Violent Campus Protests Are Discrediting the Left’s Simplistic View Dividing the World Into Oppressors and Victims

Polling makes it clear that the large majority of the public does not share many demonstrators’ celebrations of Hamas’s terrorism and cries of ‘intifada revolution.’

AP/Richard Vogel
A University of Southern California protester is detained by USC Department of Public Safety officers during an occupation at the campus' Alumni Park. AP/Richard Vogel

The violent campus takeover by protesters — some of them students, many not — has had the unintended effect of discrediting the premise underlying the protest. That premise is that the world is divided between oppressors and the oppressed, and that the oppressors are always evil and their victims already virtuous.

It’s a premise that runs against common sense and is readily rejected by anyone with more than a smidgen of knowledge of history. Common sense tells us that people who are treated badly often behave badly in return, which is why people are favorably impressed by those who rise above adversity. 

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