Went to a Palestinian solidarity protest/rally with some new folks who’d become radicalised against America/the West over the last six months. They aren’t socialists (yet, I’m working on it) - but they’re good people. So, seeing the genocide and its support by our governments filled them with disgust. We talked about the Nakba, the history of Zionism, and the current apartheid etc.
Now, we come to the protest.
Overall, the atmosphere was incredible. Lots of cool signs, different kinds of people, and, of course the pigs. That’s not the problem.
The problem was the fucking speakers. I swear, at least half of them had to be feds whose entire job was to turn people away from turning up at these events.
Some of them, and I mean this literally, wanted the crowd to chant “we support October 7” and “we stand with Hamas”.
I swear, the way the people I was with turned to look at me.
Not every speaker was like this - most were genuine. They talked of labor solidarity, campus organizing, personal anecdotes. But all of that made these speakers stand out all the more.
The worst part is that when it would happen, the organisers was one of them. So this entire thing was a sham from the start.
I feel so bad. I shouldn’t have just brought people to a random protest I saw and should’ve vetted it first.
Like, seriously. I can’t fucking get over this. Who organizes a protests of people from all walks of life in support of Palestine and wants them to chant we stand with Hamas and let’s do one hundred more October 7s?.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Like, of fucking course Hamas is a natural reaction to apartheid and ethnic cleansing and genocide. And of course Oct 7 is nothing compared to the 200 days that followed since (or the 75 years that preceded it). But come the fuck on.
Some people in this thread really do need to
Violent opposition to genocide is of course justified, but publicly chanting supporting for an event that is, at the very least, widely public perceived as a massacre of civilians, is pretty shitty protest tactics at best. And discrediting fed-work at worst.
Critical support for Hamas. They should do more violent resistance to the IDF, and sadly civilians will die, but that aspect is an unfortunate necessity, not a thing to be lauded. Hamas themselves say they made mistakes in that attack.
People should not stand with them on every issue and event; overall obviously fighting a genocide makes them worthy of support.
Lib shit. October 7th wasn’t a massacre it was a brilliant, heroic and successful military action. Stop ceding ground loser. The main mistakes Hamas made was not taking even more hostages and not killing even more Israeli scum.
Your optics cuckery is pathetic and a losing strategy. You conceal your aims. You accept Liberal framing. You cower before truth and put up lies
Hamas disagrees with you.
Brother you started the thread by saying people need to touch grass, an inherently bad faith attack. Reap what you sow
I didn't accuse people of straight up lying.
Yeah you just accused them of being antisocial shut ins because they have a better grasp on anti-imperialism than you and are more principled in their statements
Aight, disengaging.
That’s not what’s wrong with openly saying you support Hamas and oct7
So instead of challenging the perception of Liberals you buckle to it, accept their framework and then lie about your ‘critical support’ of Hamas and hide it (or maybe you don’t actually support them after all if you can’t stand up to smears against them)
If you say to me you “critically support Hamas” but then in public condemn them you are lying to either me or the public. Neither is acceptable
Thanks for the shitty bad faith accusations. This kind of conversation sucks.
Brother you started the thread by saying people need to touch grass, an inherently bad faith attack. Reap what you sow
Which in this case is grass. Congrats you're a sod farmer now
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I disagree with the pearl clutching, but what actually is the point of chanting in favor of Hamas at a protest? Is there a path where there could be solidarity between American student groups and Hamas, channels to send aid to Hamas specifically to support their resistance? It seems pretty much impossible to me. Why not just focus on the message that's most effective for divesting from Israel, which is all we can really hope for by protesting anyway?
The situation just reeks of the same kind of impulse to show ideological purity that made the Weather Underground a small group of kids doing random acts of violence instead of a mass movement. Sure, they were ideologically correct and morally justified, but what's the point of being right if you don't have a path to political power?
Idk, could be useful in opening a conversation about the realities of 10/7. There are numerous accounts of Israelis in tanks, helicopters, and on the ground indiscriminately killing anything that moves. By explicitly calling out these events and support for the resistance it allows people like OP or other organizers to explain to their lib friends where the majority of civilian deaths actually came from instead of only allowing MSM to tell them how to feel (that somehow Hamas had hellfire missiles/were roving gangs of rapists)
only ones I'm sad to see die are the Palestinians, may all settlers face what they deserve
Dead children sucks. Even if they are the children of fascists supporters.
if the IOF didn't want dead settler kids, they shouldn't have unloaded helicopter fire on random people on Oct.7
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Never said they were???
Damn these people just want to be mad at you wtf
Didn't think "children dying is bad" would be a controversial take to anybody here but here we are I guess.
Yeah, children cannot be fascists, and they are victims on both sides. As far as adults go though, there are next to 0 “Israelis” that could be considered “innocent civilians.” The vast majority were in the military.
"critical support for some actions of hamas" is a shitty slogan to chant, sorry
Real "Why can't defund the police actually say what they want instead of some crazy anarchy chant?" vibes you get from liberals. It's supposed to get people questioning and open conversation on the topic, not be a manifesto of exactly what is to be done
You're right. Critical support isn't something that makes for good slogans. It's a highly nuanced position that you can't sum up in a catchy chant. Of course October 7 was justified—when you're given the choice between violence or death, it isn't really a choice. But that's a thing that's difficult to distill down to three or four words.
Yeah this is one of the points where you better not let your online brain write checks your irl self can’t cash. Something like that has a good chance of escalating into violence and the people involved HAVE to recognize that. You have to trust the people around you otherwise you’re just going to end up getting hurt while the libs around you run away because they were just saying it to be funny.
Also this is a direct call out. If you say you support OCT7 and you’re not ready to take a nightstick to the skull potentially you should probably be quite.