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

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.

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This reporter spent three days with these students and other comrades at the Marxism 2024 conference over the Easter long weekend. Together, we spent hours discussing Palestine, the history of radical Jewish struggle, racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism and colonial settler theories.

We also talked about how the current conflict in Gaza is a symptom of a global system – imperialism – that is in decay and fighting desperately to continue killing the planet through unchecked global warming and the planning and execution of wars to recurve the world between competing empires.

I hope Al Jazeera is keeping this map up to date. So cool to see Australia lit by orange dots too.https://t.co/KMU8rajjtV pic.twitter.com/JE0rtvseqv
—    ALL EYES ON PALESTINE (@ethicalmartini) May 10, 2024

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. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s gothic novel, Frankenstein, is a literary reference to moral panics, complete with wild mobs brandishing burning "faggots".

The documented 4,000 lynchings of African Americans in the Jim Crow era are clearly linked to the moral panic about Black people. The continuing War on Drugs initiated by the Reagan regime is another example. Hippies, punks, goths and hip-hop have all been attacked by conservatives for similar reasons.

Young punks, young people of colour, Muslim communities and progressive activists in the Black Lives Matter movement have all been characterised as beyond societal norms and control, their behaviour vilified as deviant.

Their modes of dress, speech and communication – from low-slung jeans to slang patois, from vinyl records to raves, to TikTok – are denounced almost literally as the work of the devil.

Peace in Palestine needs us — in our thousands and our millions

The worldwide protest movement against the Israeli atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank is growing.

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.

This reporter doesn’t really need to add much more to the explanation of moral panics, but the examples here demonstrate that it is happening right now.

Liberal Senator Sarah Henderson is organising a Senate committee to investigate antisemitism on Australian campuses.

Henderso embraces the language of moral panic and invokes the folk devil meme of "outside agitators" and "extremists":

"Allowing the establishment of encampments opens the floodgates to round-the-clock occupation by extremist protestors, including those who have no connection with a university."

The Zionists can't control the narrative which is why they're trying to launch *investigations* into antisemitism on campuses. It is a witch hunt to catch the folk devils.
There will also be lines about young minds being manipulated.
Albo's *it's the Trots* lie is one version
—    ALL EYES ON PALESTINE (@ethicalmartini) May 9, 2024

The Murdoch media is leading the charge in amplifying the supposed threat posed by the student protests and the use of chants like "From the River to the Sea" and "Intifada".

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.

In response, Group of Eight vice-chancellors have warned students that they could face disciplinary action for chanting "From the River to The Sea".

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In the wake of the Israel-Gaza war, students are pushing for universities to sever ties with the weapons industry funding their campuses.

Of course, no moral panic would be complete without the generous encouragement of Nine journalists. David Crowe, James Massola and others have enthusiastically jumped on the tumbril to chase down the "folk devils" among the student population.

@smh where protesting war #Genocide is twisted into support for terrorism. fmd 冷冷

Slaughtering 15,000 children barely rates a mention.

This will not age well David Crowe.#GazaGenocide #IsraeliNewNazism pic.twitter.com/ah9HafmM5E
— Rupert's Conscience (@RupertsConscie1) May 9, 2024

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". This reporter knew Albo at the University of Sydney in the early 1980s and he hated the Trots then.

Unfortunately, Albanese is thoroughly compromised and supports Israel because Australia is completely embedded in the American imperialist camp, and the Zionist entity must be protected to bolster the U.S. empire’s grip on the Middle East.

Albo may be happy to see university students pilloried in the media and paraded in front of a Senate witch hunt because, in the end, he likely sees them as dangerous folk devils too.