Editorial Board
The ruling class monopoly media with one voice claims that “Biden has broken his silence on the student protest.” Was Biden ever silent on the Palestine solidarity movement? Is drastically increasing the US military “aid” to Israel by about 14 billion US dollars really being “silent”?
Biden is professed by those who suffer the rot of imperialist ideas as a democratic alternative to the “dictatorial” Trump, while both have embodied the restriction of democratic rights among average people. Biden’s openly backward comments on the student movement follow this trend.
After the country’s best universities have turned first into hard-fought battlegrounds against imperialism, then into what amounts to a militarized police camp, the imperialist in chief had this to say: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest.” We would be compelled to agree with him, if he were at all aware that this described the actions of the police and not those of the students. Add to this cracking heads, using chemical weapons and flash bangs—all acts of reactionary violence—and you get an idea of who is bringing disruptions to campus life and what type of “order” Biden represents. “Dissent must never lead to disorder” he reminds the country’s brightest youths—at gun point.
Biden was quoted in Reuters—in a manner professionally calculated to lend a democratic facade to what is antagonistic to democratic rights—as saying “There is a right to protest, but not a right to cause chaos.” In other words, the only kind of “protests” supported by this “champion of democracy” are those which do not bother the folks being protested.
“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent” the president pretends, while the Committee for Accuracy in the Middle East does its dirty work, professionals in silencing and targeting journalists who report balanced news in the interests of the oppressed, while militarized police storm campuses and arrest anyone without an Israeli flag. “This isn’t a moment for politics” the old man suggests. Since when has sending bombs to support genocide not been a political act? Opposition to it is also political. This can be nothing other than a political moment.
In response to what is perhaps Biden’s most idiotic attack on the youth, the so-called “left” of his party carries out a little damage control. Social democratic-leaning Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders assured CNN that the students were not out in support of the Palestinian resistance, but only in opposition to Israeli violence. The students’ banners, signs, and literature, if Sanders actually paid attention, tell another story. More and more the solidarity movement has become anti-imperialist in essence, and their words and deeds confirm a support for the resistance of Palestinian people’s armed struggle. It was at this point that Biden sent in his goons.
The maturation of the student movement is incomplete but it is being noticed around the world. In Mexico a student activist told the monopoly NPR that she thought students in the US were apathetic until they stood up for Palestine. Palestinians whose homes were destroyed in Gaza have written solidarity messages and messages of gratitude to the students of Columbia on the outside of their tents. Ansar Allah, the armed resistance to imperialism in Yemen locked in a battle against the Zionist and US imperialists, raised a banner with the image of a University of Texas student being arrested which reads: “Dear American student, they can arrest you but they can never break your spirit!” and another reading “To the brave American Students! Stand your ground! Yemen stands with you for a free Palestine!”
The international response of solidarity, the manner in which the US student movement has inspired students around the world, combined with the brazen attacks on their democratic rights by the old-state, can only mean the tempering of the student forces which have already demonstrated their courage and resolve.
