National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke said Tuesday that the escalating anti-Israel protests at Columbia University appear to reflect a desire on the part of the contemporary Left to “contrive” a kind of “great clarifying Manichaean moment,” even if they’re not living through one.
“I think that we are once again witnessing what is generally termed ‘Selma envy,’” Cooke said on The Editors podcast, “but I think that there is an attendant wrinkle to it.
“They have managed to deploy the logic and rhetoric of Selma in all circumstances in a manner that always, invariably, helps them,” Cooke said. He brought up something National Review Online editor Phil Klein pointed out, that “it’s not just that there is a double standard when it comes to Jews. It’s that there is a double standard when it comes to who is protesting Jews.”
Cooke recalled the Charlottesville riots, where “right-wingers were protesting Jews. They are therefore the bad guy who are making the world less safe. . . . but if the Left is protesting Jews, then they are the downtrodden.
“You can’t win. You cannot win in this framework. It’s extremely clever.”
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