Who tends to get the big foreign policy calls right: student protesters, or their detractors? Answering this question, it turns out, is useful if you don’t want to end up judged poorly by history. Student protesters were vilified when they stood against the Vietnam war, yet now, who would have wanted to be on the side that denigrated them variously as naive, dupes and extremists? How should we look back at the students suspended after walking out of lessons in protest at the impending war in Iraq in 2003? Today we might say they come off looking pretty good, having had far more foresight than the seasoned politicians and ageing media commentators who cheered that particular cataclysm on back then.
That legacy loomed large on Wednesday in a courtyard at Trinity College Dublin, filled with students waving Palestinian flags alongside the Irish tricolour, as the triumphant student union president, László Molnárfi, told them their protests would succeed in Ireland, the US and across the world “because our cause is right”. The students were jubilant, because they had won.
Before the encampment was set up (similar to those at Columbia University in New York and UCLA in California, which have faced a brutal onslaught from police and pro-Israel activists), the university authorities were in no mood to concede to student demands. Within days, management U-turned, promising Trinity would divest from Israeli companies, some of which are linked to Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. A group of lecturers from Academics for Palestine beamed with pride. “It’s weird to win!” one told me. “How strange a feeling it is, to not make excuses and explanations for a loss.”
Perhaps because of its centuries-long violent subjugation by the British, Ireland is more fertile territory for sympathies for the Palestinian cause than most western states. A poll earlier this year found more than seven in 10 Irish voters believe Israel is subjecting Palestinians to apartheid, and the country’s new centre-right prime minister, Simon Harris, drawing on Ireland’s own history of famine, delivered a message to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu on behalf of the Irish people: “We are repulsed by your actions.”
But in truth, student protesters against Israel’s unfolding genocide in Gaza seem to enjoy far more public sympathy now – and far more quickly – than their Vietnam equivalents. Indeed, back then, protesters were a minority on campus, let alone in wider society. In 1967, 49% of US college students backed escalation in Vietnam, with just 35% opting for de-escalation. A couple of years later, college students were more likely to express opposition to the Republican president Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policies than the wider public, but nonetheless, more approved than not. When Joe Biden reported that at the time he had believed student protesters were “assholes”, he was merely reflecting what was once widespread public opinion. By October 1970, a large majority of Americans believed campus unrest was caused by “radical militant student groups”, “irresponsible” troublemakers, and “radical professors” encouraging revolt.
There are crucial differences here. While US weapons transfers alongside aid and diplomatic support have led the former Palestinian negotiator Diana Buttu to describe Gaza as an “Israeli-American war”, US soldiers aren’t fighting and dying on the ground. Just over 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam, of whom more than 58,000 perished and more than 300,000 were wounded.
That galvanised the student movement, but it was also manipulated by pro-war figures. There were student deferments and exemptions from combat, with well-connected, privileged college students able to gain admission to non-combat military service such as the National Guard. Poorer Americans were more likely to be slaughtered in Vietnam’s killing fields. Students were easily caricatured as pampered brats insulting the sacrifice of their working-class peers. This smear campaign proved devastatingly successful, and in May 1970, hundreds of US construction workers violently assaulted peace protesters in New York City, chanting “All the way, USA”, in the so-called Hard Hat riot.
It’s true that Americans are more opposed than not to today’s student protests, but without the entrenched bitter hostility that defined the backlash against the Vietnam peace movement, and with those under 45 more sympathetic than not. That more Americans believe Israel is committing genocide than those who don’t – including an overwhelming majority of Democrats – points to a major difference between now and the years-long military quagmire of Vietnam in the 1970s.
Indeed, it is generally the fate of protesters to be patronised and demonised in their time. The most notorious example is of course the suffragettes, who are today virtually secular saints, but who were widely denounced as dangerous subversives and terrorists in the early 1900s. Student protesters in particular are often victims of what could be described as “the eyeroll”: a condescending dismissal of the young as naive know-it-alls who need to be educated in the ways of the world before they are qualified to arrive at such assured conclusions.
Yet the confidence I saw in the grounds of Trinity College Dublin came from history. They are well aware of how previous generations of student protesters were treated, and how their causes came to be judged. A grave and obvious evil such as Gaza is not going to be an exception: it is likely to be the most hideous vindication yet.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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