When you've got something to say, show your face
When you’re talking behind a mask, the mask is the message.
It says, I’m not willing to stake my identity on my words.
Many of the students now protesting on college campuses have been covering most of their faces with medical masks. Journalists have reported that many protesters also refuse to give their names or even reveal identifying information, such as where they’re from.
Insistence on anonymity does not inspire support. It makes me think of internet trolls who hide behind pseudonyms while spouting bitterness. For them, the conflict is the point.
How many of the masked protesters are doing it for the thrill while trying to escape accountability?
The leaders of these protests have been speaking up without masks and saying their names. They should demand that all protesters make themselves known.
Accountability for your actions, whether fair or not, is integral to public protests. Civil rights protesters, whom the students are trying to emulate, knew they could be jailed and beaten for sit-ins at lunch counters and peaceful marches. Their bravery inspired others to join them and shamed their oppressors.
I have seen supporters of the current protesters arguing the masks are being worn to prevent transmission of disease. The students are outside. Are we to believe they have been wearing masks to classes and in their dorms, all day every day?
They are cleverly taking advantage of the moral high ground of mask-wearing established during the pandemic. In the process, they’re exacerbating the tension around masking, making it even less likely people will wear masks when we need them to.
The students want to be taken seriously, and while the tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza are serious, messages from people who hide their faces are not.
Well, its not because of disease, unless unemployment from professional jobs is a disease. It's because of NGOs like Canary Mission which "dox" and publicly identify student protestors by name which might foreclose lucrative job offers in finance,corporations and media from employers which might not like controversy or anti-semitism. You might or might not think this is "fair", depending on your polutics.
(For the record, I think kiddies who think this is about "colonialism" are horribly misguided, writing this from Tel Aviv, but Im conflicted as to whether "youthful misdecretions" should cost them working for Goldman Sachs or some white shoe law firm. I was young once, long ago. That being said, Gaza really isn't Vietnam.
I agree with the commenters who point out the difference in today's protest ramifications vs those of the past. AI and other technology puts today's protestors in a different kind of danger.
Having said that, I stand with the protestors. There. I said it. I am a huge fan of the Biden/Harris administration and applaud their great accomplishments, low unemployment, desperately needed infrastructure investment, support for Ukraine, and the list goes on. But our continued support of Israel's genocide in Gaza is beyond disgusting. If you provide the gun to the kid who mows down 20 classmates, are you not aiding and abetting murder? If after the kid mows down 20 classmates, you hand him more ammunition, are you not also the murderer?
The argument that opposing Israel's attacks on Gaza is antisemitic is a ridiculous stance.