Violence erupted at the University of California, Los Angeles after pro-Israeli counter-demonstrators attacked a pro-Palestinian campus encampment. Bubbling tensions on the campus boiled over following the alleged breach of a “buffer zone” between the rival groups.
Does anyone know what political stance(s) the attacking crowd is made of?
Like, also lefties? Tankies, anarchists? Or like MAGAs?
Sorry, are you following this story generally? Lefties, tankies and anarchists all seem extremely unlikely to be involved with pro Israel attackers.
Ok wow. First, thanks to everyone who have their estimates. Appreciated. And for everyone else and the warriors of downvoting: No I was not trolling abd not it’s not THAT unilkely for it to be lefties (yes okay anarchists and tankies I mostly said as exmples so you know what I’m trying to ask)
If you are interested: there is a german lefty flavor called Antideutsche (anti-german). They are Zionists, antifas, anticapitalist, have a thing for violence (stylizing “bomber harris” for example), say weird thing like “protecting ur environment is like protecting your ‘home country’ like nazis would” and sometimes think of whoever basically as if they were nazis.
I’m not making this up, lefties go weird ways sometimes.
Edit readibility
Okay on second thought I wanna take back that warriors comment, that was too bitchy. Guess I’m also not uneffected by how toxic the whole discourse on Israel (also in or between lefty communities) is.
Like, everyone seems to feel they’d have to be either “pro israel” or “pro palestine”, wich imo 1. Is freaking dangerous for germans specifically 2. Doesn’t recognize the complexity (in the sense of one can’t just identify the totality of Israel with its right wing government as ome can’t just identify palestine with hamas.) 3. It tends to overlook the perspective of both israelian and palestinian lefties
why the hell would tankies and anarchist side with the counter protestors. palestine litterally isnt a state yet(its trying to get accepted in the UN)
Are you trolling?
Right-wingers. They just happen to be zionist right-wingers.
Same the world over because violence and fascism are the fundemental basis of right-wing political ideology, whatever local flavor it might be.
Zionists, Democrats, and Republicans.
Boo this man.
They first and foremost identify as violent shit bags and only representative of violent shit bags.
You can boo all you want, but those are the three sides supporting Israel.
Funny how it’s all rightists supporting them.
For every large group there’s probably only only 2-8 that are genuinely knowledgeable and authentic about the beliefs being fought for. Regardless of sides.
Or not idk… Idk why I’m posting this.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say “not the left”, and leave the rest as an exercise to the reader.
Zionists, probably wouldn’t surprise me if they made common cause with actual neo-nazi groups as well, wouldn’t be the first time.
MAGAs. because american conservatives are often also american evangelists, and they’ve got some weird ideas about israel. those conservatives who don’t necessarily personally believe weird stuff about israel (ie the jews having a homeland means the second coming of jesus and everything will be great for evangelical christians) are being brought along by the right-wing propaganda on this issue.
Alt-Right just likes attacking leftwing protests. No actual political beliefs required. It’s the physical version of owning the libs.
I’ve seen reports that they were Chabad Lubavitch. Not sure of the accuracy.
There were two attacks on different days, so it could be separate groups, but a Jewish professor who intervened said a lot of them were speaking Hebrew and one carried a Chabad flag.
How is it that on this one topic, all rational discourse is completely absent? I mean there’s some topics where one side is completely irrational, sure. But when it comes to Israel-Palestine, everyone on all sides is just completely and often violently nonsensical.
How is it that on this one topic, all rational discourse is completely absent?
It isn’t.
Find me one rational argument about Israel and/or Palestine. Any one, from anywhere, at any time in history.
Genocide is wrong and Hamas is wrong.
This is the argument nearly everyone has been making forever.
A two-state solution is the only way the situation should end, and that should include the removal of Netanyahu and an end to Isreal’s encroachment on Palestinian land. The people of the area have been failed by their governments.
Genocide is wrong and Hamas is wrong.
Ok fine, this is a rational argument, although present company excepted I don’t really find other people arguing both at the same time.
A two-state solution is the only way the situation should end
But this is where the mainstream views lose me and seem to grasp at something that everyone should be able to see is just not gonna work. You have the gaza strip on one side, the west bank on the other, and Israel in between. How can this be two countries? Is there any other country that’s in 2 separate land masses with its adversary in the middle?
As I understand it, Israel would have to cede land to Palestine so that each can have a continuous land mass. That land was taken to from Israel in the first place, so it’s not unreasonable for some of it to be taken back.
But of course Israel the government is not fond of that at all.
Found the Enlightened Centrist!
See that in itself is a perfect example because it’s both a hasty generalization, and an ad hominem.
🙄
I am utterly unconcerned by criticism from someone who wants “both sides” a genocide.
Which thing that someone says is a genocide are you referring to? Because last I checked, “both sides” claim that the other is trying to genocide them.
And frankly, both are again engaging in hasty generalizations. There are people in Palestine who want a genocide in Israel, and people in Israel who want a genocide in Palestine. And many more in both that don’t. But that latter bit is really inconvenient for everyone, isn’t it?
There are people in Palestine who want a genocide in Israel, and people in Israel who want a genocide in Palestine
Only one of those is actually happening
Username checks out
Angry and lashing out. This time the Israeli genocide was called out and the world was made more aware. And the usual cover given challenged thanks to these protests. The dehumanization of Palestinian people by supporters of Israel’s genocide is frightening.
It is unfortunate that the very small % of people that choose violence tend to only make things worse not better.
Which is exactly why those people are being used by more powerful figures. It’s hard to change the hearts and minds of the people, it’s easy to make them fight themselves.
It is indeed an effective strategy to distract the masses unfortunately. There is a real growth opportunity here for humanity if we are able to see it as clearly the established pattern is not serving society.
Jewish Federation Los Angeles meanwhile blamed the university’s chancellor for allowing “an environment to be created over many months that has made students feel unsafe”.
The group demanded that the encampment be cleared and that UCLA meet leaders of the Jewish community.
Fucking hell, this is such a callous response. In any other situation, the group representing the side that just had masked vigilantes attack peaceful demonstrators would make amends. “These people don’t represent our movement. We disavow them and what they stand for.” And so on.
I see they’re taking a page from Israel’s book: refuse to apologize, defend unprovoked violence, and blame the victims on top of everything else.
No wonder anti-semitism is ramping up. The JFLA not helping themselves with that one.
“We’re allowed to beat you if you question our genocide” is certainly a hell of a tagline
meet leaders of the Jewish community.
Never leaders of the palestinian community…
Your school’s protests against violence is making the school unsafe and therefore it’s the schools fault for the violence that falls upon it. That’s basically what they said.
Lol, it’s not my fault I’m beating you in the face. It’s the school’s fault I’m beating you in the face.
You wont hear mainstream media question why the police retracted a short moment before pro-Israeli thugs stormed in the encampment and attack the peaceful protesters, they came back in to only arrest the pro-palestine protesters. the establishment has payed to end the protests and establishment media are only parading the side of the story the have been paid for to.
So now I am left with no sources and no idea if it is a real thing or not. One thing
twitterx has for it is the readers context.However idk if the same would work in relatively one sided isolated env
Lemmy needs a payed vs paid bot
They sealed the deck with tar to prevent pesky protestors from leaking in.
Ok but where the fuck are the videos? Let me guess, tiktok.
Here you go: https://youtu.be/foGyTH5_bso?t=1361 Right after the timemark
The pro-Israeli camp behaves like my old neighbourhood’s neonazis.
Ok but that is pretty fucking burried am I wrong?
It’s blurried enough to not to recognize the individual faces of the people there, not blurried enough not to recognize the pro-Israeli fucks were catching people who got separated from the rest of the protestors to beat them up, or that they threw bombs with the capacity to maim or kill against a crowd. Are you being dense on purpose?
Hmm. No I’m just trying to find posted videos. I guess since I’m not on twitter or tiktok so they don’t exist. Or at least are difficult to find from cursory searches. A youtube video of a streamer rebroadcasting twitter videos isn’t exactly accessible.
I found the link to the first video by googling exact quotes of the tweet’s text. You can do this for most tweets that haven’t been deleted, including the rest in the youtube video.
https://twitter.com/TeresaWatanabe/status/1785575610469007471
All over social media
I’m looking
You can have violence from the police, or you can have counter-protest violence. The police have proven time and again they will stand back and do nothing while the people protesting for any liberal idea (sad that the left seems to be the only one interested in things like peace, equality, and justice) get beaten by the right.
The Palestinian homeland isn’t even a liberal idea though.
True, but being anti genocide, anti colonialism, and anti war often are. Just so happens that these ideas and Palestinian statehood are simpatico at the moment.
I mean you could have protestor violence, but for some reason that’s just outright dismissed as lunacy.
That’s when the police beat you.
If there aren’t regular right wingers beating protesters, the police step in and do it.
That’s when the police beat you.
Police will teargas and beat you regardless. When has exclusively nonviolent protest ever worked?
Give The Failure of Nonviolence by Peter Gelderloos a read. To make it ridiculously easy here’s a copy: http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=the+failure+of+nonviolence&lg_topic=libgen&open=0&view=simple&res=25&phrase=1&column=def
Nonviolent protest works when the violence against the nonviolent becomes the impetus for change. That whole Jesus taking the beating to point out the problems in the system has a long history whether you believe in religion on not. Probably why we still talk about non-violent protesters like Gandhi or MLK, too.
That’s not to say that violence doesn’t have its place, like the French Revolution. But that’s the shortcut. You forcefully break the system and rebuild it right now, rather than the long game of changing the system from within.
Checking out the author, he seems much more French Revolution type (even though being an anarchist really puts him at odds with any resulting government), looks like he’s spent a bit of time in jail for some protests, none of them violent.
Pacifism did not work for Ghandi or MLK. They were both murdered by conservatives and the problems they championed persisted long after their deaths.
Conservatives see pacifism as a weakness to exploit and an invitation to attack. In fact, never in history has pacifism defeated conservatism. Action is always needed to cure an infection of conservatism.
Some Jews’ opinions about illegal settlements sure have changed in the last few days
All these police attacks on Pro-Palestine rallies are just bringing more attention that would have faded away.
And the unprovoked violent attacks will cause more people to start to question the Israel war and the US support of it. People will start to wonder why supporting normal Palestine people is an idea to attack peaceful rallies and to take away the right to protest.
All these police attacks on Pro-Palestine rallies
In this case they weren’t attacked by Police.
Or the police weren’t wearing their uniforms???
I’m willing to accept that as a possibility but I’ve seen it argued the other way too. That since the Pro-Palestinian side hasn’t been getting pushed down at UCLA like other places “something” needed to happen in order to increase visibility.
In fairness the various University of California campuses have been pretty laid back with these protests to the point that they’d refused to call in Law Enforcement at all on the LA campus until things got out of hand last night. Even then it seems that Law Enforcement slow rolled their response.
At this point who the hell knows; could be some of Column A and a little of Column B.
Shows you what this is really about
Isn’t it interesting how Israel and pro-Israel people apply the exact same tactic?! Let’s attack innocent people. Whether it’s bombing innocent civilians or violently attacking peaceful protestors. It’s so telling. They are rotten to their core.
That’s what 80 years of cultural righteousness gets you. You start to think you can do no wrong.
Cue up the “I learned it from you” meme because the USA showed Israel how it’s done.
It’s just plain old Fascism.
Etnic/nationalistic/cultural righteousness (aka nationalistic racism) is one of the foundational blocks of it along with violence.
Unlike Europe, Israel hasn’t realy evolved in social and political terms from the kind of thinking so prevalent in the early XX century.
Jesus Christ. All over students protesting that their university is openly supporting a regime committing genocide and crimes against humanity.
People supporting genocide are violent.
What a surprise.
“Counter-protesters”?
This is an example of a news organization trying so hard to be neutral that they end up taking a side.
That’s the term. They are counter-protesting the pro-Palestinian protesters. Sorry, what’s the problem?
The term that fits here is actually Terrorists.
I wasn’t making an argument, simply explaining what this headline meant.
You’re welcome to publish your own news articles if you think you can do better, but it doesn’t seem you could be objective.
Yes, we had established that the headline’s use of words was wrong, and then you came to chime in afterwards to argue in their favor. Nobody was confused about their intent before you came here. You added nothing but to contradict the previous user.
Yes, we had established that the headline’s use of words was wrong
No, several people here feel that way. You and others have that opinion. Nobody gets do decide their own facts, however. But this is a news article, not an opinion piece, and objective reporting of facts is what was called for. You are free to disagree about that, but it doesn’t make you “right”.
and then you came to chime in afterwards to argue in their favor
Wrong. I didn’t argue in anyone’s “favor”. I merely pointed out what I said above: this is a news article, not an opinion piece, which reported on a group of protesters being attacked by a group of counter-protesters. How you or anyone may feel about that or those involved is opinion and doesn’t belong in a news article.
Nobody was confused about their intent before you came here. You added nothing but to contradict the previous user.
Well, that’s just demonstrably false, and if you don’t like that, or the contents of the article, that’s what the downvote button is for, but I didn’t write the article and am not to blame for it’s contents.
I’m seeing this comment pattern a lot lately where they take apart and quote the previous comment in an argument, often using nonsequitur bullshit responses. Is this the latest bot, or do the kids these days lack all originality? I don’t do that shit. I assume you already know what your previous comment was without quoting it back to you. Maybe I’m giving you too much credit?
I’m seeing this response a lot lately. Can’t write a rational counter argument, so out come the insults and/or accusations of being a bot.
Classy.
FWIW, I don’t hold it against you. This is a terrible, horrible subject and series of events, and I’m trying very hard not to be overly emotional about all of this. I very much do support the pro-Palestinian protesters, but it also think it’s important to keep facts straight and to keep a cool head when discussing these events.
I’m not your enemy.
“Fireworks and tear gas flew through the night sky as masked counter-protesters attempted to tear down barricades, and struck campers with sticks and bats.”
That’s counter protesting in your world?
As I said in another comment:
If you had read past “counter-protesters”, it goes on to say, “…attack pro-Palestinian camp”
“Counter-protester” describes who they were not what they were doing. That’s what the word “attack” is for. If you read the article it contains even more details.
I think people are suggesting the “counter protesters” aren’t “protesting” anything, they’re just straight up a mob attacking kids.
I understand that. That’s why I explained what the words mean.
Charging sleeping people with baseball bats isn’t normally considered protest.
If you had read past “counter-protesters”, it goes on to say, “…attack pro-Palestinian camp”
Yep, that was one of the sentences that showed how silly it is to describe attackers as protesters but there are plenty more.
They were there counter-protesting and then attacked the pro-palenstine protesters. Why do you object to an accurate description of the events?
Protestors: Less filling!
Counter Protestors: Taste great!
not
Protestors: Stop funding genocide, my college!
Counter Protestors: We’re going to beat you with bats while you sleep!
you disingenuous, festering carbuncle.
you disingenuous, festering carbuncle.
Name-calling when you can’t come up with an argument. Typical
It seems like your having a difficult time understanding this, maybe I can help. If another group of people showed up, and they had signs, and maybe bullhorns, and they started protesting the opposite of what the original people were protesting, they would be counter-protesting. Some heckling could even be involved.
When they show up wearing masks and wielding baseball bats, they are not counter-protestors. They are violent criminals. They did not show up to protest. They showed up to insight violence.
It seems like your having a difficult time understanding this
Im not, and your childish insults don’t make you right. There’s not dress code for protesters, and your No True Scotsman fallacy doesn’t win your argument any points. The Counter-protesters were counter-protesting, then they attacked the protesters. It’s a simple concept to grasp.
Just because it doesn’t tell the narrative you wish it to tell isn’t my fault. It’s just the facts as they happened, not an opinion piece.
Now go insult someone else for their ability to read.
When we protested the Iraq War very similarly, someone hung a noose in the camp the first night.
After that I was the one to stay up all night keeping watch.
Fuck Granite! Fuck Cement! Fuck Wood! Fuck All Counters!
All Counters Are Bad!
I see you
What am I doing right now?
Ew gross
It’s okay. This counter isn’t for food.
Little slatey slut
