What America’s Student Photojournalists Saw at the Campus Protests
TimeMay 07
Campus Protests: Police Dismantle Camps at Penn, MIT
Image copyright: Scott Eisen/Getty Images News via Getty Images
The Facts
Police arrested dozens of pro-Palestinian activists and cleared protest tent encampments at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania on Friday.
According to Penn officials, 33 people, including nine Penn students, were detained on trespassing charges.
The Spin
Right narrative
The main group behind these encampments, Students for Justice in Palestine, is funded largely by George Soros' charities and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, among other wealthy elites. Organizers are paid thousands of dollars to build these encampments and buy the tents, food, and other resources used in most of them. Foreign money was likely also behind these illegal campus occupations, which is why police were justifiably called in to shut them down.
Left narrative
The "outside agitator" trope has been used to crack down on peaceful protests for decades. From the Ku Klux Klan lying about "communists" infiltrating the civil rights movement to alleged agitators during the 2020 BLM protests, these evidence-lacking accusations have always existed as an excuse to arrest activists. Today, however, the tactic of calling protesters antisemitic is thrown into the mix, which allows the pro-Israel side to smear anti-Zionists as anti-Jewish.