By Tom Luongo
May 14, 2024
"Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right...
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you."
- Steeler Wheels
Before I delve into what I think is really going on with the Anti-Israeli protests on college campuses I want to make one thing very, very clear:
I don't agree AT ALL with what Israel has done in response to the October, 7th attack. I don't agree with what Hamas did as well. Wholesale slaughter of civilians, by they Muslim, Jewish, Ukrainian, Russian, etc. is morally repulsive.
No "Ifs." No, "Ands..." and certainly no "Buts..."
At the same time, I want to invoke what I wrote on the Gold, Goats 'n Guns blog about the Ukraine war in June 2023:
The Brits need this because their centuries-long feud with Russia simply cannot end with a whimper in Ukraine.
The US thinks they need this because of the ridiculous Great Powers mind virus unleashed on us by our colonial "betters."
Davos needs this because you can't roll the world up into your total control if there are any great nations left.
When viewed through the lens of the power-mongers who unleashed this war I leave you with one last question.
What do you call a hundred thousand dead Slavs fighting over swampland?
A good start.
Going back to 2017, we talked endlessly on the livestreams about how Benjamin Netanyahu's obsessions were setting up Jews to be the scapegoats for all of the world's problems. He would get on everyone's last nerve acting like he ruled the world and could make every major world leader dance to his tune because he had the big, bad US behind him.
You'll note the same behavior from places like Lithuania, Poland, and France, by the way.
All that had to occur was for the curtain to be pulled back, the protection of Zionists and Zionism by our media be removed, and the scapegoating could begin.
The Nick Fuentes' etc. would go from persona non grata to courageous truth tellers overnight. Or did we forget that guys like Mike Enoch and Richard Spencer weren't real Nazis either?
I warned everyone right after October 7th that Netanyahu was operating under false pretenses; that the US would always jump to his commands at a moment's notice.
He would be blind-sided by the simmering anger over our leaders sending our money overseas to defend his temper tantrums, while no money could be spared for us at home. And here we are with Speaker Mike Johnson now the most hated man in America for his staunch defense of Israel. For months I had to endure conservatives in Trump's camp go after Ron DeSantis because of his support for Israel, and yet, here's Trump at this moment in time calling for the death penalty for those protesting against Israel.
I wonder if Sundance et.al. will issue a mea culpa for participating in that psy-op. Trust me, I still breathe in and out normally between puffs off my cigars.
This anger at the wholesale slaughter of civilians for cynical geopolitical reasons is what is driving some of these protests, the organic part. There's a real inorganic or "astroturfed" part of this grassroots movement against Israel.
To that end not that I don't use the fashionable word "genocide" here, because 40,000 out of 3 million is NOT a genocide. It's awful, it's barbaric, but it's not genocide. Genocides are mechanistic, procedural. What's happening in Gaza simply isn't that.
That's hyperbole meant to elicit an emotional response and suck us into the psychological orbit of our oppressors. Remember folks, propaganda is thick on all sides of these conflicts. And it's no different than what happened during the early days of the Russia/Ukraine war.
Ghost of Kiev anyone? Russia having 'hypersonic' missiles? Newsflash, all missiles are hypersonic.
It's no different than the histrionics on display when anyone previously said anything remotely anti-Jewish. Then you could expect a call from the ADL's lawyers. We lived with that nonsense for decades.
But, please don't think for a second that that was some kind of prima facie evidence of a Grand Jewish Conspiracy. There are plenty of other groups who are just as protected as Israel.
Note how I'm not listing them here for the subtle rhetorical point.
I know the common refrain is, "Just look at who we're not allowed to criticize and that's who rules you." And fair cop, I've used that one myself in times past. But as I believe I've become better at seeing things clearly I think the better observation is, "Just look at who we are allowed to criticize and you know who our rulers want us to hate."
At this point I believe that's the far more predictive filter through which to view the Overton Window than the former.
Those two groups right now are the US and Israel.
We'll get back to being told to hate Russia later in the month after Putin makes a move on Zelenskyy.
When we take a hard look at the divisions on this issue there are important distinctions. Our college campuses exist in a reality that is far different than the anger in the heartland, who for the most part, support Israel's right to balance the scales for 10/7. Their separate perspectives are the wedge narcissistic abusers use to set the two groups against each other for their gain.
The minute Soros and Davos turned the campus protests into the latest version of BLM in 2020 or Occupy Wall Street in 2008, we have a classic 'divide and rule' play by the usual suspects, regardless of the rightness of the cause.
Now Americans rightfully outraged by Hamas' violence are pitted against the college kids rightfully outraged by Israel's unacceptable response.
The result is even more divisions within a society being subdivided almost by the hour.
Now, ask yourself the most important question, cui bono? What's the gain here and why?
Netanyahu is either a useful idiot or a complicit player. The Israeli majority (and the American one) that support his actions against Hamas have absolutely been pushed into the role of useful idiot.
Soros' money still spends I guess.
And I believe this was done such that, in the end, all Jews would then be the victims of the next pogrom... or more accurately, "The pogrom to end all pogroms," unless something is done to wake them up to where things are headed.
This is why I was glad to see Iran's missile attack send the right message to the right people; the Israelis who were blindly following Netanyahu's aggression on pseudo-religious grounds and the false sense of security afforded by alliance with the US and Israel's Iron Dome air defenses.
At the same time Iran may have been given a wake-up call to just how outclassed they are by US/Israeli missile technology during Israel's supposed nothingburger of a strike back.
So, on that front it's a bit of a stalemate, which I believe is a good thing.
Again, whose propaganda you believe on this exchange says more about you than it does about the people lobbing missiles at each other.
Those four ballistic missiles that got through to the ground may be some of the most effective 'misses' in human history. It shattered that illusion of safety which led to a whole lot of Israelis running to the airport to get out of harm's way.
At the same time, the Iranians got a wake up call that if Israel starts a war with Iran they are in big, big trouble. Don't get sucked into weapons technology vortex that none of our weapons work. Many do, very well.
With that said, it is our job, nee responsibility, to strip away the emotional response to the violence (so damned hard to do, I know!) to do look outside of the microcosm of psychosis on the ground look at that pesky bigger picture through which the people who fomented this conflict operate.
It's obvious if you scratch the surface of these protests just a little you can see the hand of the outside actor with their thumb on the scale. There is genuine outrage over what Israel has done in Gaza and what Netanyahu has yet to accomplish.
There are also a whole lotta outside forces amping this conflict up that go back decades before the kids protesting were born. Or did we forget that the Soviets backed the PLO and Hamas was created by the West (kinda like ISIS) to be the Palestinian group Israel was prepared to deal with?
These protests, on balance, are as organic as the BLM riots of 2020, the Ukrainian uprising on the Maidan in 2014, the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2008, and every other 'color revolution' that's been attempted and/or successful over the past forty years.
Which is to say, by this point, sadly, they really aren't. They are, strategically, a weapon directed towards a particular outcome. The OWS protests were originally about racism and then hijacked on the ground (H/T Tim Pool) by organized forces to march on the banks.
Snipers were on rooftops shooting cops and protestors alike on the Maidan to ensure chaos and a violent overthrow of Viktor Yanukovich. And they died, and they died (H/T Roger Zelazny).
Why were these legitimate protests hijacked? We know the answer here. My interest in this started with this tweet from a someone I respect deeply but who, in my opinion, has lost the plot on this.
These protests are part of another color revolution tactic to undermine the US politically. They are NOT organic anymore than the BLM riots were organic in 2016. Their cause is just, their…
You know why they know our triggers so well? It's because they installed them.
Why is it that the same people who called bullshit on OWS, or saw the hand of Vickie "Cookies" Nuland on the Maidan, or the organization of Antifa into black bloc during the BLM riots, or who covered the Arab Spring uprisings, can't see the heavy-hand of the very same people now because it's Israel in the crosshairs?
I leave that to your interpretation. My personal opinion is that the long-suppressed, and somewhat justified, criticism of Israel has now been allowed to be unleashed for larger geopolitical purposes.
This is the first flush of that frustration boiling over into righteous, if not self-righteous, anger. Again, now, apparently, it feels good to finally get to criticize Israel.
Remember when we found out that anti-US Empire asshats like Caitlin Johnstone and Bernard at Moon of Alabama were wishing Americans died during COVID to wake us up to the evils of our private health care system?
No? I do. And I still haven't forgiven them for it. Because it showed me who they really were, committed ideologues to their political agendas rather than actual champions of peace and humanity.
Look, my friend and collaborator in this project, Dexter White took me personally to task on a GGnG podcast during the early days of the Ukrainian war because he felt I was veering too close to justifying Russia's initiation of violence there. I had to work through a whole lot of Christian Just War Theory to get through that. And I don't think I did the best job of it, in hindsight.
My job here isn't to give you what you want to hear, but sometimes what you need to hear.
Dead Palestinians are a tragedy. But so too will dead Jews. And if Netanyahu is backed into a corner over external forces now ripping Israel apart, he will create the very bloodshed that we all want to avoid.
Who are those external forces? Davos. Why? Because they want the US involved in wars that 1) bankrupt us both economically and morally and 2) to justify ending nation state politics on the other side of the global conflict and turning global governance over to them through the UN.
And if Israel and some Jews and Arabs that most people have been taught to hate, have to be vaporized in the process, well there's that whole thing about omelettes and eggs.
Or did we not watch Watchmen enough times to get the joke?
Frustration and anger are easy. They are, as we kept getting told by those pesky Star Wars films, the path to evil. So, my message to everyone is simple, be careful what you wish for here.
Or the next exchange won't be over a few thousand dead, but a few hundred million.
Tomorrow, I'll finish this off with how I think these protests are being used to constructive effect with respect to the Civil Rights Act of 1965.
"Feds to the left of me, Commies to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you."
Reprinted with permission from Gold Goats 'n Guns.