So you don't support freedom of speech? Or you support it only for people who agree with you? Do you believe the government should pressure institutions to punish people who express messages the government doesn't like?
It's interesting that Columbia protesters get their degrees revoked but J6 protesters get pardons. How do you explain the difference?
J6 protestors are lawbreakers. IMO, they should not get pardons, but Trump is a despot with the power to issue pardons. I can't do anything about that.
The people at Columbia were not mere "protestors". They were physically abusive bigots who trampled the freedoms of people around them. If they were Jews chanting islamophobic slurs, destroying property, and preventing anyone with a keffiyeh from attending class, they should suffer the same consequences.
I get that "peaceful protest" can be seen as an oxymoron. But what happened at Columbia should have been stopped the moment it started. It is bigotry. It is hypocrisy. But even if you ignore the moral and ethical failings, it was against the rules.
> They were physically abusive bigots who trampled the freedoms of people around them.
If true, ok, charge them with a crime. That's why we have courts. Implementing a punishment, under pressure from the president, without due process or a chance to defend themselves, is contrary to American law and values.
We already have laws on the books to deal with physical violence. As for verbal abuse, welcome to America - aka sticks and stones country (as guaranteed by our constitution). Anyways, why should a particular faith get special privileges?
When people physically block your access to classes you paid for, on a campus you have an equal right to be at, and they're blocking you on the basis of your faith or ethnicity, that's not "sticks and stones".
There's laws on the books to deal with blocking access and movement. You mentioned verbal abuse, that's different. If campus safety nor law is not getting enforced, there's avenues for addressing it.
It's clear that you hold these positions pretty strongly, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, I am wondering why you felt compelled to post your closely held personal positions from a throwaway account? It minimizes the statement quite a bit and makes it looks like a drive by posting.
Because I have a life and I have no desire to become a target for the mob, "woke" or otherwise. This is a sensitive subject. People hate. Anonymity here allows me to speak my mind in safety. It's the opposite of drive-by posting.
Also, I don't need people digging into my identity and using that to deconstruct what I say.
Doesn't the sheer amount of dissonance make you think twice though? Maybe just a little bit? Consider the commitments you need to make and secondary beliefs you need to have, just to keep this narrative alive right now. You have pretty much implied this point yourself. I can't truly imagine what it must be like to live in the world you do, and I am sorry.
I mean, the world is not much better for the other side I guess, but at least there there is sense of international solidarity, fighting for a common struggle; that the bad guys are specific and nuance in everything is structurally required. It just seems like you need to literally sign on to having gang stalker mentality about the whole world, all because there is one big thing you can't possibly question.
I am truly sorry for how this has affected you, nothing bad deserves to happen to you either way, truly.
Thankfully I enjoy anonymity behind my throwaway handle.
There is no justification for mobs chanting for the death of me and mine. Their coded slogans are not very coded. "Anti-genocide" protests who call for genocide are not honest nor legitimate.
There is not justification why several decades after Brown v Board of Education, there needs to be any gray area around equal access. A durable mob preventing people from feeling safe going to classes they paid for is no different from the KKK. No matter whose politics they espouse.
You're not _truly_ sorry if you're concern trolling. The Israel/Palestine conflict is my lived experience of nearly half a century. My opinions are opinions, but they are very far from uninformed. I have no way to prove this to you.
I am not trolling! I guess I am just pointing out that what you are saying is quite literally shocking, and would be to anyone who believes this is what is going on. And you don't have to listen to me and you can keep wishing whatever pain you want on strangers or whatever; but I think it would at least behoove you to step back sometimes and appreciate just how dissonant things are from this perspective. Like how do you even explain this level of generalized evil in the world? What do you think happened to this culture all of the sudden, to step it up to this level? Even being more grounded, what could be going on, in your view, at the admissions office at Columbia et al to allow in so many literal Nazis in, so to speak?? Like, truly, I can't imagine how you are grounded at all, I definitely would be going crazy.
Like is there anyway you could even appreciate the Occam's razor here that at the very least, the protestors in this case may actually minimally think they are doing the right thing? You can believe people to be trying to be virtuous even if they are misguided or deluded or somehow led astray. Is that too worthy of such punishment and ire?
Is it really the case you can see only prejudice and hate from the other side here? That this many just ordinary people (read annoying liberal arts kids) are just pure evil? There is no room or evidence at all to see that we are all just fumbling around, reacting to the terror and pain we are all disproportionally exposed to? What sickness, what trauma could be so universally applied to all of us to create such a universal and bewildering hate? This is not rhetorical, I am truly curious.
