrisies of living there.
Sadly, that’s how the people with those identities would end up if they came out in Gaza—hung from light posts and other tall objects. The naïveté of the protestors is so apparent that it’s hard to believe that we have to take them seriously.
This.⬆️⬆️⬆️
I will be closely looking for “Rooftop Hamas Islamofascists for Dykes and Fags” signs.
Well this I can understand.
It simply results from the fantasies of limitless energy in the transatlantic Romantic imagination from 1760-1860 — not to mention, a possible prehistory of metabolic rift (Marx’s term for the disruption of energy circuits caused by industrialization under capitalism).
To understand this, we take theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens in order to update and propose an alternative to historicist ideological critiques of the Romantic imagination.
[… if you’re not hip to what that copy/pasted blurb is, take a look for a certain biography of a certain Johannah King-Slutzky, the famous orderer of humanitarian aid for students on the meal plan and critical unconsciousness haver. But check soon before its taken down ]
english.columbia.edu/content/johannah-king-slutzky
N.B. I am entirely relying on these hoodies not being hoaxes:
I have zero qualms about swapping the hostages with these idiots. I say idiots because they really have no clue. Also they are welcome to go to university in Iran with the expelled students from Columbia
It will not be fair to Iranian university students, however. They have enough trouble as it is.
More info on groups helping the protests:
“The National Students for Justice in Palestine, or NSJP, has been around some two decades and has more than 300 chapters across the U.S., many of which have helped organize the college encampments and building occupations.”
…
“For the last decade, donations to NSJP have been received and administered by the Wespac Foundation, according to Howard Horowitz, Wespac’s board chairman. The donations are passed on to NSJP “for projects in the United States,” he said, declining to provide further details.
Wespac, a nonprofit based in Westchester County near New York City, is decades old, according to its website. It has supported humanitarian causes, as well as organizations that propagate antisemitism, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Wespac has posted support of pro-Palestinian protests on social media and posted videos in which protesters held signs that refer to President Biden as “Genocide Joe.”
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/student-campus-protests-veteran-activist-groups-17ccd094
Useful idiots.
I do wonder what proportion of LGBTQ+ people have a warped view of how enlightened the Palestinian Muslims are — and how many ruefully acknowledge that yes, they’d be rejected or even killed in Gaza, but they’re still on their side because of the death toll, genocide, colonialism, or what have you.
I can certainly imagine the second scenario, and hope it’s not uncommon. It’s just that there have been so many instances of stubborn denial and ideological distortion that I find the “these noble freedom fighters accept our struggle as their struggle” narrative believable.
There will be some, but far fewer.
I remember from my student days – animal rights group : membership 60-several ; number who turned up for meetings and presentations, a dozen ; number who turned out to travel 100 miles to blockade and sabotage a hare-coursing event (who are notorious for thuggery) : 2 (and I had to shield the other one by attracting the police’s attention when she was getting back on the bus home afterwards).
Wanting to support a group that wants your last images to be the ground coming at you at pace is just sad… or may be they think they can “hit the ground running” and change Islam as well by identifying with Hamas’s intifada.
The below quote, purportedly from Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 work “The End of History and the Last Man,” has been making the rounds on the internet thanks to the governor of Utah, with amplification by investor Bill Ackman.
“Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.”
There is a certain type of activist who will always be opposed to whatever she sees as a norm in her society. This practically defines “queer” activism. Thus, we get dykes for the deranged, fags for murderous fanatics, and trannies for terrorists. Pointing out the incoherence matters not a bit.
But they have plenty of legitimate causes to protest about. The removal of abortion rights, the 40 minutes maternity leave, the removal of pensions, the lack of automatic preparation of tax returns, the taxing of expatriates etc.
Not to mention that for half a year, US Congress was working (or rather NOT working) for Putin.
“These are tee-shirts…”
Aren’t T-shirts have short sleeves?
And another linguistic question from a non-native: my understanding is that “fag” is a pejorative word. Do people use it now as a self-designation? Because of the usage of this word I was sure it was meant to mock them, but I am possibly not up-to-date with the practices of LGBTQ+ phrasing in the Anglo-Saxon world.
Yes, T-shirts have short sleeves. These are sweat shirts. If they have hoods, they are also sometimes referred to as “hoodies.”
Fag, like Queer, is a pejorative – many LGB people are very unhappy at being labelled Queer by the LGBTQIAP+ brigade. But apparently, being able to choose your labels only goes one way. (See also, “cis”!)
From, I think, the same nation as Jez, if not the same country, “fag” is an abbreviation for “cigarette” while faggot is a nice food of minced pork slightly spiced and cooked in gravy. “I think I’ll have suck on a fag” and “Those faggots tasted nice” are perfectly reasonable English for polite company.
You may find different usages in different variants of “English”, particularly “American”, where “heterodoxy” is a rude word.
Even after being told that these displays are not a joke, my mind struggles to accept it. No one, my thinking goes, could possibly be so… what? Willfully self-contradictory? Foolishly ignorant? Just plain stupid?
It’s a farce. That these are apparently real is some kind of statement about the times we live in.
Since other comments have reminded me of student days, I remember another bout of the continuing Israeli-Levant war where I had to educate a friend about Britain’s rôle in the politics of the Levant between the end of the Ottoman empire and the foundation of Israel.
Which astonished even cynical me – such profound ignorance in someone who was 3 years into a degree course in International Relations. I wonder if she graduated?