The protest movement against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is the most bizarre protest to my knowledge. We studied protest movements as part of history; the protest that led to the beginning of English rights and the Magna Carta in 1215; the protests leading to the American Revolution in 1776; the protest storming the Bastille leading to the French Revolution in 1789; the protests leading to the Russian Revolution in 1917; the anti-Vietnam war Protests in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and we can name so many more. Most of them were for some kind of political social rights or greater economic equality. These movements may not have been solidly based on good religious, economic, or social views, but there was some level of coherence and the people were usually professing, foundationally, the same goals or values. But this is not the case with these protests.
For one thing, the protests are more based on mega lies more than any other I have ever studied. And secondly, the protests bring together three very different groups. The first group is the Islamic Fascists, who believe in the dictatorship of the Caliph or Muslim rulers world Caliphate. Hamas and its world partners, Boko Haram in Africa that kills and tortures Christians, ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and other such groups seek to violently overthrow the present order of the West and replace it with the Islamic Sunni world state. Hamas partners with another world movement of radical Shiite Islam led today by Iran and including its partners, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis of Yemen. Surely if these groups were to defeat the West, they would then turn to fight each other since this is an alliance against a common enemy, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but they would no doubt resume their battle of over 1000 years against each other, Sunni against Shiite.
The second group is the Neo-Marxists for whom Israel is the white colonial oppressor and the Palestinians are the darker oppressed group. The Islamic Fascists may mimic the rhetoric for the sake of destroying Israel, but this is not their philosophical or political worldview. They are good at manipulating media and knowing what these “woke” neo-Marxists want to hear to gain their help to destroy Israel. Ultimately these two groups would fight. One needs only to note that the oppressed in neo-Marxism include women gays, lesbians, and indeed the whole gamut of LGBTQ2+ people. There are people that the Islamic Fascists would and indeed did, toss off buildings and stone. Women would not have rights but would be covered as they are forced to do in Iran today. Are the neo-Marxists too dumb to realize this or are they using the chaos to overcome the capitalist West and believe they can deal with Islam later? After all, joining together produces just the destabilization they desire that Herbert Marcuse called for in his Essay on Liberation (1969). When it is all destroyed, a new society can be built. The goal for these folks is not the destruction of Israel only, but of the American order and the Western order. This group includes Antifa and various radical groups. Scholar revivalist Michael Brown said that this alliance is so incoherent that it is like Jews for Nazis or blacks for the KKK.
The third group is all the naïve young people and not-so-young people who really believe these protests are about human rights, a national movement for Palestinians. Many may not understand neo-Marxism and certainly, they do not understand Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran and their radical support for terrorism. We have never seen a college population so uneducated and naïve and unable to think, weigh the evidence, and come to good, reasoned conclusions. Education standards have declined drastically with the decline of the West. These are just totally subject to the most gross propaganda and don’t even know what they are chanting, the meaning of intifada, or from the River to the Sea. Yet it feels exciting to be in a chanting marching group for liberation!
The propaganda attack against Israel is grossly immoral as can be believed. It is lies from the father of lies at a huge level. The nation of Israel is attacked by the Hamas movement whose charter and actions are genocidal by the United Nations Treaty on Genocide (1951). The parallel to this was the genocide promotion and propaganda of the Nazis. In the most bizarre Orwellian twist, whose promotion would even cause Orwell’s head to spin, the Islamic Fascists accuse Israel of genocide when they defend against genocide and do what they reasonably can to save civilians while prosecuting the war against the genocidal terrorists who showed their total depravity on October 7. It is a reality reversal.
The roots of this in Islamic radicalism are not hard to discover. We have a long history of texts, genocidal war history, and murder that show us that this is only a more recent iteration of a satanic worldview. However, the roots of Neo-Marxism can also be explained. For us in the West, how did this neo-Marxism gain such sway in our universities and then partner with Islamic Fascism, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union the revealed failure of Communism? The key is to understand that this is the result of the loss of the moral vision of the West rooted in the Bible. Once this has been abandoned, all kinds of false “isms” that are not well thought out, nostrums, fill the void. The reasoning is emotional.
The moral vision of the West was built up over centuries and was a joining of the best in Greco-Roman civilization and Biblical standards, but then all was reformed by Biblical norms. We see this in Augustine’s rules for just war that still inform the West. We note that genocide was common in the warring tribes of the ancient world and even more recent times, in India, China, and Africa. The idea of the worth of each human being, and standards for reasoning, evidence, and logic became part of creating the first universities. The moral vision looked for a society where human rights and material provision could be made available for all who were diligent. It looked for a society where kindness, love, and law were established. We note today that the importance of a lawful society and enforcing the law equally are today rejected and excuses are given for not enforcing the law.
The loss of the moral vision of the West has produced Western leaders who have no moral courage. This is seen in the university presidents that gave in to intimidation and bullying. People with moral vision and culture do not give in to such tactics, but the culture-formation elite of our universities are largely morally bankrupt. Only not giving in to bullying can stop bullying and intimidation.
If we were thinking like FBI or CIA operatives the approach to fighting this movement would be, to paraphrase Eric Bern’s Games People Play, “Let’s You and Him fight.” We could imagine getting the Neo-Marxists and Islamic Fascists to fight each other over women’s rights and gay rights. We could envision getting the Sunni Muslim radicals to fight the Shiite Muslim radicals. Sunni Isis is murdering Shiites in Iraq! Then it could all fall apart.
However, the above is tongue-in-cheek, though it would be a type of justice. Rather the only answer for this situation is a massive revival of Biblical faith in the West. Only then can we restore moral vision, real education in universities, the enforcement of law, and the recovery of courage.