Everything needs to be about everything all the time.
That’s the real meaning of wokeism and the idea underlying intersectionality. It’s related to the old feminist demand that “the personal is the political.” It’s behind the totalitarian phrase “silence is violence,” which has started to transform into the dystopian “private support is violent.”
Why did Harvard and Penn lose their presidents after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist invasion into Israel? Because universities had decided — upon George Floyd’s death, if not earlier — that they, like every other left-leaning institution in America, had a duty to speak up on every issue of “injustice” or “oppression” everywhere.
When they didn’t speak up quickly against mass murder and rape of innocent Israelis, they were exposed as hypocrites.
But this painful lesson didn’t deter left-wing students from demanding that everyone, however unconnected, blare their allegiance to its favored causes. So town councils in college towns started debating resolutions in support of Palestinians in Gaza.
In Massachusetts, the towns of Cambridge, Somerville, and Amherst all discussed resolutions endorsing a ceasefire in Gaza — that is, demanding Israel suspend its attempt to destroy the terrorist group Hamas and secure the return of Israeli hostages. In Somerville, the council passed, 9-2, a weaker resolution simply calling for peace. Quite the bold and relevant stance for an American town: we support peace in the Middle East.
Somerville City Council President Ben Ewen-Campen explained why Israeli counterterrorism measures and Gazan humanitarian problems are the proper concern of the government of Somerville. “This is something that our City Council and other city councils do to advocate for policy changes at the state level, at the federal level,” Ewen-Campen told the local press. “This is not a resolution that we’re sending to foreign countries. We’re sending it to our own government, asking them and supporting a policy of ending this war. … I want our community to feel respected and heard on this incredibly difficult and painful issue.”
North Carolina, for some reason, has seen the biggest spate of ceasefire debates. Carrboro, near the Research Triangle, voted 4-3 to call on Congress to back a ceasefire.
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Chapel Hill’s City Council turned down a massive student-led effort to pass a ceasefire resolution.
Raleigh’s City Council is now enduring marathon 3.5-hour meetings because hundreds of speakers show up to demand Israel stand down — the city is considering cutting each speaker’s time to one minute.
