Went to a Palestinian solidarity protest/rally with some new folks who’d become radicalised against America/the West over the last six months. They aren’t socialists (yet, I’m working on it) - but they’re good people. So, seeing the genocide and its support by our governments filled them with disgust. We talked about the Nakba, the history of Zionism, and the current apartheid etc.
Now, we come to the protest.
Overall, the atmosphere was incredible. Lots of cool signs, different kinds of people, and, of course the pigs. That’s not the problem.
The problem was the fucking speakers. I swear, at least half of them had to be feds whose entire job was to turn people away from turning up at these events.
Some of them, and I mean this literally, wanted the crowd to chant “we support October 7” and “we stand with Hamas”.
I swear, the way the people I was with turned to look at me.
Not every speaker was like this - most were genuine. They talked of labor solidarity, campus organizing, personal anecdotes. But all of that made these speakers stand out all the more.
The worst part is that when it would happen, the organisers was one of them. So this entire thing was a sham from the start.
I feel so bad. I shouldn’t have just brought people to a random protest I saw and should’ve vetted it first.
Like, seriously. I can’t fucking get over this. Who organizes a protests of people from all walks of life in support of Palestine and wants them to chant we stand with Hamas and let’s do one hundred more October 7s?.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Like, of fucking course Hamas is a natural reaction to apartheid and ethnic cleansing and genocide. And of course Oct 7 is nothing compared to the 200 days that followed since (or the 75 years that preceded it). But come the fuck on.
Some people in this thread really do need to
Violent opposition to genocide is of course justified, but publicly chanting supporting for an event that is, at the very least, widely public perceived as a massacre of civilians, is pretty shitty protest tactics at best. And discrediting fed-work at worst.
Critical support for Hamas. They should do more violent resistance to the IDF, and sadly civilians will die, but that aspect is an unfortunate necessity, not a thing to be lauded. Hamas themselves say they made mistakes in that attack.
People should not stand with them on every issue and event; overall obviously fighting a genocide makes them worthy of support.
Lib shit. October 7th wasn’t a massacre it was a brilliant, heroic and successful military action. Stop ceding ground loser. The main mistakes Hamas made was not taking even more hostages and not killing even more Israeli scum.
Your optics cuckery is pathetic and a losing strategy. You conceal your aims. You accept Liberal framing. You cower before truth and put up lies
Hamas disagrees with you.
Brother you started the thread by saying people need to touch grass, an inherently bad faith attack. Reap what you sow
I didn't accuse people of straight up lying.
Yeah you just accused them of being antisocial shut ins because they have a better grasp on anti-imperialism than you and are more principled in their statements
Aight, disengaging.
That’s not what’s wrong with openly saying you support Hamas and oct7