Today parallels tumult of 1968 for Democrats
Protest over US foreign policy is again being dismissed as an electionyear distraction for Democrats, David Smith and Abene Clayton, of The Observer, explain.
WHEN student Lauren Brown first heard the commotion, including firecrackers, she assumed the sounds were coming from nearby frat houses. Then, about 4am, she heard helicopters. Later, she awoke to news and footage of a violent attack by proIsraeli protesters on an encampment set up to oppose the war in Gaza.
‘‘It was hard to watch,’’ said Brown, 19, a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose dorm was near the encampment. ‘‘And I wondered where the police were. I saw posts from people talking about them being teargassed and maced and campus security was just watching.’’ Eventually, a large police contingent did arrive and forcibly cleared the sprawling encampment. More than 200 people were arrested. Similar scenes of tumult played out this month at about 40 universities and colleges in the United States, resulting in clashes with police, mass arrests and a directive from Joe Biden to restore order. The unrest has unfolded coast to coast on a scale not seen since the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s. The president has cause for concern as the issue threatens his youth vote, divides his Democratic Party and gives Donald Trump’s Republicans an opening to push allegations of antiSemitism and depict Biden’s America as spiralling out of control.
There are inescapable parallels with 1968, a tumultuous year of assassinations and antiwar demonstrations that led to chaos at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Democrats lost the White House to Republican ‘‘law and order’’ candidate Richard Nixon.
Now, there are fears that history will repeat itself as antiwar protests again convulse university campuses, and the Democratic National
Convention again heads to Chicago ahead of November’s presidential election. Hundreds of thousands of people registered versions of ‘‘uncommitted’’ protest votes against him in the Democratic primary.
Bernie Sanders, an independent US senator from Vermont, this month told CNN ‘‘I am thinking back and other people are making this reference that this may be Biden’s Vietnam.’’
Drawing parallels with president Lyndon Johnson, whose domestic achievements were overshadowed by the Vietnam War and who did not seek reelection in 1968, Sanders said ‘‘I worry very much that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated not just young people but a lot of the Democratic base, in terms of his views on Israel and this war.’’ The ferocity of Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 attack, and the US’ ‘‘ironclad’’ support for Israel, ignited protests by students at
Columbia University in New York that rapidly spread to other campuses across the country. Students built encampments in solidarity with Gaza, demanding a ceasefire and that universities divest from Israel.
University administrators, who have tried to balance the right to protest and complaints of violence and hate speech, have increasingly called on police to clear out the demonstrators before yearend exams and graduation ceremonies. More than 2500 arrests have been made this month, some during violent confrontations with police, giving rise to accusations of use of excessive force.
Biden, who has faced pressure from all political sides over
Gaza, has attempted to thread the needle: ‘‘We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent. But neither are we a lawless country. We’re a civil society, and order must prevail.’’
Yaya Anantanang, a student organiser at George Washington University in Washington, told Politico ‘‘we do not support Biden. We do not capitulate to the liberal electoral politics, because, quite frankly, the liberation of Palestinians will not come through a Democratic president but by organising and ensuring that there is full divestment within all of these institutions’’.
Such views ring alarm bells for those who fear that even a small dip in support from Biden’s coalition could make all the difference in a tight election. Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, who was gunned down while running for president in 1968, urged the protesters to support Biden despite their misgivings. ‘‘We need their votes now,’’ she said. ‘‘They might not love Joe Biden’s policies but the choice is not between Joe Biden and their ideal. The choice is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who’s going to institute the Muslim ban on day one.’’
Republicans, meanwhile, are seeking to exploit the unrest for political gain. They have accused Biden of being soft on what they say is antiSemitic sentiment among the protesters, and Democrats of indulging ‘‘wokeness’’ in America’s education system.
New Hampshire Republican governor Chris Sununu cited the socalled ‘‘woke’’ education. ‘‘The crisis you’re seeing on college campuses is a result of the colleges themselves not having and pushing the right education, the right discussion in the classrooms, in the right way.
They play this woke game where they don’t want to touch an issue. ‘‘They create a vacuum of information. The students get bad information and propaganda. They’re effectively being used by terrorist organisations overseas to push an antiAmerican, antiIsraeli message, which is just awful. It’s not a difference of opinion. It’s complete misinformation.’’ Images of disarray on campus have played endlessly on Fox News and in other rightwing media, feeding a narrative of instability and lawlessness under Biden while conveniently sucking political oxygen away from Trump’s own negatives. Ezra Levin, cofounder and coexecutive director of the progressive movement Indivisible, said the antiwar protests distracted the public from stories about Trump’s hushmoney trial or extremist policies. ‘‘All of those [Trump] stories . . . received a fraction of the coverage of the protests against [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s massacre of Gazans.
‘‘That’s problematic for those of us who want to see Joe Biden reelected and want to see Democrats win because every day that we spend talking about this immoral war that US tax dollars are supporting is a day we’re not talking about the dangerous, creeping fascism presented by the Republican Party.’’
Still, Democrats hope that, with the academic year soon drawing to a close, students will head home for the summer and the energy will disperse. Donna Brazile, former interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, doubts that the issue will be decisive in November.
‘‘We’re going to have an October surprise every month, and we cannot predict which of the many surprises will actually drive the election.’’ she said. ‘‘A month ago, it was abortion was going drive the election. Now it’s the campus protesters. Next month it’ll be something else.’’ Brazile also defended the students’ right to protest as past generations have against the Vietnam War, South African apartheid, the Iraq war and, during the most recent election campaign, police brutality. ‘‘These are students who are using their First Amendment right to advocate for change in the Middle East.’’ — Guardian News and Media 2024
. . . this may be Biden’s Vietnam
Bernie Sanders