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Hamas invaded Israel 2023

  • Thread starter Thread starter McG
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Universities are essentially re-education camps where they are taught the hottest conspiracies.

Is this something you experienced, or simply something you read on the internet and believe it true? Because I haven’t seen it.

To qualify the very limited scope of my personal observations, I’m days away from finishing my second undergraduate degree. In the last twenty years I’ve taken over fifty individual classes in law, psychology, sociology, criminology, political science, history, and economics. Probably a couple other dribs and drabs in there I’m forgetting. I’ve had a number of specific courses on subjects including the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, national security and political dissent, and causes of war.

Many of my courses have looked at all of these subjects through a critical lens, involving questioning power structures, historical narratives, conventional understandings of how certain political, legal, and social orders came to be; but not once have I done a course and felt that it was ‘re-education’, or ‘conspiracies’ as you describe. There have been profs I’ve disagreed with - sometimes strongly - and it won’t surprise you that I can be vocal about it. My grades certainly didn’t suffer for it. Nor did I see contentious discussions stifled so long as students acted respectfully and in good faith.

Maybe what you’re describing happens elsewhere; I can’t speak to that. But I do think I can say that my school is pretty typical of what you’d find across Canada on our university campuses, and I’ve definitely been eyeballs deep in exactly the sorts of programs and courses where, were this going on, it would be found.

Food for thought.
 
Is this something you experienced, or simply something you read on the internet and believe it true? Because I haven’t seen it.
Thought this was an interesting and maybe relative clip.

 
Is this something you experienced, or simply something you read on the internet and believe it true? Because I haven’t seen it.

To qualify the very limited scope of my personal observations, I’m days away from finishing my second undergraduate degree. In the last twenty years I’ve taken over fifty individual classes in law, psychology, sociology, criminology, political science, history, and economics. Probably a couple other dribs and drabs in there I’m forgetting. I’ve had a number of specific courses on subjects including the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, national security and political dissent, and causes of war.

Many of my courses have looked at all of these subjects through a critical lens, involving questioning power structures, historical narratives, conventional understandings of how certain political, legal, and social orders came to be; but not once have I done a course and felt that it was ‘re-education’, or ‘conspiracies’ as you describe. There have been profs I’ve disagreed with - sometimes strongly - and it won’t surprise you that I can be vocal about it. My grades certainly didn’t suffer for it. Nor did I see contentious discussions stifled so long as students acted respectfully and in good faith.

Maybe what you’re describing happens elsewhere; I can’t speak to that. But I do think I can say that my school is pretty typical of what you’d find across Canada on our university campuses, and I’ve definitely been eyeballs deep in exactly the sorts of programs and courses where, were this going on, it would be found.

Food for thought.
Yes, I have experienced and seen it. In many ways.

My experience is that most young people today are severely socially-disabled. Social media and COVID devastated their development as social animals. They're constantly fixated on their phones and wearing earpods, insulating themselves from real life as much as possible. In class, they barely respond to professors, who often find themselves annoyed by silence moreso than by chaos.

The length of their development is dominated by algorithms that are provably demonstrated to be politically-oriented. Facebook's biases are well known, Twitter before Elon's takeover collaborated with the government to silence dissident voices, TikTok which is owned by China and programmed to teach kids the most civilizationally destructive thought patterns, dating apps and Instagram which absolutely wreck their perception of self and of the opposite-gender, etc.

They are less and less mature at older and older ages, as they are excessively coddled and protected from normal hardships and disagreement. They are all pushed into colleges, which means performance is over-emphasized, so they focus on memorizing the material so they can blurt it out, instead of analyzing it, questioning it, and truly understanding it. They perceive disagreement as personal attacks.

Dissidents are generally bullied into silence, lest they be ostracized.

Thus, while for you critical theories may not be problematic as an analytical tool, for easily-influenced youngsters they become the corner stones of destructive ideologies. Teaching gullible 21 year-olds that "Western civilization is nothing but a tyrannical, racist and xenophobic patriarchy" before they've had the chance to learn that their pampered lives have been made possible only by the providential existence of said civilization is a recipe for disaster.

Now, we also have to take into account our own biases. I know I am quite the dissident, and you are philosophically the bureaucrat's bureaucrat - no offence intended -, so two ends of a spectrum. Between your account that there is absolutely nothing to complain about and my doom & gloom experience, there is probably a middle ground, but I'd wager it's closer to what I describe, given one cannot ignore the well-documented influence of recent technological developments, as well as the long-run effects of Cultural-Marxist entryism on academia since the '60s.

I would caveat that the indoctrination, by most professors, is mostly accidental. It cannot be denied at the systemic level, though, when you look at the fact that faculties have gone from 60% liberal on average to more than 90%. Some faculties are more susceptible to these phenomena than others of course, STEM remaining vastly superior in quality to humanities (especially sociology, linguistics, psychology).
 
I’d be curious to hear you elaborate on your personal experiences of this in the university setting, given how different they must be from mine.
I had already written a wall of text, and I don't have the best memory so I didn't have too many on hand.

But I did think about it, and will get back to you on that.

And one last point that I forgot to mention, although it may have been implied, is that students themselves are somewhat responsible for their own indoctrination, as administrations consistently bend to their demands, in a manner that is consistent with the generalized "crisis of discipline" in our modern society.
 
I had already written a wall of text, and I don't have the best memory so I didn't have too many on hand.

But I did think about it, and will get back to you on that.
I understand. It’s just that most of the wall of text seemed both quite general, and well outside the specific setting and comment I was replying to. I wasn’t able to see much of your own specific experience in academia within that.
 
I understand. It’s just that most of the wall of text seemed both quite general, and well outside the specific setting and comment I was replying to. I wasn’t able to see much of your own specific experience in academia within that.
It's mostly taken from my personal experience, but personal experience is made up of thousands of micro interactions. It's not necessarily that one stands out, it's patterns of behaviour that are replicated from student to student.
 
Most Canadians could not find Gaza on a map, explain genocide, tell you anything about the Hague, Geneva Conventions, tell you anything about the historical aspect of the conflict. Also any opinion poll can be influenced by the questions asked, much less how and who you ask.

Israel is imperfect, but had a sizable peace movement prior to Oct 7th and Jewish groups that regularly took their own government to task and to court on behalf of Palestinians. When the Syrian civil war broke out, israel provided medical aid to anyone that could reach their border. When the Bam earthquake hit Iran, Israel was one of the first to offer to send rescue teams (refused by Iran) israel also offered help to Turkey even after it had turned away from them. Israel does want peace, clearly on acceptable terms for them.

Gaza was an opportunity for Palestinians to show the world what they can do and sadly they choose the path of blood and terror instead of creating economic opportunity. The WB is a slow economic and demographic war that really only one side can win and mostly at the expense of the other. Nothing there is going to be pretty. In my opinion the day of a viable Two State solution in the WB is dead and the Palestinians would use that State to attack Israel until it is destroyed and the Jews are dead or driven into the sea. So regardless of what the world thinks, either all the Jews are forced to leave or the majority of the Palestinians are forced to leave the WB. So pick your poison.
 
Historically, while Israel may commit offenses against Palestinians in the WB, the WB was and had been a spring board for Arab invasions, and as a result Israel occupied it, during the 6 Day War. Furthermore as @Colin Parkinson has pointed out several times above that Israelis outside of the fringe groups tend to take their government and population to task for excesses.


Then comes the Yom Kippur War, while Israel returned the seized Sinai to Egypt at the Camp David Peace Talks, as Egypt was the first to recognize Israel as a country and its right to exist, the other Arab nations didn’t at that point - which one can find no major fault with Israel seeing no other option to occupy buffer zones.

Note during the Yom Kippur war Israel had captured the entire Sinai, and was within 100km of Suez City, and was shelling Damascus Syria as the IDF had penetrated that far North.

Jordan stayed out of the Yom Kippur war, and so no change in boundary occurred to expand the West Bank.


It’s a mess, and will continue to be a mess, until they get sick of killing each other. But generally speaking the Palestinians have only themselves to blame as Israeli has shown that generally they’d prefer to live in peace.
 
Correction, they were actually within 100 km of Egypt's capital, Cairo.
Someone needs a refresher on the ME's geography 😉.
As I recall they had entered Suez City and then proceeded down the highway to Cario intending to do a victory lap in the main square at which point the USSR said we will do whatever we have to to protect our client State and Kissinger had to force the Israelis to stop. Egyptian Politicians paint it as a "victory" to their public, but internally they knew how close they had come to a very embarrassing defeat, hence the peace treaty. The Israelis are generally careful not to correct Egyptians on historical details of the fight in public.

The crossing of the canal I would say is likley the greatest triumphs of Arab arms in the 20th century and quite remarkable. The Egyptian infantry did a good job of defending and gained the respect of the Israelis. But the infantry was let down by their leadership and lack of support. In 1948 the Egyptian army was the only Arab force not involved in some sort of atrocity and actually protected Jewish Settlers from Palestinian mobs.
 
Correction, they were actually within 100 km of Egypt's capital, Cairo.
Someone needs a refresher on the ME's geography 😉.
Well considering Cairo is within 100km of Suez… but yes I will admit I typed that incorrectly
The IDF had also encircled most of the Egyptian operational Army at that point, and had the Russians not chosen to intervene, the Israelis would have captured both Cairo and Damascus.
 
@abduly85 check these resistance fighters out.

'Yemen, Yemen, make us proud': Anti-Israel protesters pledge support to Houthi militants


The Houthi want us to know “God is great, Death to America, death to Israel, damnation to the Jews, victory to Islam.” they just want the occupation to end.

Maybe they'll be giving swim lessons at the revolutionary summer school in Toronro.
 
@abduly85 check these resistance fighters out.

'Yemen, Yemen, make us proud': Anti-Israel protesters pledge support to Houthi militants


The Houthi want us to know “God is great, Death to America, death to Israel, damnation to the Jews, victory to Islam.” they just want the occupation to end.

Maybe they'll be giving swim lessons at the revolutionary summer school in Toronro.
Not mad at the Houthis. They're doing what they can to advance their cause. At least they're not engaging in mass murder (in this context) (to my knowledge).

If there are Houthi supporters in the West, however. Those people should be made to join them and never return.
 
Not mad at the Houthis. They're doing what they can to advance their cause. At least they're not engaging in mass murder (in this context) (to my knowledge).

If there are Houthi supporters in the West, however. Those people should be made to join them and never return.
They’re trying to, with their constant attacks on civilian shipping. They’re just mostly (not completely) unable to slip shots past US Navy missile defense. But absolutely the Houthis are trying to murder civilians en masse. Those ships aren’t crewed by Roombas.
 
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