There’s a nihilistic solipsism and narcissism underlying this outlook, deep down they don’t even know if Israel and Palestine are real places or thought experiments

Yes! This is a concept I keep trying to chisel away at (there's probably some philosopher I haven't gotten around to reading yet on my ever-growing list that perfectly describes all of this lmao, it'll probably be Foucault or something), where liberals, especially western liberals, are totally detached from reality. It's akin to the obfuscation of capitalist social relations of production but for everything in life. To draw upon my once-liberal thought process, because all of these things aren't really experienced by the people discussing them - and there's not even any familial experience of this kind of oppression much of the time - it all becomes this very hypothetical, wishy-washy, cloudy, idealist fantasy land bullshit.

The only reason why anti-landlord sentiments are a remotely popular thing among Gen Z is because of their direct exposure to its criminality, so even if there's some high-minded, educated, economics-y explanation as to why you shouldn't be mad that your landlord is a piece of shit ("he had to take risks! he also has a mortgage to pay, you know! he's actually a prole too!"), when you look at your rent, you just feel your raw material interests unburdened by all the inane fluff and go "actually, no, this fucking sucks." It's similar (but obviously much worse) for when people directly experienced economic collapses like the Russian shock therapy or even bombing raids - you can be told all the information in the world about how, actually, the shock therapy was necessary because this and that indicator were much too high, and actually that bombing campaign was necessary because sometimes there are terrorists and you have to do hard things, but your material interests are just like "No. Fuck you. I lost my relatives because of it. It wasn't necessary and everybody behind it should be locked in jail for the rest of their lives."

But if you have no experience of those events (and I freely admit I do not), and can't even really feel any empathy with people undergoing those experiences, then the propaganda can be convincing and the "logic" seems pretty tight, and you're just lost in an idealistic fantasy world, disconnected from reality in the most literal sense. This is why, if the American empire does violently collapse in my lifetime, it's going to some mixture of fascinating and horrifying to watch these people adapt to much harder conditions, with severe economic turmoil which would make 2008 look like a fun picnic. Or even bombing/missile campaigns, if nuclear war is the result. Even with conservative prepper types, I get the sense that their plan in the event of a societal collapse is basically "Get into their bunkers, very quickly become bored because you're not used to not having television blasted into your eyes and ears every minute of every day, try and impulsively check Facebook and get angry that the networks are down, the family kills each other before day 2 - and if not, they get murked by trying to be an epic action hero shooting at people from their rooftops before getting owned and their supplies stolen by a co-ordinated group of survivors."