The same behavior happens for social movements that co-sign our perceptions. We are all too willing to ignore the malicious motives that may lurk beneath those movements' rhetoric.
So it was in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, when many well-intentioned Americans were pushed into adopting aspects of leftism and uncritically following Black Lives Matter. The "uncritical" part was key: racial justice supposedly demanded that we treat rationality itself as an artifact of whiteness. Some, embarrassingly, did just that.
However, the conflict between Hamas and the nation of Israel has become highly salient for those whose vision was hazed through an uncritical lens as they now see what BLM-style "social justice" Leftism really means, and to what lengths its adherents will go to “fight” for the oppressed, even down to rationalizing terrorism and cheering on the destruction of a nation.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on civilians in Israel, including the murdering of hundreds of party-goers at a psychedelic trance music festival near the border of Gaza, BLM Chicago took it upon themselves to show the world where their solidarity was with the imagery of a paragliding Hamas militant with the caption, “I stand with Palestine,” and their added commentary, “That is all that is it”.
While this shocked many, the people who had been paying attention to the core of Black Lives Matter’s messaging for years are not surprised by this at all.
While it was the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter that made this public declaration, the heads of BLM have made it clear that their allegiance is with anyone who proclaims to want to liberate the Palestinian people and defund Israel alongside other BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanction) organizations.
Patrice Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, on a Harvard Law panel in 2015 advocated for the end of Israel to bring liberation to the Palestinian people. “Palestine is our generation’s South Africa. If we don’t step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project that’s called Israel, we’re doomed.”
Leftists have gone as far as to absurdly blame Israel for George Floyd’s death as they claim that the officers involved were trained by the Israeli military to place their knees on the neck as a method of restraint much like what was done to George Floyd.
What you’re witnessing on campuses has been the culmination of years of purposeful preparedness to galvanize an already indoctrinated youth who have been groomed to see an oppressor versus oppressed dynamic in every situation.
Just as George Floyd’s death was the ignitor to push progressivism into the mainstream and manipulate well-intentioned people into adopting their ideology or else fear being culpable for another Floyd situation, leftists are using Israel as an excuse to pull bystanders into the fold and vilify Israel for the sake of alleged (highly dubious) "liberation."
No one would fall for this kind of clear bigotry, it not for one thing: The American public has already been fed a steady diet of race essentialism, where one can tell the positive or negative intentions based on complexion. The lighter the complexion, the more nefarious you are presumed to be. Since the Left treats Israel as a "white" civilization and the Palestinians as a "brown" one, this makes the choice simple for them, and makes their narrative obvious: white Jews are oppressing the brown people because they are brown.
Now, at last, we can see that George Floyd’s death was used as leftist training wheels to teach us all how to ride the rusty bike of neo-Marxism; a bike we are still peddling despite this conflict. However, that bike may soon be abandoned, now that most people are seeing the extent to which Leftist liberation movements truly believe that the "liberatory" end justifies any means, no matter how horrendous. Thus, Hamas must be viewed as liberators even as they rape innocent women and murder people who just wanted to listen to music together. It is not enough to object to the treatment of those in Gaza, the Left tells us: one must treat all Jews as complicit with that treatment, and thus hate them for being Jews. Just as all white people are supposedly complicit in the expansion of "systemic white supremacy."
Needless to say, this is guilt by association on steroids. And yes, I know that they are mostly American college-indoctrinated leftists who would never leave their comfortable lives to join this Middle Eastern conflict at all, let alone to rain terror on the Jews in Israel, but still. The fact that they’ve chosen to show solidarity by engaging in conflict with Jews in America was always foreseeable. This is the point of their worldview: any "privileged" person or ethnic group who dares to assert their right to live in peace once the Left decides they don't deserve it must be destroyed, sanity, history, and yes, rationality be damned. This is why you see some pro-Palestinian protesters tearing down posters of people who were kidnapped and are still missing: in their minds, “oppressor Jews” can never be victims, even if they’re children.
This is the logic of genocide, and for the sake of not just Israel, but the world, we must recognize the Left for its genocidal tendencies now.
