The Protesters Don’t Want to Be Popular

By Noah Rothman

Monday, January 08, 2024

 

Pivoting off anti-Israel protesters’ latest effort to inconvenience as many Americans as possible, Jewish Insider’s Josh Kraushaar wonders what it is that these demonstrators think they’re accomplishing with stunts like these.

 

This latest disruptive display is of a piece with similar efforts by Israel’s American critics to make themselves as unattractive as possible. Pro-Palestinian protesters have attempted to shut down air travel out of some of America’s busiest hubs. They made it their mission to ruin holiday celebrations and parades. They have terrorized tourists, harassed commuters, and generally organized themselves around the principle that “joy is canceled.”

 

Kraushaar wonders what these protesters think they’re achieving since their activism has had almost no effect on Americans’ lopsided support for Israel’s defensive war against Hamas. Nor has their activism “dampened support on Capitol Hill for the Jewish state in its war against Hamas.” Observers might be tempted to conclude that the demonstrations have backfired, but that conclusion is available only to those who believe the protesters are motivated by anything other than their own self-conception as enlightened outsiders.

 

If, however, we allow ourselves to be open to the conclusion that the protesters cherish their movement’s exclusivity more than its efficacy, their tactics make perfect sense. A mass movement is a movement that is willing to make concessions. It does not make the perfect the enemy of the good. It organizes itself around one principle and seeks a handful of achievable objectives, all of which can only be durably secured through incremental progress. Does that sound at all like these anti-Israel demonstrators? Indeed, does that describe any of today’s most visible protest movements?

 

There is satisfaction in making yourself into a recalcitrant, maximalist proponent of revolutionary social change — if only for the romance of it. These movements attract figures who reject compromise, which imposes a ceiling on their numbers. The larger the group, the more heterogenous its membership. Moderating its tactics to attract a broader but less committed membership would be to sacrifice its ideological homogeneity, yes. But perhaps more importantly, it would undermine the intoxicating group belief in its own uniqueness. That is especially true for movements organized around the notion that all of polite society is arrayed corruptly against you. If it is possible to make inroads with a broader, skeptical public, the movement’s central conceit is a lie.

 

The behavior that has typified the most aggressive anti-Israel protests doesn’t make much sense unless it is seen as an effort not to convince the uncommitted but to repel them. In that way, the movement can avoid the compromises associated with the conduct of politics, properly understood, and arrest its drift into a business and, eventually, a racket. By preserving its exclusivity, it can remain pure. Of course, that says a lot more about the protesters than their cause.