Antinuclear

Amidst genocide and war, anti-Zionism protesters are demonised as ‘extremists’

Independent Australia, By Martin Hirst | 13 May 2024

As human rights experts warn of an ongoing genocide in Gaza, any opposition to Zionism is being egregiously labelled as extremism, Dr Martin Hirst writes.

STUDENT PROTESTERS around the world are being demonised by politicians, bureaucrats and the news media for taking a stand against genocide.

This is just an updated version of the moral panic playbook that conservatives use to demonise young people who don’t toe the establishment line.

In the last six weeks, student protests have exploded around the world on a scale not seen since the Vietnam Moratorium almost 60 years ago. These students are protesting against what human rights experts are not hesitating to call a genocide in Gaza.

This reporter knows some of the Australian leaders of these protests quite well, organising politically with them as a long-term member of Left-wing group Socialist Alternative and a writer for its newspaper, Red Flag.

We know that none of these outstanding young activists are antisemitic. We know they are better educated about Palestine from a contemporary and historical perspective than our Prime Minister and most politicians…………………………………………………

We know that these young people are on the right side of history.

We also know that attempts by political leaders, intelligence agencies, Zionist hacks, the police and some university administrators to brand these brave students as violent, dangerous and antisemitic is a bald lie.

It is the lie itself that is dangerous because it actually emboldens Zionist thugs to launch ever-more violent attacks on student encampments, causing injury and mayhem.

It is also dangerous because it is a serious attempt – carried out with planning and intent – to criminalise anti-genocide activists and to criminalise their right to political speech.

What is happening in Australia, across Europe and in the United States is the creation of a state of emergency based on these dangerous lies. Right in front of our eyes, pro-Israel elements of the ruling class are establishing the conditions for a new wave of moral panic.

Students are being demonised as the 21st-Century version of the “folk devil“. The protests are being compared to 1930s Germany – which most people who make this comparison know absolutely fuck-all about – and they are being used to launch a McCarthyite witch hunt against students and academics who stand up for Palestine.

There’s nothing new about moral panics — the phrase was coined by British sociologist Stanley Cohen in the 1970s to describe the clamour for the state to take action against “Mods” and “Rockers” — two rival youth subcultures that enjoyed different types of music.

Interestingly, the Pogroms against Jews that swept Europe in the 1920s were a form of moral panic…………………………………………………………………………………………………

A moral panic only works when those in power – who feel threatened by resistance from below – can enlist loyal handmaidens in the media to prosecute their case and amplify their fear-mongering. Now, these tactics of intimidation are aimed at silencing dissent and any vocal opposition to the Israeli slaughter in Gaza.

Make no mistake, it is happening. Take it seriously because the Zionists and the political establishment are taking it seriously……………………………………………………

Failed Liberal Minister Josh Frydenberg helped to produce a “documentary” helpfully explaining to Sky News audiences how Australia is sliding into Nazi-era pogroms because of the threat to civil order posed by the student encampments and the wider anti-genocide movement.

In the last week alone, there has been a slew of opinion columns and news pieces in The Australian slandering student encampments while ignoring the attacks mounted on them by Zionist thugs.

Andrew Bolt and the usual list of suspects are apoplectic with rage that university administrators haven’t (yet) moved to shut down the protests.

However, the universities are beginning to move. The administration at Monash University in Melbourne is demanding students remove ‘Zionists not welcome’ signs from around their encampment because of some spurious “legal advice” that it is vilification.

Police have been allowed to install surveillance cameras overlooking the Monash encampment. Vice Chancellors from the Group of Eight — Australia’s richest universities — have asked Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus to advise them if the slogans used in the encampments are “hate speech”.

This is particularly egregious because Dreyfus himself is a Zionist. Dreyfus declined to provide legal advice but urged people who feel offended to lodge complaints under Section 18a of the Racial Discrimination Act. …………………………………………………..

It is too early to tell where all of this will end, but we can confidently predict that the Labor Party will support Sarah Henderson’s call for a Senate inquiry.

Anthony Albanese is fuelling the moral panic with apparent joy. He is reported to have told a room full of senior Zionist elders and student leaders that he believes the campus protests are led by outside agitators.

Helpfully, he was able to name them too. It’s all “the Trots‘ fault”.

This is deeply ironic for two reasons:

Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky was a Jew and when he fell foul of the Stalinist regime, his Jewish heritage was used against him to launch a moral panic that even spread to Australia and poisoned the minds of many good Communist Party members, including the artist Noel Counihan who famously called Trotsky a “fascist gangster”.

Albanese has also been demonised as a Trotskyist by Murdoch hacks and (former Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop) “Kerosene Bronny“…………….. https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/amidst-genocide-and-war-anti-zionism-protesters-are-demonised-as-extremists,18594

May 14, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | culture, politics