We are witnessing a picture-perfect example of a moral panic.
gazaprotests
“I have been reporting on political dissent and violent policing for 15 years, particularly in New York City. Compared to Tuesday night, I have never witnessed, at the scene of a protest, the use of police power so disproportionate to the type of demonstration taking place.”
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/01/nyc-gaza-college-protests-police-outside-agitators/
This is a well reported piece but the framing is bizarre.
When a mob attacks a group of protesters under cover of darkness, they are not counter-protesting.
And as the reporting makes clear, they didn’t “provoke” violence, they *perpetrated* it as the cops and campus security stood by. #media #fascism #gazaprotests
Many media outlets are paying a lot more attention to arrests than to the actual demands of protesters.
US media largely ignored campus protests until encampments (and police clearing of encampments) got going, fitting in with a general pattern, according to a researcher who studies how journalists cover protest movements:
https://theconversation.com/media-coverage-of-campus-protests-tends-to-focus-on-the-spectacle-rather-than-the-substance-229172
#News #GazaProtests #journalism @academicchatter
Hard to overstate how irresponsible that Politico piece is. Not only is it substantially inaccurate, but this is the stuff that leads to threats, harassment and violence. It has in the past, so I’m not speaking hypothetically. And yet they chose to publish this bullshit story for clicks. #media #conspiracytheories #gazaprotests
Many responses to this focus on Trump promising much worse but it just strikes me as incoherent.
Yes, #Biden made a small, late contribution to the moral panic but the crackdowns are coming from college administrators buckling under pressure from GOP demagogues in Congress and are carried out by local cops. #gazaprotests
Well well well
"A handful of powerful businessmen pushed New York City Mayor Eric Adams to use police to crack down on pro-Palestinian student protesters at #Columbia University, donating to the politician and offering to pay for private investigators to help break up the demonstrations, based on leaked WhatsApp conversations"
This professor, who is Jewish, was suspended for posing a threat to Jewish students, AKA participating in a protest (where he was violently arrested). Now he's in a kind of limbo.
This is what a moral panic looks like. #gazaprotests
https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/professor-suspended-by-wash-u-after-protests-hears-only-silence-42567338
These were banal, humorous texts between colleagues, someone took a picture of them over one of the dean's shoulder and leaked them to demagogues at The Free Beacon, they became fodder for a House Republican witch hunt and here we are.
That ludicrous moral panic claims three more victims.