Where Does Your Alma Mater Stand On Genocide?
In the topsy turvy world of status quo message management, those who oppose Zionism are now deemed Nazis.
There, I fixed it for you.
An airplane towed the original distorted message through the skies all week, including over the Army-Navy football game in Boston and several campuses besides Harvard. Because narrative control that began with the NATO proxy war on Russia in Ukraine has grown exponentially with the need to whitewash genocide in Gaza by the U.S. and Israel.
In the topsy turvy world of status quo message management, those who oppose Zionism are now deemed Nazis. So, Hasidic Jews, gen Z Jews, secular Jews who did not fall for Israelism -- are all Nazis. Got it?
President Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania fell to the witch hunt and has resigned following charges in Congress that her fealty to free speech no matter how odious makes her a Jew-hater.
My own alma mater, tiny little Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, was working overtime on narrative management last Saturday as hundreds of students and supporters gathered demanding alumnus Sen. Angus King work for a permanent ceasefire now. Photographers and media were told by campus security that no photos and no reporting would be allowed.
But an open air rally on the steps of the art museum ought to at least be reported in the Orient, right? As the oldest student newspaper in the U.S., the Orient has lately become hampered in its ability to report the truth if that truth is deemed inconvenient by the wealthy who serve on its board of directors (think Jes Staley of Barclay's who stepped down over allegations that he enabled Jeffrey Epstein's child rape and blackmail scheme). I know because, while the Orient used to publish my occasional op eds or letters to the editor, that all came to a screeching halt over my dissent from the official Ukraine narrative i.e. Russia bad, Ukraine not infiltrated by literal Nazis.
The compare and contrast between Friday's rally at General Dynamics and Saturday's rally at Bowdoin reveals very similar messaging but a subdued tone at the college up until the march began.
In a nutshell, Bowdoin speakers said things like, "according to the New York Times" as if they lack the understanding that the NYT and NPR (also cited) are part of the problem of genocide whitewashing. There was little if any crowd response except, interestingly, when a speaker mentioned the name of Gaza journalist MoTaz.
In Bath, the crowd responded continuously until hours in the cold and then gathering darkness quieted them down. The final speaker was well-informed but most of us oldsters thought it was TMI; I noted from my spot on the pavement that they actually got a cheer from the crowd for using the phrase "historical revision." In other words, my kind of people.
At Bowdoin, the similar sized crowd of about 300 finally got loud as they marched with scrolls recording the names of the first several thousand people killed in Gaza.
My friends who went on the mile and a half march reported the energy remained high throughout a reading of a letter to King signed by 1,500 members of the Bowdoin community (me among them). The marchers also left the scrolls with names of those slaughtered on King's doorstep -- in other words, right where they belong.
King has voted for funding genocide in Gaza before, and he probably will again. May he not know a moment's peace when he's at home a few blocks from campus in a house with a Ukraine flag out front in the small town of Brunswick.
We are seeing the kind of narrative control that George Orwell wrote about in 1984. I remember when it was actually 1984, and his book seemed quaint and far from the reality, although perhaps edging towards it. This was before Julian Assange was imprisoned. We are now full fledged on with that dystopian reality, and the vote in Congress last week declaring that if you are antiZionist, then you are antisemite. Well, I'm definitely antiZionist, although I have a Jewish friend who is a Zionist. I may have some antisemite leanings, I'll admit it, and Israel's ongoing occupation and persecution of Palestinians reinforces it. But generally, I have been in love with Jewish culture, intellectuals, artists, and impact on society. I have felt deeply for the suffering they've endured in pogroms, enforced conversion to Christianity during the Inquisition in Europe, and the genocide they suffered in the concentration camps in Germany in WWII. How does that justify the hate crimes being committed in Gaza now? What I would like to see is healing and following processes that lead to lasting peace, not more revenge and hatred, killing and destruction. Wars only seed future wars, and violence is only an extreme form of coercion and control that people will always want to overthrow and seek freedom from.
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