"the student is now the teacher"
Sending out RESIST™ fundraising emails while voting to defund universities that don’t line up with genocide is some bullshit.
Our lawmakers are obviously terrified of college students. Two administrations in a row would physically attack them for voicing opinions about their tuitions funding genocide. Every corporate news network and both political parties have been all in for Israel for close to three years. And yet look where public opinion is now. Students seem to have had more influence on what people really think than those “in power”.
Defunding education was always part of the neoliberal plan. “Run the country like a business.” Defund a thing until it can’t function anymore, and then ask, “Why are we giving taxpayer money to this worthless program?”
Follow the students’ example and speak up. If you’ve spent the past few years publicly entertaining the possibility that certain religions, ethnicities, genders or sexual preferences maybe don’t quite deserve the same rights as you do, well, you’ve got a lot of blood on your hands now.
If you’ve been publicly suggesting that basic human rights need to be earned, and are granted only to those populations who meet some criteria set by American capitalist politicians or talking heads, you’ve been actively helping to create a world without basic human rights.
If you publicly suggest that Democratic genocide isn’t as bad as Republican genocide and should be given a pass, you’ve got blood on your hands. Saying “I’ve always stood for tolerance and understanding” while funding literal genocide makes no sense. Saying you stand for decency or legality while being wishy washy on genocide makes no sense.
Having trauma does not give anyone the right to perpetuate more trauma on someone else. Stealing land is not a basic human right. Military occupations and invasions are not basic human rights. Committing genocide is not a basic human right. What IS a human right is self-defense from military occupations and genocides. Our politicians and media don’t seem to understand this unless the victims are white.
Any future political solutions in Palestine must take into account the fact that Israel stole land and massacred the population, not once, not twice, but continuously from 1948-2026. Peaceful coexistence cannot simply be imposed upon a people you’ve been massacring, on the very land you stole. It makes as much sense as me killing your family and stealing your car and then saying “OK I’ll let you share the car now”.
Neither the US nor Israel has reckoned with the genocide, slavery and land theft that created their countries and made them “rich”. Without repairing the trauma and harm, without empowering the populations who suffered so much violation and erasure, we are just living in an unsustainable fairy tale.
Why do we believe all those fairy tales about the basic goodness of America and its Founding Fathers? Partly thanks to a long tradition of politicians periodically swooping in and being very obviously NOT good. Trump is evil on purpose. He exists to make the Founding Fathers or the Democrats look reasonable. The Founding Fathers and the Democrats are not reasonable. The USA is not reasonable. Genocide is not reasonable. Slavery is not reasonable.
Trump acts like an insane person so that when he’s gone a “liberal” will replace him and the world will stop paying attention. This “liberal” will boost funding to Israel, boost ICE’s budget, boost the Pentagon’s budget, boost the number of wars we’re fighting, just like when Obama replaced Bush, just like when Biden replaced Trump.
Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu act like insane people so that when they’re gone and a “liberal” genocider has taken their place, the world will stop paying attention. Genocide will go back to being background noise. It’s the boring, everyday, normalized violence, approved by both parties, committed by reasonable-sounding people, not even making the news, that is leading the world to self-destruction and needs more people to speak up.
Military invasions used to be an exception. Torture used to be a scandal. Genocide used to be an emergency. Thanks to our two-party good-cop-bad-cop routine, American politicians have succeeded in normalizing the worst horrors humans have ever invented. The US has made them permanent, made them the baseline, made them the cornerstones of our economy.
To wit: Genocide is now legal Slavery is now legal Child pornography is now legal Concentration camps are now legal Torture is now legal Invading other countries for no reason is now legal Election interference is now legal War crimes are now legal Thank you Biden Thank you Trump
Murder Now Legal As Long It’s Committed By AI Plagiarism Now Legal As Long As It’s Committed By AI Your Likeness As Porn Now Legal As Long It’s Created By AI Musical Blackface Now Applauded As Long As It’s AI Mass Houselessness Now Commended As Long As It’s Caused By AI Lies Now True As Long As They’re Told By AI Thank You Capitalism
So what actually is illegal and abnormal and frowned upon these days? Doing what the students have been doing. Saying no to genocide, apartheid, fascism, police brutality, mass surveillance, global warming, and concentration camps.