The term “gaslighting” is used to describe psychological manipulation that makes the victim question reality.
When a CNN chyron read “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful Protests After Police Shooting” while a reporter stood outside a building engulfed in flames during the Kenosha, Wisconsin, riots in 2020, that was gaslighting.
And when Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York referred to the anti-Israel protests erupting in college campuses all over the country as “peaceful,” that was gaslighting, too.
During an Earth Day event on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd in Triangle, Virginia: “It is especially important that we remember the power of young people shaping this country today, of all days, as we once again witness the leadership of those peaceful student-led protests on campuses like Columbia, Yale, Berkeley and many others.”
AOC is literally promoting the antisemitism on college campuses!
AOC: It is especially important that we remember the power of young people shaping this country today, of all days, as we once again witness the leadership of those peaceful, student-led protests on campuses like… pic.twitter.com/UqnFQVfWRN
— The Silent Majority (@siIentmajority) April 22, 2024
Really?
Pretending that chants like, “We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!” and “Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets, too!” are simply “peaceful” displays of youthful activism is like describing the 9/11 terrorists as just “some people did something.”
“We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground…Hamas we love you, we support your rockets too”
Do “peaceful protestors” celebrate destroying entire cities and praise terrorists who fire rockets at civilians? pic.twitter.com/QgLtv4s879
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) April 22, 2024
Amid anti-Israel protests, Jewish students at Columbia University don’t feel safe.
It’s become so dangerous that students were forced out of the classroom.
Let’s be clear: these are not peaceful protests, these are antisemitic mobs. pic.twitter.com/mHwOOireTJ
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) April 23, 2024
“Ceasefire” protesters at @Columbia:
— say Hamas makes them proud and should k!ll more people
— call for ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel while supporting Arab colonialism, chanting “Palestine is Arab”
They claim this as a “peaceful protest.”pic.twitter.com/j0o2er4cvb
— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) April 20, 2024
And then there’s Khymani James, a junior and leader of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group, who thinks “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
James made the inflammatory comments during a January meeting with university officials that he live-streamed on social media, according to The Daily Wire.
James has been one of the primary organizers behind the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that has taken over part of Columbia’s campus in New York City in recent weeks to protest Israeli policies. The encampment has drawn criticism, with many Jewish students saying they feel intimated and unsafe on campus.
In the video, James, who goes by “he/she/they” pronouns, defended an Instagram post where he warned Zionists not to try to “meet up and fight” because he “fights to kill.”
Meet Khymani James, a student leader of Columbia University’s anti-Israel Gaza Solidarity Encampment who openly states that “Zionists don’t deserve to live”
He made the comments during a meeting with the school that he live-streamed.
We put together the highlights: pic.twitter.com/JFlxnRkNC2
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) April 25, 2024
When a university representative questioned if his comments were “problematic,” James responded with a stern, “No.”
Horrifyingly, James went on to say he feels “very comfortable, very comfortable, calling for those people to die.”
James equated Zionists, the movement supporting a Jewish homeland in Israel, with “white supremacists” and said that just as “Haitian slaves” had to kill their “masters” to gain independence, violence against Zionists could be justified as self-defense.
“If an individual who identifies as a Zionist threatens my physical safety in person, i.e., puts their hands on me, I am going to defend myself, and in that case scenario, it may come to a point where I don’t know when to stop,” James stated calmly.
“Zionists, along with all white supremacists, need to not exist,” James said in a long, drawn-out rant after the interview had concluded.
“And so, be glad, be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists,” he said.
Would this “leader” survive more than a week living in Gaza?
Yes: 2% (2 Votes)
No: 98% (124 Votes)
“Zionists don’t deserve to live comfortably,” he reiterated. “… Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
The left used to be considered the “tolerant” side. Five years after a group of KKK members chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” during the riots in Charlottesville, establishment media mouthpieces were still writing about the horror of it.
But now, chanting about burning Tel Aviv to the ground is considered “peaceful.”
Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk may do their best to gaslight her audience, but fortunately, we do not live in the 1930s.
The internet may have many faults, but displaying evil and hatred for what they are, not how the CNN chyrons or AOC’s rhetoric spin them, is definitely one of its benefits.
By branding these unambiguously anti-Semitic rallies as mere “peaceful protests,” Ocasio-Cortez and her allies are invalidating and minimizing the dangers of this hostile environment. It sends the message that Jewish students’ concerns about their security do not matter and that they should accept the torrent of threats as par for the course and keep their fingers crossed that the deranged rhetoric doesn’t go a step further.
By downplaying the bald threats against “Zionists” as just the rantings of overzealous but “peaceful” students, AOC is giving tacit approval to the climate of hatred and insecurity that people like James are fomenting.
American universities have become a tinder box where one match can set off a conflagration.
And if that happens, it will be on the hands of gaslighters like Ocasio-Cortez.
