Paul Berman weighs in.
The students want to chant these things, of course, because these slogans are transgressive. But no one wants to say what the transgression is because it’s too horrible. So we’re having a mass euphemism event: Horrible things are being advocated by people who deny that they’re advocating it.
… It’s very difficult for people with liberal ideas to recognize the extreme and frightening views that are actually upheld by totalitarian movements. In Hamas we have radical Islamists who’ve shown us in real life what they’re actually for by acting on their principles. And there’s an inability or reluctance to see that. So we have a mass movement in defense of Hamas that calls itself a mass movement in defense of human rights. It’s a blindness, but within the blindness is a seduction and a fascination. That’s evident in the transgressive thrill students feel in chanting those chants.
May 13th, 2024 at 4:14PM
“If I completely change what they say they’re protesting about then I can criticize them for being foolish and transgressive” is not the powerful argument Berman would like it to be.