#by all means boycott Disney or universal because you hate them

[b0x]

i hate that post that's like “we would've gotten a better trilogy if they'd just let rian johnson write all three films than playing hot potato with jj” like i get the point it's trying to make but you're forgetting that rj was fighting tooth and nail for the tlj r*ylo narrative since day 1 so you do realise we would've just gotten the same trilogy as we got now.......

further Thoughts on the trilogy as a whole and a few troc spoilers under the cut

also you KNOW that even if jj COULD have had a hand in saving it... there’s no saving a screenplay written by the guy who did the justice league films

No Comment. No Thoughts. Head Empty. everything post tfa was doomed from the start

have you SEEN the screenwriters for tfa? THAT’S why that one was so good, THAT’S why tfa succeeded as an excellent reboot of a long-dormant franchise. kasdan and arndt and jj should've been on for ALL THREE, and if they couldn’t, then a hiatus was the way to fucking go. rian never should have Touched it, never should have even Looked in its direction.

tfa had the essence of sw BECAUSE the essence of sw wrote it! tlj and tros isn’t sw!!!! 

they rly just tried to make Anakin..... 2! with kylo... but somehow... even Worse. you can’t make an anakin story Without showing kylo’s motives and morals - oh, except, you Did show his motives and morals, and they were in no way redeeming whatsoever! anakin had a whole ARC of complexity that allows for endless discussion on morality and justifiability that led him to earn his redemption. all kylo had was a blood tie to han and leia, which!!!! if anything!!!!!! made his motives and morals WORSE, knowing that he had the most IDEAL most loving and perfect upbringing and he still chose the dark side. that makes any love received from han or leia or luka or even fucking rey completely insignificant because we ALREADY KNOW what it means to him. all of this shit was so worthless!!!!!!!! fuck!

and i have a lot to say about rian johnson because i Cannot for the life of me believe the guy behind BRICK (2005) was taken on for tlj, WHILE TFA WASN’T EVEN FINISHED YET. i really didn’t think this had to be said but that is just NOT how you make a Trilogy. that is how you make Three Separate Films and guess what! that is exactly what we got! and it honestly saddens me to think that the guy behind the beautiful 6 minute music video ‘oh baby’ by lcd sound system, inspired by some of his greatest work in looper (and even brick!), would then take the absolute worst of his worst and apply that to a star wars franchise that desperately needed his best. and there’s something hilarious about that too, that you have this huge sandbox FULL of belief-suspending ridiculousness and STILL somehow make it fail? make it atrocious? that takes skill. it’s like that one post that was like “you have to ACTUALLY put EFFORT into making something this bad” like it’s no longer silly mistakes or lacklustre energy, this was ACTIVE sabotage.

the fact rian Had the Understanding of the core concepts of star wars right in his hands, but somehow completely missed the entire point of them? if you look at the films he screened to his story group during the development of tlj... this handful of culturally and historically significant war films that just seem like he screened for aesthetic and reference purposes only instead of actually exploring and analysing the importance and criticism of the exonerating war propaganda and racist source materials and using these films to inspire the actual groundwork of some of the root themes of current climates and today’s culture in a sw universe... i bet big bucks on the fact that twelve o clock high was only screened to inspire the air battle on crait (red salt planet) and because of ‘VIII Bomber Command’ because ha ha hee hee tlj is episode VIII and hoo hoo hoo *you’ve been gnomed.mp4* 

the general rule is this: when reading ANY report on tlj and tros and something like “the characters came first” is mentioned, just exit out the window, it’s already a botched article/thinkpiece.

i’m also thinking a lot about how arndt translated his first draft for tfa into a script for eight months and said he needed 18 more, which disney and jj said no to, so he left, and IMMEDIATELY after jj kept saying how relieved he was that the release date was delayed and gave him more time that he also needed. like.. you had your lesson then and there. did they learn from it? *disney forcing rian to write tlj at the same time as tfa was still being made* No!

i am ALSO thinking about how they had considered fincher, brad bird, jon favreau, del toro, even getting development suggestions by spielberg.......... and rian johnson is who they called up for tlj.... my head is... empty.

just give the fucking thing to taika waititi he understands the nuances of the socio-political climates of sw’s narratives built around a guise of a fun sci-fi fantasy adventure-drama. he understands. that’s literally the very definition of his style of writing and directing. Makes You Think Why The Mandalorian Is A Hit.... they already gave him 2 mandalorian episodes just give him the whole franchise i cant take it anymore. 

AND NOW THEY’RE GIVING RIAN JOHNSON A WHOLE NEW TRILOGY? RIAN? RIAN JOHNSON? THEY’RE GIVING HIM A WHOLE NEW TRILOGY AFTER WHAT HAPPENED... HERE. SURE.. OKAY . ALRIGHT. IT’S HONESTLY MIND-BLOWING. THE THOUGHT PROCESS THAT GOES INTO CONSECUTIVE DECISIONS SUCH AS THIS. like i would LOVE to see footage of the board meeting for this. no sarcasm i am GENUINELY curious to hear what was said to greenlight this. i have GOT to know what post tros board meetings about this will be like. 

anyway! op of that post! i will be thinking about you when the new rj trilogy drops!

what’s worse about this whole trilogy is that.. they Had it. they had it in the bag with tfa. they HAD the original idea they HAD the power to make a sw trilogy set to current climates JUST LIKE THE PREVIOUS TRILOGIES DID, cos that’s what sw is all about! what it was ALWAYS about! a space opera reflective of current times and climates. but disney turned it into a Keeping Up With The Skywalkers reality tv show that’s nothing more than a sci-fi fantasy light show and vfx flex to keep the brand alive, and personally, i think that’s ultimately one of the reasons it’s so hated and why it failed (of course rampant misogyny/sexism, racism, homophobia under the guise of geek culture within the sw community and in the production itself is a whole other discussion and is another humongous part of why it’s hated and why it failed)

and it’s why hamill had every right to criticise tlj the way he did with rotj, why boyega and isaac and ridley had Every right to their commentary on their distaste of the second and third instalments. how the only reason they’d rescind what they said was due to their contracts. how their silence was necessary to squeeze every last dollar out of consumers because god forbid a potential boycott due to their own star’s “controversial” (Correct) judgements and disapprovals

they really had it in the bag..

a female protagonist who could be a chosen one regardless of her blood and family ties, a protagonist that reflected the importance and validity of found family, and the idea that Anyone can be a “Skywalker”, a symbol of hope and a fighter for justice and goodness and love in the world, especially in the darkest of times... a young woman being just as powerful, as Chosen, as essential as Luke and Anakin were... a narrative that couldve been commentary on the necessity of women needing to do double the work, make double the effort, to earn the same spot of her counterparts. and with the second and third instalments, especially NOW, with the growth and vocalisation of the MeToo movement, the narrative of strength to speak out against abusers, to fight back and to thrive, a symbol of justice, to teach that men such as kylo who refuse consequence, who actively and soberly choose violence and manipulation for the strengthening of the self, who will ignore and deny all opportunities to better the self, to know their guilt, to make up for their actions, are the ones who are irredeemable. that people like him are not owed any time or understanding or belief in, when that belief perpetuates the violent and oppressive nature they are indefinitely attracted to and make themselves defined by.

a black hero raised by violence and refusing to be defined by it and unlocking the force within as a symbol of that strength within over encompassing goodness, to have a hero that breaks that harmful narrative stereotype that black characters have had for decades and still continue to do so, to have a voice and a hero that fights with love and kindness, that is able to find family and support in a place beyond what he believes he is allowed to have, the significance of a hero being deemed a “traitor”, a term that holds weight in the shame of seeking your own independence and identity, versus the cathartic empowerment of thriving in the independence you make for yourself in the end. a black hero that defeats his oppressors, oppressors that belong to a policing fascist regime, a faction that has always from the very beginning been a depiction of nazis, of authoritarian nationalism. 

a canonical gay latino man freedom fighter, being the best in his career as a literal symbol of hope for the resistance, a literal symbol of the climates for lgbt folk in regards to resisting those same fascist nazi regimes, resisting laws against lgbt existence, lgbt employability, lgbt success. a man who grew into a legacy of heroism, surrounded by it, something that could have been powerful poignant commentary on the necessity to sacrifice lives so others like his didn’t have to, the very narrative to fight for a world that the innocents and the ones he loves could have peace in, could have a future in, could Exist in. poe fights in the skies because he knew damn well the effect of believing in someone that is human, like you, instead of a force that is bigger than anything you could ever know or believe in. poe brings humanity and realism to an otherwise fanatical universe of magic and religion and chaos of endless war that means nothing, that is based on nothing. poe is commentary on fighting a fight that you have no choice but to fight, that you are forced to fight from birth just for the very act of Existing. his humanity and realism is a significant grounding necessity for our two protagonist heroes and it is appalling that he’d just be discarded the way he was, shallowly played off as sideline comic relief, much like lgbt narratives and characters are expressed in pretty much ANY media today, so it comes as no surprise. 

the three most vital narratives that should have been told in this trilogy but no of course not (disney voice) gimme my Fackin MANEY. it’s the silence of marginalised voices cleverly disguised under hollow face-value representation.

honestly, even rey being blood-related to palpatine as his granddaughter was such a strong and perfect set-up for The Narrative That Could’ve Been TM, but instead they had palpatine make it a whole weird pseudo-marriage thing that was just so. backwards and unbelievably shocking that it was in a 2019 era star wars film.

wow marriage story and the rise of skywalker really is the same movie huh

yes we wanted a grey jedi protagonist hero that gets tempted by the dark side but this was the absolute worst way that could’ve been explored. like if they were just gonna recycle old characters and old storylines and make them worse they could’ve at least looked at darth maul or asajj ventress and the nightsisters

and NO WONDER oscar looked so DEFEATED every time finnpoe was mentioned cos he fought for that shit tooth and nail and they? ? ? they gave him a funny ha ha hee hee hoo hoo straight flirt scene? ? with like his ex or something, where they imply they get back together? COMPLETELY destroying the ENTIRE narrative of his character that was so lovingly built and developed in the Official Canon Comic Series About Him ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

NO WORDS. there are NO WORDS. head EMPTY. no not even empty there's NO HEAD at all i am BEHEADED

finn had NOTHING in this film. Nothing. how are you gonna make him a joint-protag with rey and give him Nothing? 

anyone with brain cells knows that what finn truly was trying to tell rey the entire film was that he was force sensitive, i will take this to my grave, and that should’ve built up to this grand reveal where they empower each other and take down palpatine and kylo as one, as the joint-protagonists they were Literally Fucking Written And Built Up To Be. they gave EVERY antagonist to REY. what was the POINT. rey had her significant clash with kylo across two films, hell, even in this one (before the Final one), tros was the penultimate film about her family, her bloodline, so her significant final battle should have been with palpatine a la rotj. the person who DESERVED to clash with and take down kylo once and for all was FINN, even a TODDLER would understand WHY. 

but considering everything, i would take the thing finn was trying to tell her the entire film being that he loves her ANY DAY if it meant whatever the fuck we got instead Never Happened.

finn got made general and not only was it a blink-and-you-miss bit but it adds NOTHING, yes it’s something to celebrate and of Course he deserves it, but it holds zero significance to him as a character. like i mentioned earlier, when han was made general, that never defined him. he was still han solo and it took a Dozen other significant scenarios and twists to make him a significant and vital memorable character. han solo isn’t known for “being a general”. he’s known for being han fucking solo, a critical puzzle piece in the taking down of the empire, a scamp-turned-deeply-loyal friend and lover, a man who not only got his own personal storyline concluded to the level it deserved to be (the repercussions of his bounty hunter life, the importance of the falcon, his relationships with lando, luke, and leia, his triumph over his captors even when it was luke and leia who freed him). 

side note, this was maybe the one thing that tfa screwed up, the entire point and development of the original trilogy, it sort of felt a bit moot with how they put a “twist” on han, leia and luke’s relationship, especially when it came to kylo. but i think there are some forgivable aspects to it for the sake of the new trio, and that’s why those executive decisions kind of Worked! this is, of course, for another discussion bc this is about the new trilogy.

leia IS known for being a general because part of her entire storyline revolves around it and the significance of it!!! which is why finn being made general just feels so... i don’t know! just completely disrespectful, to both him as a character, and to generals who are defined by this position (such as, hello!!!!! poe!!! poe fucking dameron!!!! a man raised by the resistance!!! a man who’s entire life and prior legacy was entirely dedicated to the resistance!!!! him being made general MEANT something). it’s like rubbing salt in the wound of the fact that finn has been discarded as the protagonist he was meant to be, the story, development and conclusion he never got, just to slap general on him and call it a day and then write about his actual development in a novel that 3/4ths of the ppl who watch the films will never read. 

and that's just the core story stuff!!! do NOT get me started on the general lore proposed in this shit. i’m talking about the force ghost nonsense and the convenience of some of the timing choices (rewriting the way death works in sw, claiming that rey “didn’t really die/wasn’t really dead” since she didn’t fade which in itself completely destroys the entire plot they were going for with the resurrection scene, the timing of the fades themselves bullshitted for “dramatic cinematic purposes”), the entire palpatine storyline, the bullshit with snoke and the lack of explanation, all these one-off characters that have the lore capacity of an overwatch character when instead they could have developed the ones that already existed and had the opportunity to be fleshed out and CARED about

the FACT that HUX (hux!!!!!!!!!) had a more interesting storyline in all three films with a total screentime of maybe 10 minutes than these one-offs whose only purpose is to stroke the cock of sw nostalgia seekers and lore aficionados. to make these characters so inaccessible that to fully appreciate them, fans have to dive into hundreds of different novels and comics and games and whatnot. like if you make it so that the Only way someone can experience a character’s full essence is by reading their wiki page then you’ve failed in creating them, in writing them, in including them, in using them, in whatever them. you’ve just failed as a creator.

and the ONLY reason hux got a reaction (a barebones reaction but a reaction nonetheless) out of me was because they essentially just turned him into phasma 2 which is SO telling of the climate of this trilogy.

it’s a recycled trilogy. that’s all it is. it’s a recycled series of films where tfa’s originality was completely entirely scrapped and ignored because rian wanted to write his personal fanfiction more than he wanted to continue the story he was given, and did everything he could to insert that whenever he could, and kennedy, of course, let him, because she realised giving herself indulging content other than fifty shades and radfem articles that she could jerk off to was more important than telling a critical story where its wonder and valuable, influential morals could’ve stayed in this generation’s minds for years to come.

if you want to watch tros just watch the prequel trilogy instead you'll get the same story except actually good.

[iamnmbr3]

Nick Spencer Is Wrong: Hydra IS A Nazi Organization

I study 20th century history, and one of my particular areas is Nazism and the Third Reich and I’d like to explain why despite what Nick Spencer, the writer of Marvel Comics’ recent, deplorable Hydra!Cap storyline is trying to claim, HYDRA ABSOLUTELY IS A NAZI ORGANIZATION. 

So, let’s start out with a little history lesson from the Marvel Directory: 

“The man most responsible for the creation of HYDRA was Baron Wolfgang Yon Strucker, the Prussian aristocrat who served as wing commander of Nazi Germany’s infamous Death’s-Head Squadron, and later as leader of its Blitzkrieg Squad of commandos.”

I’ve talked a lot about what doesn’t make you a Nazi, but guess what goes right at the very top of the list of things that do make you a Nazi? 

1) BEING PART OF THE ORIGINAL NAZI PARTY SERVING THE NAZI REGIME AND HELPING THEM CARRY OUT THEIR NAZI IDEOLOGY MAKES YOU A NAZI!!!

Like that is so basic, I should not have to be explaining that being a Nazi makes you a Nazi. But apparently that’s where we’re at. That’s it. End of discussion. I’m going to keep going, because there are actually more Nazi parallels I’d like to discuss, and counterarguments I’d like to address, but just to be clear, let me reiterate: HYDRA IS A NAZI ORGANIZATION. An organization founded by members of the Nazi party supports Nazism. An organization that never repudiates Nazi ideology or its Nazi members, supports Nazism. People who work for an organization founded by members of the Nazi party support Nazism and Nazi ideologies. 

“Hold it,” some of you are probably saying. “I hate to rain on your parade, but actually in some continuities HYDRA is thousands of years old, and thus predates the Nazi party, so Nick Spencer is actually right when he says they’re technically not Nazis.” 

No he’s not. Even if HYDRA predated the Nazis, it was still affiliated with them. If anything, this would just mean that in this version of history, the Nazis were HYDRA rather than the other way around. And guess what. THAT DOESN’T CHANGE ANYTHING! That would still mean that HYDRA supported the views held by the Nazi party. Whether the Nazi party emerged from HYDRA or vice verse doesn’t really matter. Either way, the two are inextricably linked. Either way, the two represented the same things. Either way, in our modern view, the two are part and parcel of the same sick world view. 

Hitler hardly came up with anything new and original. He and his followers basically just took pre-existing racist views and violent ideas, called it Nazism, slapped a Swastika on the brand, and started making speeches about it. That doesn’t make the ideology any less deplorable. It doesn’t make the people who supported purging “inferior races” any less disgusting because at one point they weren’t called Nazis. Now, those ideas are called Nazism. Even if they didn’t start out being called by that name, those ideologies are now part of what we call Nazi ideology. It isn’t the name that’s the problem. It’s what that name stands for. .

Ok. Now let’s change tack for a moment and look at some real world facts. Even if HYDRA were “technically not Nazis” (which is totally wrong) HYDRA is in the modern consciousness connected to Nazism. In the MCU the First Avenger made it clear that HYDRA originated as the Nazi science division. Red Skull, who in the comic continuity helped found HYDRA, is one of Marvel’s oldest and most recognizable Nazi villains - often shown wearing a swastika in older comics. We think of HYDRA and the Nazis together. Marvel has gone out of their way to link these two organizations. Spencer can’t pretend that Marvel hasn’t tried to create a connection between HYDRA and the Nazis time and time again and that it is reasonable for the two people to connect the two. Especially in the current political climate, closing his eyes to this is extremely distasteful. 

“Wait a minute,” you say. “Haven’t you said that just because a creator wants to draw a parallel between the Nazis and a fictional organization, it doesn’t mean that parallel actually exits if it isn’t manifested in the organizations’ actual ideology?” Well yes, but 1) that doesn’t mean people won’t take it this way, and that creators shouldn’t be aware of the connection they are evoking, 2) especially when that connection is not some vague aesthetic but a literal connection to eh Nazi party and more importantly 3) that only applies if the organization in question exists in a fictional universe where Nazis don’t exist.

That’s not the case here. Marvel sets its stories more or less int he real world. World War II still happened. The Nazis existed in their continuity. Every Hydra member that has ever put on a swastika is knowingly aligning themselves with Nazism. Every individual who has ever worked for these villains or for the organization they controlled or its split offs, is knowingly joining ranks with a Nazi affiliated organization. 

So yeah. In summary. HYDRA is a Nazi organization. Making Steve Rogers, a character conceived by two Jewish creators to make be explicitly anti-Nazi, is an utter betrayal of the character and deeply offensive to Jews and other minorities, to people of slavic descent, to LGBTQ+ individuals, to the many people who gave their lives and their health fighting the NAZIS and their descendants, to the millions of victims of the Nazi regime and their descendants, and to any decent person who stands against hate. 

Similarly, making Magneto, a Jewish man, HYDRA is incredibly disrespectful to the Jewish community and to the character. 

These decisions are especially upsetting and tasteless in these dark times when white supremacists, rightists, and neo-Nazis (all sister ideologies despite the fact that they go by different names) are experiencing a resurgence in power. 

Captain America was created to inspire people to stand up to these ideologies, to remind us that at it’s core American patriotism should represent tolerance and openness. We need characters like that now more than ever.

Nick Spencer, you are wrong and your apologism disgusts me. 

I would urge everyone to make their voices heard. Boycott Secret Empire content and all its tie ins. Contact Marvel. Contact Disney. Tell them this is not what we want. 

Say NO to Hydra Cap! 

[loudlytransparenttrash]

The truth about ‘Students for Justice on Palestine’ on campus

If you are on an American campus, you are probably familiar with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) because of their aggressive anti-Israel demonstrations and weird political theater. The organization started as a small, radical anti-Israel group in the hub of student radicalism, UC Berkeley, in October 2000, in response to the Palestinian Intifada which began at almost the same time. Within a year, chapters had spread to over 25 other campuses, including Yale and Princeton. By 2005, chapters had sprouted on campuses across the country and today they have a presence in over 200 of our universities. 

When the SPJ organizes events at your campus, be prepared for an anti-Israel assault and be even further prepared for your liberal classmates to support and even join in on this blatant antisemitism and watch them get away with it because it’s coming from those who can do no wrong - Muslim students. The SJP fomented new radicalism about the Palestinian-Israel conflict and gave a new energy and visibility to Palestinian and Hamas propaganda. The SJP have moved far beyond legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and its policies into complete delegitimization of the Jewish state by organizing and sponsoring anti-Israel events and campaigns more actively than any other group in the nation. 

SJP's declared mission is to “promote the cause of justice” but instead they echo much of what is said by the Hamas terrorists who seek to permanently end Israel's existence as a sovereign Jewish state. The reason for this is simple: SJP was in essence formed to help spread anti-Semitism through the halls of American academia; to wage a campus war against Israel by providing rhetorical support for the Jew-hatred undergirding the Second Palestinian Intifada which Hamas and allied terrorists had launched in late September 2000. 

SJP's principal founder, Hatem Bazian, has quoted approvingly from a famous Islamic hadith which calls for the violent slaughter of Jews and which appears in Hamas's founding charter. “In the Hadith, the Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews. Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him!” He once spoke at a fundraising event for a Hamas front group that the U.S. government later shut down due to the organization's ties to Islamic terrorism. Notwithstanding Hamas's calls for the mass murder and genocide of Jews, the website of SJP's UC Berkeley chapter describes Hamas not as a terrorist group but rather as “a vast social organization.”  It is commonplace for SJP's rank-and-file members to support, or to at least decline to condemn, Islamic terrorism. At a UC San Diego talk by David Horowitz, a SJP student refused to condemn the terror group Hamas and said if she admitted her support for Hamas then she would be arrested by Homeland Security. Horowitz offered to rephrase the question and asked, “the head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes all Jews gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt them all down globally, are you for or against it?” The SJP shows her true colors by admitting she is for it yet everyone just shrugs their shoulders because she’s Muslim so it’s okay for her to want Jews wiped out. It’s Islamohobia to question her and all those within her group.  The most significant and influential supporter of SJP is American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which was established in 2005 by none other than SJP co-founder Hatem Bazian. At least eight of AMP's current board members, key officials, and close allies were previously members of now-defunct Islamic extremist groups that funded terrorist activities. 

SJP’s national convention was sponsored by the Islamic Association for Palestine, a now-defunct, Illinois-based front group for Hamas. The conference featured keynote speaker Sami Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor who served as the North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization whose objectives include the destruction of Israel, the elimination of all Western influences in the Middle East by means of armed warfare, and the convergence of all Muslim countries into a single Islamic caliphate. 

A number of SJP chapters hold annual commemorations in honor of the late Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group which Islam expert Robert Spencer has described as “the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda.” Al-Banna was an inveterate Jew-hater who firmly opposed the creation of Israel in 1948 and strove to forge a formal alliance with Hitler and Mussolini when World War II broke out. Al-Banna was also the mentor of Haj Amin Al-Husseni, the pro-Hitler father of Palestinian nationalism.

More recently, SJP chapters across U.S campuses have begun to drink saltwater to show their soladarity with Palestine terrorists, specifically convicted terrorist Marwan Barghout, currently being detained in Israeli prisons. They have called it the “saltwater challenge” where the participant drinks one cup of saltwater to show their support which coincides with a surge of SJP’s Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions demanding that universities sell their holdings in companies that do business with Israel, some of which were introduced or debated during Passover, when Jewish students were unable to attend student government meetings to express opposition. SJP is America's leading campus promoter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, a Hamas-inspired initiative that aims to use various forms of public protest and economic pressure to advance the Hamas agenda of Israel's destruction. While Hamas pursues this goal in its low-intensity war against Israel by means of terrorism and bloodshed, BDS supplements those efforts by pushing for three forms of nonviolent punitive action designed to cripple Israel's economy and bring the nation to its knees politically: Coordinated boycotts that aim to intimidate and coerce corporations, universities, and individuals into breaking off their business relationships with Israel, decisions by banks, pension funds, corporations, and other entities to withdraw any financial investments which they may have made in the state of Israel or in companies that operate there and targeted sanctions, such as trade penalties or bans, arms embargoes, and the severing of diplomatic ties, imposed by governments around the world against Israel specifically. Using these tactics, SJP and its allies in the BDS movement seek to lay the psychological and rhetorical groundwork for creating the false impression that Israel has illegally and immorally usurped large swaths of land that rightfully belong to the Palestinians, likening Israeli public officials and soldiers to “Nazis” and delegitimizing in the minds of people worldwide, Israel's very right to exist as a sovereign state while promoting the idea that this illegitimate Jewish state should be replaced by an Arab-majority alternative. As NGO Monitor puts it, the effectiveness of BDS campaigns is rooted chiefly “in their ability to penetrate the public and political discourse and blur the lines between legitimate criticism of Israel and the complete delegitimization of Israel in the international arena.” 

Particularly notable is the fact that since 2005, a number of SJP chapters have designated one week of every academic year as “Palestine Awareness Week” or, alternatively, “Israel Apartheid Week.” These weeks feature an array of SJP-sponsored events where Israel is repeatedly denounced in incendiary language as an apartheid state that is guilty of human-rights abuses, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and even genocide. Yet no one calls it antisemitic or questions the SJP because they are Muslim students and that would be Islamophobia. 

Protests on college campuses are nothing new. They are a rite of passage for gullible young minds attracted to emotionally-exciting slogans, the simplistic solutions that people not yet educated but convinced of their own brilliance find plausible, and a chance to posture at being morally superior to their society. Campus protests start have to be taken seriously however when a thinly-disguised antisemitic hate-group begins to grow into a nationwide force, turning campuses into hotbeds of Jew-baiting rhetoric that has not been considered acceptable in America within living memory. That the group, which is recruiting U.S. college students by the thousands and the fact that it aligns itself with known Islamic terrorists is alarming. 

If any group wanted to whip up a frenzy of protest for its cause, campuses filled with young, impressionable activists are the perfect, perhaps only, venue in which to do it. Real people have jobs, lives and families, which tend to give them a somewhat more responsible view of the world. College students yearn for serious commitments in their responsibility-free lives, and often find them in extremist politics. They are doing it in a calculated way. The SJP calls Israel "this generation’s South Africa" and call the Jews the real Nazis. These absurd accusations pack a punch with college students on liberal campuses, who are primed and ready to protest anything that non-white people tell them to. 

The SJP says it’s up to today’s college students to help put an end to the "Apartheid State of Israel" by demanding that their colleges and universities divest from companies that do business there. Specifically, the group aims to create public sympathy in the U.S. and around the world for the Palestinians, resulting in economic sanctions against Israel, eventually toppling its "apartheid" regime. SJP is targeting Starbucks, the eternal favorite for student protests of all kinds, plus General Electric, Disney and scores of other companies, using protests on college campuses to pressure these companies. 

What’s troubling about SJP isn’t its flair for dramatic protests or their displays where they dress up as Jewish soldiers and act out raping and beating Palestine civilians, nor is it the group’s opposition to Israel as everyone is entitled to voice his or her own ridiculous opinion in this country. What’s troubling is that the SJP is attracting kids with inflammatory words like "apartheid," and "repression," when they should be saying, "terrorist" and "suicide bomber." 

College students who are recruited into this organization need to know, first and foremost, that they are cozying up to a group with proven ties to terrorism and the Islamic jihad against Israel, America, and the rest of the non-Muslim world. Secondly, they need to open their eyes to realize that the SJP’s tactics are moving well beyond benign, non-violent protests of U.S. foreign policy. 

The group is turning our campuses into forums for open antisemitism which is going either completely ignored or supported by our colleges in fear of inciting an accusation of Islamophobia since it’s coming from Muslim students so instead antisemitism gets linked and blamed on all white/conservative students for no other reason than they are white/conservative. 

SJP supports what most Palestinians call for: nothing less than the abolition of the state of Israel and the only way to bring a lasting peace to the region, they say, is to eliminate Israel. Think about that. Why is this group continuing to go unchallenged? Supporters of this group and those reblogging this group’s posts and accusations need to do their research. This is a dangerous and dishonest organization taking advantage of the ignorance of America’s college youth to promote a deadly agenda. We saw the same thing in the 60’s, we should know better.