Campus Kristallnacht

Minds in the Qatar

(That sub-headline only works if you pronounce Qatar as “Gutter,” as many say we should, or at least somewhere between “cutter” and “gutter.” Apparently, Qatar doesn’t rhyme with “guitar,” so I have been saying it wrong.)

So my friend George Grosman posted a terrific piece about his road from Eastern bloc Prague to Zionism and it got me thinking about the transformation of my own views. Not as dramatic for me, of course, as I don’t think the prosperous and free Ottawa Valley circa the 1970s and 1980s compares with the drama of the Prague Spring. But suffice to say that by the time I was at university, I had some views on the Middle East that were based on a complete lack of knowledge of history, the malign influence of at least one antisemitic relative, as well as the belief so many youth have - that certain groups of people are inevitably downtrodden and therefore have no agency/blame, and that other groups inevitably have power and strength and therefore are irredeemably evil, and so on. What changed for me was reading and travel and living abroad. I found out what Zionism meant and realized I was one, though I am not Jewish. (In fact, to not be a Zionist is odd, because that would mean you think everyone has the right to self-determination, except for Jewish people.) I found out that Western civilization is good - the best the world has to offer - its flaws regardless. I have written about some of that on my Substack here.

But there is more to it. One can travel and simply have their priors confirmed. One can read and be closed to what they are reading. And one can have been indoctrinated, given an iPhone and a mask and a slogan and lo, you have campuses full of narcissistic, misguided, uninformed, anti-Western/Israel/American, self-serving bigots glued to social media. One thing they are not is pro-Palestinian - this Gazan activist is not impressed. Another thing they are not is grassroots or spontaneous. Their tents are identical, their signs, their accessories. They are also not fact-friendly. They love their slogans, though. George Packer writes here, with some disingenuousness, about the toxicity, the intellectual rot and moral corruption that has been allowed to thrive in universities in the last thirty years. I give him credit for the very good article, but one only had to read a conservative magazine to have already known about this. He is basically saying, “Gosh, could academia actually be the problem?” Er, yeah. It could be. Or at least a significant portion of the problem. I am lucky that my university history professors taught me history, not an agenda. I am thrilled that my literature professors were not trying to instill an ideology into their students. This is largely because they were from a previous generation, before everything became filtered through class/gender/race. No professor ever assumed that, as a female student, I needed to be condescended to and have things taught to me in a different way or from a specific angle, for example. I might be from the last cohort that was allowed to read Pride and Prejudice without having someone tell us that Mr. Darcy’s family likely got their wealth from exploitation of others and that therefore the book is “problematic” and that this is all we should take away from one of the most wonderful novels about men and women ever written. (Seriously. I know people who say this.)

A sea change took place when the incredibly fortunate and ungrateful post-war generation took over institutions. Add this to tenure and funding from Qatar, among other dubious sources, and you’ve got trouble. The 1960s, as I have often said, have a lot for which to answer (including post-traumatic Kent State syndrome, which I suspect is the reason the National Guard hasn’t been called in…yet). It’s hard not to see similarities - the 1960s protests started off as anti-war or anti-draft, but morphed into some young people actually supporting the Viet Cong and wanting their own countrymen to be killed. The current campus zombie death cult members may have started off as claiming their only concern was peace, but it didn’t take long for them to start saying Israel should not exist and that they want more and more October 7ths. People who call everyone they don’t like a Nazi are now spewing Nazi rhetoric. Kids who have said that words are violence, that someone should lose their job for saying men can’t have babies, that a white chef making Asian food is offensive, are spitting on their Jewish classmates. (By the way, don’t all those white kids wearing keffiyehs know that they are appropriating?) I despise easy Third Reich comparisons, but this scene from Cabaret comes to mind.

[Shout out if you relate to the old guy in despair, or to Michael York’s anxious, “Do you still think you can control them?”]

In the 1960s, Mao used college kids to help carry out his cultural revolution, which resulted in over a million deaths and still more imprisoned. Young people are vulnerable - they want to fit in, they want to feel important, they want to be righteous. They think they are heroes. It is hard not to watch these chuckleheads without noticing that, far from being worried about suspension or arrest, they are having the time of their lives. You want to give them a shake and remind them that six years ago they were worried about who would invite them to their junior high prom. One must ask, where are their parents?

It is hard not to notice that there seem to be more young women than young men glorifying terrorism and trivializing rape, murder and kidnapping. Is this what feminism hath wrought? Mindless little girls ripping down posters of babies taken hostage, shrieking in rage, falling for a death cult. I live in downtown Toronto, and there is hardly a day where I don’t see elegant young women dressed for work but wearing keffiyehs. It is distressing. Thanks Women’s Studies profs! Proud? (An excellent column here, about exactly this topic. The author points out that women skew further left than men, tend to study humanities and social sciences more than men and therefore may be susceptible to activist professors who are unwilling or unable to tell right from wrong.)

I am not entirely despairing. Oh, some of these kids will double down. Some will never be open to anything that challenges their preconceived notions. But I am certain more of them will be ashamed of their participation in these antics when they are older. Life has a way of forcing expansion and enlightenment. At least that is what I tell myself.

One lives in hope.

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Regarding the clip from Cabaret, I have a keen memory of watching The Winds of War with my parents and with there being a very similar scene therein. Any Wouk fans out there who can clarify?