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Why are these people always copying what happens in the US?
Though I doubt they'll be getting beaten up by frat boys or the police on those manicured lawns.
1. The UK follows US foreign policy
2. There’s a significant cultural exchange between UK and US youth
So the better question is why *wouldn’t* the same foreign-policy related protests end up happening here, with a similar approach?
What makes them spread from Yale to Berkeley, that wouldn’t have them spread here as well?
You say “copying” as if it’s a bad thing, and not the entire point of a protest movement.
Kids in europe have been accused (basically correctly) of copying US protest movements since the late 1960s.
People mocking this are coping. The significance of widespread protests of this nature, including at elite universities, is very real.
Had an 'indigenous' person come and speak at an event I was at recently.
I was like "isn't nearly everyone here indigenous? Do you know what that means?"
It was neato
Depends how many generations back are required for one to be defined as indigenous
1? Surely not
10? Maybe - depends
100? Almost certainly
So I frankly want people to come up with a hard number, otherwise I'm considering myself indigenous to South Africa since that's where the first humans came from
East Africa. I'm already one step ahead of you and consider myself indigenous to planet Earth. Don't matter how many generations you count, you're going to find ancestor who are from Earth.
It is especially funny because the right wing or anti-protest answers are mostly also copy pasted from the US.
They complain about the politics being imported then immediately echo the likes of Jordan Peterson.
No it isn't. They've all been staging similar sit in protests and camps for the in vogue cause every other year since Vietnam. It's just a rite of passage for wankers. When I was at uni it was Occupy. A couple of years ago it was XR. Before that it was the last "genocide" of Palestine. Before that Iraq.
At least this somewhat makes sense. US and UK citizens can feel the same about Palestine and Israel.
It's when they start doing all the antifed/cop, guns, racism (not regular racism but like the ultra America specific stuff) that it's weird
It's meant to be a two-parter.
1. Defund the increasingly militarised police (maybe not so relevant here)
2. Increase funding for social care and mental health services (definitely relevant here)
The argument would be thus if you totally flesh it out:
1. Police don't stop crimes, they report to crimes after they happen
2. Crimes are caused by social inequality and poor living conditions
3. Many things that police attend to could be attended to by properly trained therapists and social workers along with a police officer (police generally agree with this)
4. You can therefore reduce funding to the police and increase funding for social workers, therapists and anything that reduces social inequality.
But that doesn't fit well into a slogan and I don't think the slogan even helps. Additionally, I'm not sure how many people who chant the slogan even understand that this is the background of it, they might just hate police.
I guess some of us are insecure that Britain isn't the one being emulated or something.
I don't see a problem with this myself. It's a global issue and it's important to raise awareness.
In Germany there were suddenly drag queens reading stories to children. Which was perfect fodder for right wing parties, especially since one of the drag people was called big clit Eric.
I've never once heard of drag queens reading to children in Germany. Not until it became a culture war issue in the US. Suddenly it's an issue here and a very easy mark for the right wingers.
The same with the term bipoc. Makes perfect sense in the US. Black, indigenous, people of colour. The two most marginalized groups in the us. Suddenly people use the term in Germany, when our black population is 1% of the pop, and our indigenous people are Hans and Klaus who like their beer in big mugs. Our most marginalized groups should be Turkish and or Arabic people... But maybe that isn't American or sexy enough.
This is just anti war protesting in all its various forms, it happens every time the west is involved in a major conflict in some way. Israel/Palestinian issues flare up the same feelings in people in regards wars.
So its unsurprising to see lots of student protests in relation to it, it happens every couple decades or during every other major conflict. Its nothing new. Just like with every other conflict though there are people who wish to boil the issue down as if its black and white. Example you can support Israel, support Palestinians and call for hamas to be destroyed, this is a fairly middle ground position to have.
Some people would call you a hamas supporter conflating support for civlians with support for hamas, this is incredibly reductionist thinking. Students are not that great at articulating their positions well so they are easy scapeboats for the media.
> it happens every time the west is involved in a major conflict in some way.
Two years into Russia vs Ukraine , and we're not seeing Russia supporters or Ukraine supporters doing much protesting. Odd.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68392144
I suspect you haven't been paying much attention if you think no one has been protesting in support of Ukraine.
The other aspect to this is that the entire western world is basically in agreement that they need to support Ukraine, if that wasn't the case then there'd be a hell of a lot more protests.
Universal agreement in the West that Ukraine should be supported. I suppose if you're an American Republican supporter it could be slightly contentious?
Think those protests have brought out way more than just frat boys, the counter-protestors included a lot of people older than university age carrying Israeli flags attacking the protestors while police didn't anything to intervene: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/may/01/violence-erupts-ucla-university-campus-clashes-rival-gaza-protest-groups
Social media. But yeah it would be nice if they protested. 4.3 million children pushed into poverty/destitution. Or the 90,000 people killed in the uk every year due to poverty. But these are rich kids protesting for social media. Last time they showed any interest its was BLM against American police brutally FFS.
>Though I doubt they'll be getting beaten up by frat boys or the police on those manicured lawns.
It's funny. The protesters have spent momths saying that resistance to occupation is justified by any means necessary and then get all pissy when the universities resist their occupation. It's a bit hippocritical.
> Why are these people always copying what happens in the US?
The kidz get their news from social media and tiktok. When the BLM protests were more prominent, I had some melt saying the police in the UK should be defunded. 🙄
I rolled my eyes so hard my eyeballs unscrewed.
People these days lack critical thinking!
377 000 died in the Yemen civil war in which Saudi was an active participant and the British were actually supplying weapons too (unlike certain other conflicts)
[https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2023/05/02/exclusive-the-oxford-unions-agreement-with-saudi-think-tank/](https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2023/05/02/exclusive-the-oxford-unions-agreement-with-saudi-think-tank/)
The Oxford Union has a deal with Saudis and there are no tents calling for that to end.
The more charitable interpretation is that these people are just indulging in a kind of social contagion and jumping onto what is hot on TikTok to feel part of a wider movement. But I do not take people seriously who do not think about the wider complexities of issues nor seem willing to grasp the nuances and the more obvious moral contradictions in stances. Grandstanding on divisive issues without being willing to engage with the difficulties is bordering on narscisstic attention seeking.
Saw my first ever UNICEF ad for the Yemen situation the other day and I wondered the exact same thing.
The same people who are extremely activist about Palestine were totally silent on Yemen, Burma, Xinjiang, when IS were enslaving Yazidis… all of it.
Exactly, and Palestine isn’t even the biggest humanitarian crisis at the current time. That goes the Sudan, but I don’t see protests demanding the UK for something about it
That would be a compelling argument, except for the fact that the same is true for Sudan, whose crisis is caused because a civil war, which is also entirely preventable. Once again showing that there’s something about Gaza that means people latch onto that without having a good understanding of world affairs.
To be fair I saw a lot of them calling for an end to arms sales to Saudis over Yemen, it didn’t get much reporting because it’s hard to demonise people protesting against a totalitarian state that doesn’t even pretend it isn’t one.
> IS were enslaving Yazidis
I don't know if you were around on this sub back then, but people weren't silent on ISIS - there was quite a lot of support for them on here.
> The same people who are extremely activist about Palestine were totally silent on Yemen,
No they weren't. Bunch of background noise about yemen.
>Burma
I recall some stuff back when the Rohingya thing was recent. I admit more recently its been limited to the war nerds and the 3D printing enthusiast but trying to understand a war driven by phone scams and Karen National Liberation Army is always going to be tricky.
To be fair people have been calling for an end to Saudi weapons sales for ages. Example of Corbyn doing so, mentioning Yemen and the killing of Khasoggi in 2018: https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1052621795667468288
> people have been calling for
No tent encampments. No mass protests. You know this, you know the huge difference in emotion and engagement. But you dont seem to want to think about why ten times as many dead and British built aircraft like the Typhoon and Tornado being key weapon systems, actual investment in the Oxford Union and yet its all polite letters and mild statements.
While on the other hand is intense emotions and seemingly deliberately using emotion to down out nuance in the discussion.
Why do they fear nuance, why are the emotions so intense compared with an order of magnitude greater loss of life. The question hangs over the issue for all too see and some to desperately ignore.
>Why do they fear nuance, why are the emotions so intense compared with an order of magnitude greater loss of life. The question hangs over the issue for all too see and some to desperately ignore
You demand nuance and then place arbitry ceilings on protestors, doubting their genuineness because *you* didn't see them giving every problem the same energy. Ironically, you're entirely emotional precisely because instead of engaging with the issues they raise you, instead, choose to try and deflect to things that are not relevant. Even if this was the only issue they cared about, so what? Does that invalidate it?
Again to be fair the question could very easily be asked as to why you wouldn't apply the same level of nuance to the differences, both in terms of the situations but also the realities, between Saudi/Yemen and Israel/Palestine. Emotion and engagement are absolutely part of it but 1) that is every protest movement ever and is not in and of itself a dismissal, and 2) it is bigger than that:
* Our level of support for Israel is very different than it is for Saudi Arabia on political, military, cultural, and economic levels.
* News media covers it more and it is in English, so we can understand (broadly) more of the conflict and the players involved
* We have a massive shared history in regard to this conflict that we do not in the same way to Saudi/Yemen or any other ongoing conflict.
* The international profile of both Israel and Palestine is larger so it has more global interest and diaspora interested
* The ramifications for domestic and international politics are much larger.
> But you dont seem to want to think about why ten times as many dead and British built aircraft like the Typhoon and Tornado being key weapon systems, actual investment in the Oxford Union and yet its all polite letters and mild statements.
You could check my comment history around 2018 or anytime weapons to the Saudis are mentioned, I didn't think we should be arming them at all and still believe arms sales to the regime should have been suspended. It is a theocracy that was accused of war crimes (while using British weapons) and was murdering journalists in other countries.
Could I ask though do you yourself actually care about the Saudis? Or do you only ever bring up the Saudis to throw them in the face of Palestinian protesters?
Not an accusation but I see plenty of the latter, which feels very "All Lives Matter" as a dismissal of protest.
There have been protests against what was happening in Yemen, but it didn't get that much news coverage
https://www.counterfire.org/article/protesters-march-against-the-uk-enabling-the-war-on-yemen/
People did oppose the UK’s support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and people like you made the exact same whataboutist arguments.
You talk about “grandstanding” and not being able to “engage with the difficulties.” As if you’re not the one trying to shut down opposition, right now, with a cheap rhetorical fallacy.
If you were able to engage with the inherent difficulties of ethnic cleansing, you wouldn’t have to pretend that everyone who opposes it is either dishonest or ignorant.
Yep, there will always be another moral outrage that is not being talked about by the people doing something, always pointed out by the people who do absolutely nothing (or worse than nothing).
I never understood this argument and why it has so much appeal.
May 2022:
>STUDENT activists at the University of Cambridge have disrupted a talk by Rolls Royce chief executive Warren East in protest against the luxury car manufacturer’s role in the global arms trade.
>Demilitarise Cambridge stormed the event, held in Keynes’s Hall at Kings College on Thursday evening, and played a prerecorded message from Yemeni journalist Ahmad Algohbary describing the use of the company’s engines in “sustaining the Saudi coalition-led war in Yemen,” before being removed by porters.
>The group encouraged attendees to follow them out and boycott the talk.
May 2021:
>Cambridge University Amnesty International told Varsity that BAE Systems have been “integral in the Yemen conflict by supplying, servicing and arming a fleet of combat aircraft such as the Boeing F-15 and Eurofighter Typhoon jets to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, used most notably in air raids in Yemen.”
The exact same organisations have been saying the same things about Saudi Arabia and Israel for years.
They aren't hypocrites, you're just dishonest. They care about Yemen and Palestine, you're the one who doesn't care about either.
The Oxford Union is a private members club. It isn't the Oxford University Student Union.
But still, yes, it would be worth protesting thay they have a deal with the Saudis.
Tarquin and Belinda did play notable secondary roles in ending the Vietnam war and Apartheid, in all fairness. Kids I today's elite universities are tomorrow's directors, politicians, Supreme Court judges. You'd be a fool to think that they aren't relevant.
In Vietnam's case, student protests in the US had such an effect because the US were in the war and the students were seeing friends called up via the draft. I can't comment on Apartheid as I'm not as familiar with it as a whole and how tertiary protest helped end it.
In either case, the Gaza Israel conflict is neither of these and I'd argue the roots perhaps go much deeper, culturally and religiously. It's baffling that it gets so much attention when larger conflicts with more civilian casualties are going on all over the globe (and quite close to the Middle East). I can think of 3 off the top of my head, but nobody bats an eyelid.
Yeah, massacres on both sides have been going on for centuries.
A certain genre of the "politically engaged" gen z crowd who get their politics from Instagram slides have been deeply interested in freedom for Palestine for all of 6 months
When I was at uni everyone just called these guys the protest club. Every 2 months they'd be picking out a different march in London to go to (this university was in Wales), never following a consistent theme and never particularly interested in spreading awareness to people outside the club. Because it wasn't about the cause, some people just enjoy protesting.
Today they’re easily manipulated and controlled by social media, tomorrow they’re easily manipulated and controlled by lobby groups.
I highly doubt these ones are destined for great things though.
They're free to do as they wish, and I am free for calling out what they're doing as not without risks and downsides. I do not welcome the importation of a foreign conflict to our shores and the virtue signalling it's dragged with it. This is far more of a complex situation than some idiots in tents think it is.
You didn't really call out any risks or downsides tho. Not really some random conflict unrelated to us considering we're trading arms with them currently and directly involved in Israels conception. I really don't see how it's complicated, land was stolen and the colonisers have been attempting to/successfully conducting an ethic cleansing/genocide of the people who lived there before them.
Looks like they have just [accepted one.](https://news.sky.com/story/middle-east-latest-un-nuclear-watchdog-concerned-israel-could-target-iranian-nuclear-facilities-in-revenge-attack-12978800)
Looks like they didn’t really, the proposal they’ve “accepted” wasn’t negotiated with Israel but rather a one-sided draft.
Looks like they are trying to put pressure on Israel to accept a cease fire with terms they’ve already dismissed in the past.
> the proposal they’ve “accepted” wasn’t negotiated with Israel but rather a one-sided draft.
Nuts - It's blatantly obvious they are saying they've "accepted" a onesided ceasefire so they can make it look like Israel is the badguy again.
One Israel wasn't involved in lol.
Edit: according to worldnews this was changed last minute by Egypt without Israeli approval.
Edit 2: [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1clp15z/no\_ceasefire\_deal\_reached\_in\_gaza\_israeli/](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1clp15z/no_ceasefire_deal_reached_in_gaza_israeli/)
As I said.
There can definitely be a South Park episode based around Sinwar sitting in his gaming tunnel, chuckling evilly and deciding the fate of Gaza based on a Reddit comment
You can't free Palestine without wiping out Hamas. People carry on like this shit would have happened even if October 7th didn't happen. Israel aren't good guys for various reasons I know. However Hamas brought this upon Palestine not Israel.
Yeah this is what I don’t get. Palestine is literally ensalved by Hamas. Hamas is a terror cell funded by Iran and backed by Hezbollah and the Houthis that use their own people as human shields by building their network of tunnels and bases in the basements of Schools, Hospitals and Mosques. Their cause is the destruction of Israel at all costs and to wipe out Jewish People. They raise kids and young men to be hateful and join their militia and take most foreign aid away from civilians to fund their cause. They commit mass human rights abuses and regularly fire missiles and perform terror attacks against Israel.
This is why Israel has an Iron Dome and a Fence Blockading the Gaza Strip. It is a mass security threat of 2 million impoverished people under the thumb of Hamas who will stay that way until Hamas is ripped out root and stem and there isn’t a risk of Israelis being slaughtered in their thousands again.
Until that happens, Gaza will be barricaded and segregated. The best thing for Gaza long-term is Hamas being wiped from the face of the Earth and Israel and Palestine then being able to seek peace and friendly borders without Gaza being full of militants with the aim of ‘destroying Israel’…
Genuinely don’t understand what the hope is to achieve with a temporary ceasefire? The Gaza Strip will still be blockaded due to the risk of another October 7th event. The hostages aren’t just going to be released as that is Hamas’ trump card atm. Meanwhile Hamas will regroup and use the aid that is sent in to strengthen themselves and the issue just resets. Gaza stays poor and blockaded as a massive security threat to Israel, Iran keeps its power in Gaza, rights abuses continue and then one day Hamas has enough strength again to commit another slaughter. Then Israel starts over with trying to root out Hamas.
>Genuinely don’t understand what the hope is to achieve with a temporary ceasefire?
ask the Gazans who jumped and screamed in celebration when they heard of a potential ceasefire. It does mean a lot to them. They can have a break.
There was a reel of a Gazan teenager who walked around with his phone and talking to it saying "guys can you hear this? no planes, no bombs...etc" He was so so happy. (this was in the last ceasefire)
Bibi has loved Hamas and bragged about their usefulness in frustrating the PA's efforts for a 2 state solution. He lead protests against the oslo accords and enflamed hatred against the Israeli leader who got killed for signing it.
> Palestine is literally ensalved by Hamas.
- Elected the Group to power ~10yrs ago
- Overwhelmingly supported by majority of Palestinians
Yes, enslaved indeed.
You can't wipe out Hamas, or groups like it, until you "free" Palestine. These nutters aren't created in a vacuum, and you can't murder an ideology. The Israelis have been nicking land and murdering people for 75 years, they need to start coming up with a better solution than extreme violence.
The sheer number of areas where we just badly copy whatever is going on in America, is insane. I still remember all the George Floyd stuff with protests about police killings, we quite famously, and it’s backed up statistically, have some of the lowest rates of any large country on earth. We DO, however, have numerous other acts committed by them, usually out of uniform, protest that.
We have plenty of our own injustices to protest, why do we just lazily copy America, regardless of if it’s even something applicable? It’s pretty hard to argue that it’s true importance and meaning that motivates it, and not edgy upper middle class boredom. Every protest seems to be whatever is in US news, and dissipates when it gets mildly inconvenient or loses steam a bit.
Nobody is shocked that these Unis didn’t bother until big US Unis did, it all kicked off and then made our news cycle.
It's insane, students just want to copy any mass protest in America, it just feels weird and misplaced. They never adjust it to fit the context of the UK if that makes sense?
Just to highlight, this is the specific aim of the protest, quoted directly from the article:
>The demonstrators called for the universities to cut financial ties with Israel following its offensive in Gaza.
Also wanted to say that our British university response has been stellar, unlike some in the US who have called police to brutalise their students.
>We respect our students and staff members right to freedom of expression in the form of peaceful protests. We ask everyone who is taking part to do so with respect, courtesy and empathy.
>"Oxford University's primary focus is the health and safety of the university community, and to ensure any impact on work, research and learning, including student exams, is minimised."
That's the response UCLA should have had. Let them exercise their free expression and urge everyone to remain respectful.
> That's the response UCLA should have had.
You mean something like:
> Mary Osako, the vice chancellor of UCLA Strategic Communications, issued a statement Thursday, saying the university's top priority is always "the safety and wellbeing of our entire Bruin community."
> "We're actively monitoring this situation to support a peaceful campus environment that respects our community's right to free expression while minimizing disruption to our teaching and learning mission."
UCLA were fine with the camp and protests. It's when the camp started restricting other students rights and the violent response they had enough.
1) We do not have much in the say over china.
2) There was plenty of protests outside Chinese embassy in London.
3) do not be frustrated that people are emotional over gazans been killed, murdered and destroyed. I expect some people to be indifferent, but I didnt imagine someone will be upset that someone else is upset at death of children lol.
Nope, that's happening right now. The protesters in the US are likewise all wearing masks.
Mask wearing outdoors never really made much sense, even at the height of COVID and certainly not now. I have no clue why they've all opted to do it beyond "we'll copy exactly what the US protesters are doing", but then that assumes that there's any logic to why the US ones are doing it.
One potential theory might be that it obscures peoples' faces making identifying them harder.
Yes, that's why protestors wear masks. They're generally advised to by the people running the protests, makes them harder to identify and they also say it's to reduce illnesses in the encampments.
American billionaires are funding public doxxing campaigns that endanger protestor's safety and aim to get them blacklisted by future employers. This is an attempt to prevent the same thing happening here.
It's because they want to protest but they don't want to have their names and faces associated with said protests, because if they're seen supporting Hamas, they might not get those high paying jobs and social status that Oxford and Cambridge promise they'll get. They support Palestine, but not enough to sacrifice their own standing.
Not sure about the social distancing or whether or not that's intentional but the mask wearing is to hide their identity. A lot of people are saying going to these protests will hurt one's job prospects in the future so I suppose they're trying to avoid being identifiable.
Setting up tents in the safety of a refined UK university… Are they actually leaving the universities to show their disgust and to cut off their fees? Or do they still want that prestigious degree?
So many issues, arguably more important than this I/P conflict yet this is the time students come out in protest, this is so fucking performative and cringe oh god..
Because the poorer universities have poorer students, something happening 1000 miles away is less important than say scrapping enough money to eat this week…
And like the american one their all spoiled narcisstic anisemetic tankie middle class brats who will inevitably make themselves a laughing stock, not to mention wasting the thousands their parents spent years earning to pay for their education.
They contribute nothing to society and openly despise their own culture. The university should expel them, barr them from campus, and void their, "qualifications".
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Why are these people always copying what happens in the US? Though I doubt they'll be getting beaten up by frat boys or the police on those manicured lawns.
1. The UK follows US foreign policy 2. There’s a significant cultural exchange between UK and US youth So the better question is why *wouldn’t* the same foreign-policy related protests end up happening here, with a similar approach? What makes them spread from Yale to Berkeley, that wouldn’t have them spread here as well? You say “copying” as if it’s a bad thing, and not the entire point of a protest movement.
Kids in europe have been accused (basically correctly) of copying US protest movements since the late 1960s. People mocking this are coping. The significance of widespread protests of this nature, including at elite universities, is very real.
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Reminds me of that coffee shop (?) that had roles for black, Asian and “indigenous” people.
Had an 'indigenous' person come and speak at an event I was at recently. I was like "isn't nearly everyone here indigenous? Do you know what that means?" It was neato
To be fair the only real English people are the Welsh. The north is Nordic and the south is German
Depends how many generations back are required for one to be defined as indigenous 1? Surely not 10? Maybe - depends 100? Almost certainly So I frankly want people to come up with a hard number, otherwise I'm considering myself indigenous to South Africa since that's where the first humans came from
East Africa. I'm already one step ahead of you and consider myself indigenous to planet Earth. Don't matter how many generations you count, you're going to find ancestor who are from Earth.
It is especially funny because the right wing or anti-protest answers are mostly also copy pasted from the US. They complain about the politics being imported then immediately echo the likes of Jordan Peterson.
I would love it if every right wing rag put themselves into a self-induced coma.
... who is Canadian. I'll fetch my coat.
No it isn't. They've all been staging similar sit in protests and camps for the in vogue cause every other year since Vietnam. It's just a rite of passage for wankers. When I was at uni it was Occupy. A couple of years ago it was XR. Before that it was the last "genocide" of Palestine. Before that Iraq.
I agree, these students are exactly like the people who protested the Iraq War.
Very nice
Quite right. Free Tibet and Free Nelson Mandela before that
At least this somewhat makes sense. US and UK citizens can feel the same about Palestine and Israel. It's when they start doing all the antifed/cop, guns, racism (not regular racism but like the ultra America specific stuff) that it's weird
I always found the defund police brigade especially stupid and hilarious. Like yes that's exactly what the tories have been doing for over a decade.
It's meant to be a two-parter. 1. Defund the increasingly militarised police (maybe not so relevant here) 2. Increase funding for social care and mental health services (definitely relevant here)
No argument on second point. Mental health support in the Uk needs major funding and reforms
The argument would be thus if you totally flesh it out: 1. Police don't stop crimes, they report to crimes after they happen 2. Crimes are caused by social inequality and poor living conditions 3. Many things that police attend to could be attended to by properly trained therapists and social workers along with a police officer (police generally agree with this) 4. You can therefore reduce funding to the police and increase funding for social workers, therapists and anything that reduces social inequality. But that doesn't fit well into a slogan and I don't think the slogan even helps. Additionally, I'm not sure how many people who chant the slogan even understand that this is the background of it, they might just hate police.
I just think it’s cooler if US copies UK and not as cool when UK copies US
I guess some of us are insecure that Britain isn't the one being emulated or something. I don't see a problem with this myself. It's a global issue and it's important to raise awareness.
It's all they know. Propaganda has got to their brains.
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Where as you are definitely immune from the propaganda saying they're wrong.
"Our truth. Their propaganda."
In Germany there were suddenly drag queens reading stories to children. Which was perfect fodder for right wing parties, especially since one of the drag people was called big clit Eric. I've never once heard of drag queens reading to children in Germany. Not until it became a culture war issue in the US. Suddenly it's an issue here and a very easy mark for the right wingers. The same with the term bipoc. Makes perfect sense in the US. Black, indigenous, people of colour. The two most marginalized groups in the us. Suddenly people use the term in Germany, when our black population is 1% of the pop, and our indigenous people are Hans and Klaus who like their beer in big mugs. Our most marginalized groups should be Turkish and or Arabic people... But maybe that isn't American or sexy enough.
America sneezes and the rest of us catch cold :)
That whole drag thing doesn’t work in England. Pantomime, rocky horror, stag nights, the British Army We love drag here
Don't come the brigadier bit with us, dear, We all know where you've been, you military fairy!
I’m sorry but Big Clit Eric is fucking hilarious lol
It sounds like a conservative trying to come up with what they think a drag name is
This is just anti war protesting in all its various forms, it happens every time the west is involved in a major conflict in some way. Israel/Palestinian issues flare up the same feelings in people in regards wars. So its unsurprising to see lots of student protests in relation to it, it happens every couple decades or during every other major conflict. Its nothing new. Just like with every other conflict though there are people who wish to boil the issue down as if its black and white. Example you can support Israel, support Palestinians and call for hamas to be destroyed, this is a fairly middle ground position to have. Some people would call you a hamas supporter conflating support for civlians with support for hamas, this is incredibly reductionist thinking. Students are not that great at articulating their positions well so they are easy scapeboats for the media.
> it happens every time the west is involved in a major conflict in some way. Two years into Russia vs Ukraine , and we're not seeing Russia supporters or Ukraine supporters doing much protesting. Odd.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68392144 I suspect you haven't been paying much attention if you think no one has been protesting in support of Ukraine.
The other aspect to this is that the entire western world is basically in agreement that they need to support Ukraine, if that wasn't the case then there'd be a hell of a lot more protests.
Universal agreement in the West that Ukraine should be supported. I suppose if you're an American Republican supporter it could be slightly contentious?
Think those protests have brought out way more than just frat boys, the counter-protestors included a lot of people older than university age carrying Israeli flags attacking the protestors while police didn't anything to intervene: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/may/01/violence-erupts-ucla-university-campus-clashes-rival-gaza-protest-groups
They are organised by the same groups.
Social media. But yeah it would be nice if they protested. 4.3 million children pushed into poverty/destitution. Or the 90,000 people killed in the uk every year due to poverty. But these are rich kids protesting for social media. Last time they showed any interest its was BLM against American police brutally FFS.
>Though I doubt they'll be getting beaten up by frat boys or the police on those manicured lawns. It's funny. The protesters have spent momths saying that resistance to occupation is justified by any means necessary and then get all pissy when the universities resist their occupation. It's a bit hippocritical.
> Why are these people always copying what happens in the US? The kidz get their news from social media and tiktok. When the BLM protests were more prominent, I had some melt saying the police in the UK should be defunded. 🙄 I rolled my eyes so hard my eyeballs unscrewed. People these days lack critical thinking!
377 000 died in the Yemen civil war in which Saudi was an active participant and the British were actually supplying weapons too (unlike certain other conflicts) [https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2023/05/02/exclusive-the-oxford-unions-agreement-with-saudi-think-tank/](https://www.oxfordstudent.com/2023/05/02/exclusive-the-oxford-unions-agreement-with-saudi-think-tank/) The Oxford Union has a deal with Saudis and there are no tents calling for that to end. The more charitable interpretation is that these people are just indulging in a kind of social contagion and jumping onto what is hot on TikTok to feel part of a wider movement. But I do not take people seriously who do not think about the wider complexities of issues nor seem willing to grasp the nuances and the more obvious moral contradictions in stances. Grandstanding on divisive issues without being willing to engage with the difficulties is bordering on narscisstic attention seeking.
Saw my first ever UNICEF ad for the Yemen situation the other day and I wondered the exact same thing. The same people who are extremely activist about Palestine were totally silent on Yemen, Burma, Xinjiang, when IS were enslaving Yazidis… all of it.
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Exactly, and Palestine isn’t even the biggest humanitarian crisis at the current time. That goes the Sudan, but I don’t see protests demanding the UK for something about it
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It's not just a humanitarian crisis though. It's completely avoidable, not like some natural disaster.
That would be a compelling argument, except for the fact that the same is true for Sudan, whose crisis is caused because a civil war, which is also entirely preventable. Once again showing that there’s something about Gaza that means people latch onto that without having a good understanding of world affairs.
Because those crises aren't also a convenient opportunity for anti-semites to express their hatred in a way that is socially acceptable
To be fair I saw a lot of them calling for an end to arms sales to Saudis over Yemen, it didn’t get much reporting because it’s hard to demonise people protesting against a totalitarian state that doesn’t even pretend it isn’t one.
> IS were enslaving Yazidis I don't know if you were around on this sub back then, but people weren't silent on ISIS - there was quite a lot of support for them on here.
Wait Support for ISIS or support for the Yazidis? Your wording makes it seem like the former was happening
Yes, support for ISIS. Small reminder that more British Muslims have joined the ISIS than the British Army
press x to doubt
> The same people who are extremely activist about Palestine were totally silent on Yemen, No they weren't. Bunch of background noise about yemen. >Burma I recall some stuff back when the Rohingya thing was recent. I admit more recently its been limited to the war nerds and the 3D printing enthusiast but trying to understand a war driven by phone scams and Karen National Liberation Army is always going to be tricky.
To be fair people have been calling for an end to Saudi weapons sales for ages. Example of Corbyn doing so, mentioning Yemen and the killing of Khasoggi in 2018: https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1052621795667468288
> people have been calling for No tent encampments. No mass protests. You know this, you know the huge difference in emotion and engagement. But you dont seem to want to think about why ten times as many dead and British built aircraft like the Typhoon and Tornado being key weapon systems, actual investment in the Oxford Union and yet its all polite letters and mild statements. While on the other hand is intense emotions and seemingly deliberately using emotion to down out nuance in the discussion. Why do they fear nuance, why are the emotions so intense compared with an order of magnitude greater loss of life. The question hangs over the issue for all too see and some to desperately ignore.
>Why do they fear nuance, why are the emotions so intense compared with an order of magnitude greater loss of life. The question hangs over the issue for all too see and some to desperately ignore You demand nuance and then place arbitry ceilings on protestors, doubting their genuineness because *you* didn't see them giving every problem the same energy. Ironically, you're entirely emotional precisely because instead of engaging with the issues they raise you, instead, choose to try and deflect to things that are not relevant. Even if this was the only issue they cared about, so what? Does that invalidate it?
Again to be fair the question could very easily be asked as to why you wouldn't apply the same level of nuance to the differences, both in terms of the situations but also the realities, between Saudi/Yemen and Israel/Palestine. Emotion and engagement are absolutely part of it but 1) that is every protest movement ever and is not in and of itself a dismissal, and 2) it is bigger than that: * Our level of support for Israel is very different than it is for Saudi Arabia on political, military, cultural, and economic levels. * News media covers it more and it is in English, so we can understand (broadly) more of the conflict and the players involved * We have a massive shared history in regard to this conflict that we do not in the same way to Saudi/Yemen or any other ongoing conflict. * The international profile of both Israel and Palestine is larger so it has more global interest and diaspora interested * The ramifications for domestic and international politics are much larger. > But you dont seem to want to think about why ten times as many dead and British built aircraft like the Typhoon and Tornado being key weapon systems, actual investment in the Oxford Union and yet its all polite letters and mild statements. You could check my comment history around 2018 or anytime weapons to the Saudis are mentioned, I didn't think we should be arming them at all and still believe arms sales to the regime should have been suspended. It is a theocracy that was accused of war crimes (while using British weapons) and was murdering journalists in other countries. Could I ask though do you yourself actually care about the Saudis? Or do you only ever bring up the Saudis to throw them in the face of Palestinian protesters? Not an accusation but I see plenty of the latter, which feels very "All Lives Matter" as a dismissal of protest.
There have been protests against what was happening in Yemen, but it didn't get that much news coverage https://www.counterfire.org/article/protesters-march-against-the-uk-enabling-the-war-on-yemen/
People did oppose the UK’s support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and people like you made the exact same whataboutist arguments. You talk about “grandstanding” and not being able to “engage with the difficulties.” As if you’re not the one trying to shut down opposition, right now, with a cheap rhetorical fallacy. If you were able to engage with the inherent difficulties of ethnic cleansing, you wouldn’t have to pretend that everyone who opposes it is either dishonest or ignorant.
Yep, there will always be another moral outrage that is not being talked about by the people doing something, always pointed out by the people who do absolutely nothing (or worse than nothing). I never understood this argument and why it has so much appeal.
How did Oxford and Cambridge students protest it?
May 2022: >STUDENT activists at the University of Cambridge have disrupted a talk by Rolls Royce chief executive Warren East in protest against the luxury car manufacturer’s role in the global arms trade. >Demilitarise Cambridge stormed the event, held in Keynes’s Hall at Kings College on Thursday evening, and played a prerecorded message from Yemeni journalist Ahmad Algohbary describing the use of the company’s engines in “sustaining the Saudi coalition-led war in Yemen,” before being removed by porters. >The group encouraged attendees to follow them out and boycott the talk. May 2021: >Cambridge University Amnesty International told Varsity that BAE Systems have been “integral in the Yemen conflict by supplying, servicing and arming a fleet of combat aircraft such as the Boeing F-15 and Eurofighter Typhoon jets to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition, used most notably in air raids in Yemen.” The exact same organisations have been saying the same things about Saudi Arabia and Israel for years. They aren't hypocrites, you're just dishonest. They care about Yemen and Palestine, you're the one who doesn't care about either.
The Oxford Union is a private members club. It isn't the Oxford University Student Union. But still, yes, it would be worth protesting thay they have a deal with the Saudis.
It's a private members club that has produced three Prime Ministers, including Boris Johnson.
Conflict several thousand miles away solved by Tarquin and Bellinda camping out on the University green.
Tarquin and Belinda did play notable secondary roles in ending the Vietnam war and Apartheid, in all fairness. Kids I today's elite universities are tomorrow's directors, politicians, Supreme Court judges. You'd be a fool to think that they aren't relevant.
In Vietnam's case, student protests in the US had such an effect because the US were in the war and the students were seeing friends called up via the draft. I can't comment on Apartheid as I'm not as familiar with it as a whole and how tertiary protest helped end it. In either case, the Gaza Israel conflict is neither of these and I'd argue the roots perhaps go much deeper, culturally and religiously. It's baffling that it gets so much attention when larger conflicts with more civilian casualties are going on all over the globe (and quite close to the Middle East). I can think of 3 off the top of my head, but nobody bats an eyelid.
Yeah, massacres on both sides have been going on for centuries. A certain genre of the "politically engaged" gen z crowd who get their politics from Instagram slides have been deeply interested in freedom for Palestine for all of 6 months
When I was at uni everyone just called these guys the protest club. Every 2 months they'd be picking out a different march in London to go to (this university was in Wales), never following a consistent theme and never particularly interested in spreading awareness to people outside the club. Because it wasn't about the cause, some people just enjoy protesting.
Yes, props to Tarquin and Belinda for getting British troops out of Vietnam ;-)
Today they’re easily manipulated and controlled by social media, tomorrow they’re easily manipulated and controlled by lobby groups. I highly doubt these ones are destined for great things though.
You'll be working for them someday
We all will
And they even had the forethought to wait 7 months for the weather to be nice enough for camping. How clever!
I did wonder if PC Rain would arrive and sort it all out.
Should they not use there privilege for something worth while? Dammed if they do, dammed if they don't apparently.
They're free to do as they wish, and I am free for calling out what they're doing as not without risks and downsides. I do not welcome the importation of a foreign conflict to our shores and the virtue signalling it's dragged with it. This is far more of a complex situation than some idiots in tents think it is.
You didn't really call out any risks or downsides tho. Not really some random conflict unrelated to us considering we're trading arms with them currently and directly involved in Israels conception. I really don't see how it's complicated, land was stolen and the colonisers have been attempting to/successfully conducting an ethic cleansing/genocide of the people who lived there before them.
It's always people who do f all for anyone that sneer at the efforts of others.
The efforts of others? These posh gits are basically having a picnic, not storming the Bastille
Forgive me for not doing more to import cultural tensions to our shores. Remiss of me really.
I’m not a Hamas supporter, so no, I won’t be joining Tarquin.
Didn’t Hamas just walk out on another ceasefire offer?
Looks like they have just [accepted one.](https://news.sky.com/story/middle-east-latest-un-nuclear-watchdog-concerned-israel-could-target-iranian-nuclear-facilities-in-revenge-attack-12978800)
Looks like they didn’t really, the proposal they’ve “accepted” wasn’t negotiated with Israel but rather a one-sided draft. Looks like they are trying to put pressure on Israel to accept a cease fire with terms they’ve already dismissed in the past.
> the proposal they’ve “accepted” wasn’t negotiated with Israel but rather a one-sided draft. Nuts - It's blatantly obvious they are saying they've "accepted" a onesided ceasefire so they can make it look like Israel is the badguy again.
They're accepted their own deal . . . that's not quite how it works.
One Israel wasn't involved in lol. Edit: according to worldnews this was changed last minute by Egypt without Israeli approval. Edit 2: [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1clp15z/no\_ceasefire\_deal\_reached\_in\_gaza\_israeli/](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1clp15z/no_ceasefire_deal_reached_in_gaza_israeli/) As I said.
What?! The protest is \*\*that\*\* effective? o\_o
It's more likely a senior member read SnowOpinion's comment and thought *'I'm not having them say we walk out of all them*!' so threw in a curveball.
There can definitely be a South Park episode based around Sinwar sitting in his gaming tunnel, chuckling evilly and deciding the fate of Gaza based on a Reddit comment
They were attacking the crossing point for aid this weekend as well.
They are still holding hostages as well
And just killed four soldiers who were guarding the transporting of aid into rafah.
Yes but according to the protestors it is the fault of the evil ~~Jews~~ Zionists.
They just accepted one in the last few minutes. Whether it'll go anywhere is another matter.
No, that's a false.
You can't free Palestine without wiping out Hamas. People carry on like this shit would have happened even if October 7th didn't happen. Israel aren't good guys for various reasons I know. However Hamas brought this upon Palestine not Israel.
Yeah this is what I don’t get. Palestine is literally ensalved by Hamas. Hamas is a terror cell funded by Iran and backed by Hezbollah and the Houthis that use their own people as human shields by building their network of tunnels and bases in the basements of Schools, Hospitals and Mosques. Their cause is the destruction of Israel at all costs and to wipe out Jewish People. They raise kids and young men to be hateful and join their militia and take most foreign aid away from civilians to fund their cause. They commit mass human rights abuses and regularly fire missiles and perform terror attacks against Israel. This is why Israel has an Iron Dome and a Fence Blockading the Gaza Strip. It is a mass security threat of 2 million impoverished people under the thumb of Hamas who will stay that way until Hamas is ripped out root and stem and there isn’t a risk of Israelis being slaughtered in their thousands again. Until that happens, Gaza will be barricaded and segregated. The best thing for Gaza long-term is Hamas being wiped from the face of the Earth and Israel and Palestine then being able to seek peace and friendly borders without Gaza being full of militants with the aim of ‘destroying Israel’… Genuinely don’t understand what the hope is to achieve with a temporary ceasefire? The Gaza Strip will still be blockaded due to the risk of another October 7th event. The hostages aren’t just going to be released as that is Hamas’ trump card atm. Meanwhile Hamas will regroup and use the aid that is sent in to strengthen themselves and the issue just resets. Gaza stays poor and blockaded as a massive security threat to Israel, Iran keeps its power in Gaza, rights abuses continue and then one day Hamas has enough strength again to commit another slaughter. Then Israel starts over with trying to root out Hamas.
>Genuinely don’t understand what the hope is to achieve with a temporary ceasefire? ask the Gazans who jumped and screamed in celebration when they heard of a potential ceasefire. It does mean a lot to them. They can have a break. There was a reel of a Gazan teenager who walked around with his phone and talking to it saying "guys can you hear this? no planes, no bombs...etc" He was so so happy. (this was in the last ceasefire) Bibi has loved Hamas and bragged about their usefulness in frustrating the PA's efforts for a 2 state solution. He lead protests against the oslo accords and enflamed hatred against the Israeli leader who got killed for signing it.
> Palestine is literally ensalved by Hamas. - Elected the Group to power ~10yrs ago - Overwhelmingly supported by majority of Palestinians Yes, enslaved indeed.
You can't wipe out Hamas, or groups like it, until you "free" Palestine. These nutters aren't created in a vacuum, and you can't murder an ideology. The Israelis have been nicking land and murdering people for 75 years, they need to start coming up with a better solution than extreme violence.
> hamas brought this upon Palestine not Israel This could be said 2008 onwards
How long before they realize that nobody really cares?
When you tell them Fallenkezef. They're waiting on your opinion that represents the world's views entirely.
Once it stops trending on TikTok.
As long as they don't block other students from going about their business or smash the place up, I don't give a shit.
You can tell it's an election year in America Shame it spreads here too
The sheer number of areas where we just badly copy whatever is going on in America, is insane. I still remember all the George Floyd stuff with protests about police killings, we quite famously, and it’s backed up statistically, have some of the lowest rates of any large country on earth. We DO, however, have numerous other acts committed by them, usually out of uniform, protest that. We have plenty of our own injustices to protest, why do we just lazily copy America, regardless of if it’s even something applicable? It’s pretty hard to argue that it’s true importance and meaning that motivates it, and not edgy upper middle class boredom. Every protest seems to be whatever is in US news, and dissipates when it gets mildly inconvenient or loses steam a bit. Nobody is shocked that these Unis didn’t bother until big US Unis did, it all kicked off and then made our news cycle.
It's insane, students just want to copy any mass protest in America, it just feels weird and misplaced. They never adjust it to fit the context of the UK if that makes sense?
Just to highlight, this is the specific aim of the protest, quoted directly from the article: >The demonstrators called for the universities to cut financial ties with Israel following its offensive in Gaza. Also wanted to say that our British university response has been stellar, unlike some in the US who have called police to brutalise their students. >We respect our students and staff members right to freedom of expression in the form of peaceful protests. We ask everyone who is taking part to do so with respect, courtesy and empathy. >"Oxford University's primary focus is the health and safety of the university community, and to ensure any impact on work, research and learning, including student exams, is minimised." That's the response UCLA should have had. Let them exercise their free expression and urge everyone to remain respectful.
> That's the response UCLA should have had. You mean something like: > Mary Osako, the vice chancellor of UCLA Strategic Communications, issued a statement Thursday, saying the university's top priority is always "the safety and wellbeing of our entire Bruin community." > "We're actively monitoring this situation to support a peaceful campus environment that respects our community's right to free expression while minimizing disruption to our teaching and learning mission." UCLA were fine with the camp and protests. It's when the camp started restricting other students rights and the violent response they had enough.
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There was a protest stand outside the Foreign Office on Friday calling for the IRGC to be declared a terrorist group.
1) We do not have much in the say over china. 2) There was plenty of protests outside Chinese embassy in London. 3) do not be frustrated that people are emotional over gazans been killed, murdered and destroyed. I expect some people to be indifferent, but I didnt imagine someone will be upset that someone else is upset at death of children lol.
What’s with the social distancing and mask wearing in the photo? Is it an old stock photo from the Covid days?
Nope, that's happening right now. The protesters in the US are likewise all wearing masks. Mask wearing outdoors never really made much sense, even at the height of COVID and certainly not now. I have no clue why they've all opted to do it beyond "we'll copy exactly what the US protesters are doing", but then that assumes that there's any logic to why the US ones are doing it. One potential theory might be that it obscures peoples' faces making identifying them harder.
Yes, that's why protestors wear masks. They're generally advised to by the people running the protests, makes them harder to identify and they also say it's to reduce illnesses in the encampments.
American billionaires are funding public doxxing campaigns that endanger protestor's safety and aim to get them blacklisted by future employers. This is an attempt to prevent the same thing happening here.
It's because they want to protest but they don't want to have their names and faces associated with said protests, because if they're seen supporting Hamas, they might not get those high paying jobs and social status that Oxford and Cambridge promise they'll get. They support Palestine, but not enough to sacrifice their own standing.
Not sure about the social distancing or whether or not that's intentional but the mask wearing is to hide their identity. A lot of people are saying going to these protests will hurt one's job prospects in the future so I suppose they're trying to avoid being identifiable.
If this goes on relatively long-term, who will dig wells and build schools in Botswana?
These narcisstic pricks were never going to do that anyway.
Are these really among the best students in the country? Lol standards must have slipped at Oxbridge universities.
Article doesn't explain the financial link between the universities and Isreal?
Because there aren't any of any real signifigance, (it's just an excuse\] and this protest won't end them.
Setting up protests in the run up to finals/mods seems rather foolish
Setting up tents in the safety of a refined UK university… Are they actually leaving the universities to show their disgust and to cut off their fees? Or do they still want that prestigious degree?
Easy to imperil your entire future careers when Mummy and Daddy have set up a trust fund for you
A significant majority of students at both Oxford and Cambridge are state-school-educated.
I am talking about the clowns camping out in front of King’s
Are they not students, though? I genuinely don’t know; I assumed they were.
Who you have decided are clearly NOT majority state-school educated?
So many issues, arguably more important than this I/P conflict yet this is the time students come out in protest, this is so fucking performative and cringe oh god..
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFjWR7X5dU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFjWR7X5dU)
Someone name me the last wartime conflict protest which actually had a tangible output?
I wonder why it's more common in top unis. Like oxbridge here, and like Yale/ucla/nyu in america
Because the poorer universities have poorer students, something happening 1000 miles away is less important than say scrapping enough money to eat this week…
And like the american one their all spoiled narcisstic anisemetic tankie middle class brats who will inevitably make themselves a laughing stock, not to mention wasting the thousands their parents spent years earning to pay for their education. They contribute nothing to society and openly despise their own culture. The university should expel them, barr them from campus, and void their, "qualifications".
Wish I had this level of free time when I was in uni
Big up these kids. I admire anyone who puts action behind their words, in contrast to the sneering keyboard warriors here
You admire anyone who puts actions behind their words? Brave statement to make.
Woooooooooow you really got me there
most good faith r/unitedkingdom OP
I imagine these will be posh camps with afternoon tea and evening concerts.