The student movements don’t frame themselves as narrowly targeting “American wrongdoing” but instead use sweeping moral language like genocide, apartheid, and absolute evil. Once you do that, people are going to notice when the outrage is selective. That isn’t “whataboutism,” it’s a basic credibility problem.
The idea that this all comes down to U.S. leverage or divestment is unpersuasive. Campus activism has often been symbolic first and practical second. Universities protest plenty of things they have no real influence over. Claiming Gaza is uniquely actionable feels like a post hoc justification, not a real explanation.
There’s also a huge leap in treating “the U.S. is actively supporting a genocide” as an established fact. That’s a highly disputed claim, and disagreeing with it doesn’t mean someone is cheering war crimes. Reducing the debate to that kind of moral absolutism is intellectually lazy and/or overly convenient.
And no one needs to believe activists support Iran to see the imbalance. The issue is silence and intensity. Some atrocities generate nonstop protests and encampments; others barely register. Pointing that out isn’t an attempt to distract. It’s pointing out selective outrage.
If a movement wants universal moral authority, it can’t also demand immunity from criticism when its priorities are this obviously uneven.
You convenient ignore the fact that the Iranian regime threatens Israel directly, as well as indirectly through its proxies, and thus has major responsibility for what has occurred in Gaza. Hamas's goal is Iran's goal: genocide against Israel.
The Iranian regime that has systematically oppressed its own citizens and is now killing thousands of them in the streets is the same regime that has facilitated and funded Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s genocidal ambitions and actions against Israel. So the absence of campus protests against the Iranian regime that you twistedly try to justify is actually consistent with protestors’ proclaimed support for those Iranian proxies.
I believe the constant circulation of Gaza footage and news - often including extremely graphic scenes - on TikTok feeds for young people, contrasted with the far more limited visibility of content from Iran for the same demographics, also helps explain the relatively muted response to Iran among Gen Z. Which leads us to another set of questions...
I think that’s right, and explains much of the difference between the two.
Two points though: clearly protests against e.g. the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen were much smaller than those around Gaza, even though the leverage point would apply very similarly.
Second, it would still reflect well on progressives to show greater solidarity. For example, there are countries where significant protests in support of Ukraine, Palestine, and Kurdish rights have taken place even though the respective national governments weren’t directly complicit in their oppression.
The student movements don’t frame themselves as narrowly targeting “American wrongdoing” but instead use sweeping moral language like genocide, apartheid, and absolute evil. Once you do that, people are going to notice when the outrage is selective. That isn’t “whataboutism,” it’s a basic credibility problem.
The idea that this all comes down to U.S. leverage or divestment is unpersuasive. Campus activism has often been symbolic first and practical second. Universities protest plenty of things they have no real influence over. Claiming Gaza is uniquely actionable feels like a post hoc justification, not a real explanation.
There’s also a huge leap in treating “the U.S. is actively supporting a genocide” as an established fact. That’s a highly disputed claim, and disagreeing with it doesn’t mean someone is cheering war crimes. Reducing the debate to that kind of moral absolutism is intellectually lazy and/or overly convenient.
And no one needs to believe activists support Iran to see the imbalance. The issue is silence and intensity. Some atrocities generate nonstop protests and encampments; others barely register. Pointing that out isn’t an attempt to distract. It’s pointing out selective outrage.
If a movement wants universal moral authority, it can’t also demand immunity from criticism when its priorities are this obviously uneven.
You convenient ignore the fact that the Iranian regime threatens Israel directly, as well as indirectly through its proxies, and thus has major responsibility for what has occurred in Gaza. Hamas's goal is Iran's goal: genocide against Israel.
The Iranian regime that has systematically oppressed its own citizens and is now killing thousands of them in the streets is the same regime that has facilitated and funded Hamas’ and Hezbollah’s genocidal ambitions and actions against Israel. So the absence of campus protests against the Iranian regime that you twistedly try to justify is actually consistent with protestors’ proclaimed support for those Iranian proxies.
I believe the constant circulation of Gaza footage and news - often including extremely graphic scenes - on TikTok feeds for young people, contrasted with the far more limited visibility of content from Iran for the same demographics, also helps explain the relatively muted response to Iran among Gen Z. Which leads us to another set of questions...
I think that’s right, and explains much of the difference between the two.
Two points though: clearly protests against e.g. the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen were much smaller than those around Gaza, even though the leverage point would apply very similarly.
Second, it would still reflect well on progressives to show greater solidarity. For example, there are countries where significant protests in support of Ukraine, Palestine, and Kurdish rights have taken place even though the respective national governments weren’t directly complicit in their oppression.