Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Muddying the Waters on US Student Protests

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Alastair Crooke: Muddying the Waters on US Student ProtestsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. so so Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, May 6, 2024. Alistair Crook joins us now. Alistair, a pleasure, my dear friend. Since last we spoke just a week ago, the student demonstrations against the slaughter in Gaza, the demonstrations on American college campuses have ratcheted up substantially. More than 2,000 people have been arrested, the overwhelming majority students, some outside observers and participants, and even a few

professors. Do you think that these student demonstrations will have any kind of an effect as they did back in the late 60s and early 70s with respect to America's involvement in Vietnam? Well, I do. I mean, there's first of all the external effect, which is very great indeed, and perhaps not so well perceived inside the United States are there but it will have an effect because i think it really it is pushed you know the the leaders the institutional leaders i'm talking about in congress parts of congress and elsewhere the institutional leaders have are very firm on a complete clampdown. I mean, they've become very comfortable in power, and they have their project.

The diversity project is going, and that is their ideology. And they are not going to easily go away or let that drop. So there is a big clampdown. By the way, I mean, it's the same here, and it's a concerted, I've been told for some time, that if there were protests in Europe, as in America, from students or just street protests, the agreed line amongst our elites is that it's to be repressed very forcefully. That across Europe, and you can see that, you've seen that in France, for example, you've seen it in Italy, the agreement is we will repress them as forcefully as we can, and we will prevail, and we can prevail in this we will suppress them and i think this is what we are seeing it seems the discipline as they call it but the sanctions i mean you would be better you would have more knowledge than me but i think the sanctions are getting harsher than 68.

i mean the expulsions and the suspensions and um all the loss of the fees all of these things uh are are quite substantial so it is I think breaking if you like the the structures of the state which are not as they were in 68 they've become far more rigid in the United States in the intervening period. They do not believe that they can be backed out. They do not believe in any way that these people need our guidance, and we cannot. It would be wrong. It would be a loss of justice. It would be treachery for us to back down because these deplorables don't really know what they're

doing. They don't understand. And so they are going to diminish them and continue to diminish them by calling them, oh, well, they're either Marxists or they're led astray by the Chinese or by Iran or they're Russian stooges, external enemies. They won't accept that what they're seeing is a manifestation of something human, human empathy for people losing their lives in Gaza and in the west bank and being destroyed and their civilization their hospital schools and everything are bended and they cannot accept that this is a a human reaction to what is taking place and so their only alternative is to clamp down and clamp down harder. You'll see the same happening in Europe.

Do the Western governments view criticism of the slaughter in Gaza as some sort of a threat to their own stability? Or is this fear of the Jewish donor class and lobby? It's become, I mean, first of all, I mean, there is the element of the lobby and the influence they have with their money and their contributions, sure. But no, it's now a fear of stability. You've probably seen what's happened in the local elections in the UK. I mean, it's a complete wipeout for the ruling party.

Now in France, Macron's support amongst the younger generation to the sort of age 24 is about 4%, more with the older generation, but about 4% with the young the elections are coming out they're really concerned now it's not just about you know making sure they get the regular contribution from the um you know the various platforms that um that help support israel in the political systems the system is being being threatened. And overseas, it is also shaking the Arab world. Particularly Jordan is very much affected by this. Egypt too. Even Saudi Arabia is being affected by this. So it's having really a global systemic effect, not just in the United States.

And it is in danger of bringing down the United States with Israel in this process increasingly. We're showing some clips from students in Paris peacefully demonstrating, okay, they're blocking a street, but they're not destroying anything. They're not invading property. Are the police, look at this, a kid with a bullhorn and they're chanting and screaming. This is classic, classic protest. The police are going to break this up? Yeah, sure. The CRS, I mean, will get in. And you've seen how they, I mean, the French police are some of the, I mean, the most harsh, most violent of any.

They'll leave it for a while and then they'll come in and there will be a lot of very sore protesters at the end of it. They have their wooden battens and it will be quite violent. I mean, and across Europe, as I said, you know, I don't know whether this was concerted at Bildenberg or somewhere else, but it's certainly, I've been told for some time by what we've heard from the elites, and they say, we know protests are coming, but we are going to treat them very toughly and we believe we can crush any protests.

Well, who knows? We will have to see. But there's no moral defense whatsoever, none that I'm aware of, for what the IDF is doing in Gaza. And yet every major Western country, including the United States, is willing to suppress those who would peacefully criticize what the IDF is doing? Absolutely, clearly, yes, because they have come to this view, youically, as a bulwark against disorder and that these students or others that protest are representatives of disorder and they can't allow disorder to take over because it threatens their project and it threatens everything,

stability itself. And so, in fact, I mean, the paradox is obvious they're creating disorder to stem disorder and that's i mean this is why it's having such a huge impact because everyone can understand and it's not you know like vietnam i mean this is about normal human empathy and their attempt to try and suppress a very natural human emotion of empathy for people that are suffering as the people in Gaza are suffering. It's not overtly political. It is not Marxist. It is not led by Iran. It's not led by Russia. This is students who find their moral consciousness, conscience,

offended by what they see and hear. This is the commencement at the University of Michigan, a state school in America, but very highly ranked academically. There's about 65,000 to 75,000 students enrolled there. So approximately one quarter of them are at the commencement at the football stadium, American football, where the university football team plays. There are about 100,000 people there. You can see students peacefully demonstrating, but you could also see the police dressed in military gear, dressed as if they were going to take the hill, so to speak, ready to deal with them. There are the police marching in. They've got their bulletproof vests on, even though none of the students has any weapons. The only weapon that's been fired in any of this was a New York City police officer who says his gun went off accidentally. That's hard to believe.

I'm very familiar with the guns that they carry. It's nearly impossible for it to go off accidentally. His finger had to be on the trigger. No one was hurt, but it went off inside one of the buildings at Columbia University. Has this antipathy to free speech in America and in the West affected at all the relationship of Russia to China? Oh, certainly. Because in a sense, this is a new chapter in that long story of anti-colonialism.

The anti-colonial movement that began after the Second World War, I mean, started over with the famous non-aligned movement conference that was held in Bandung, I think in 57. I mean, all of this, and then India and these other states fought very fiercely against colonialism. And, of course, what we're seeing in Israel is a form of, for the rest of the world, certainly, it is a form of settler colonialism. A settler colonialism that has been unable to come to terms with the indigenous population and therefore is facing the alternative of exterminating or eliminating or displacing the population.

And of course, this resonates with China, which was a colonized power and is now a superpower. And that changes everything dramatically for Russia, for China. Russia was never a colonial power. So, yes, it is having a big effect and it's having an effect across Europe. But I can assure you from people who come back from China, and they all say the same, you know, the Chinese, I mean, totally sympathize with the Palestinians. I mean, this is not just at the official level.

But China was humiliated, essentially of humiliation by the West, by the colonial past. And now we see people seeing this as a colonial exercise that is coming to an end, and this is part of it, and it must change. We're going to take a break. When we come back, Alistair and I will talk about President Xi in Paris, which is where he is as we speak, and the Israeli plans for invading Rafah, about which the IDF has supposedly given warnings early this morning. But first this.

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Learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Is the IDF preparing to invade RAFA, notwithstanding all the cautionary comments from the American State Department and even the White House itself? Yes. There are very clear signs they've started dropping leaflets,

sending text messages to people in Gaza. 100,000 leaflets, I believe, have been already dropped by the IDF into Gaza to instruct people to move to what they call safe zones. They're not necessarily very safe, but they're instructing people to move there and to the tented areas that have been being set up. So it looks like it. Now, we know that the IDF are not really so keen on this. Senior IDF officers have even suggested that they may be walking into a trap by going into Rafah, invading Rafah. But it has become part of the narrative of the government. And in a sense, the Israelis have sort of trapped themselves into it because they said originally,

you may recall, and they said, you know, it's absolutely slam dunk. We know the Hamas leadership is in Khan Yunus, and we are going to take them out there. They're probably hiding under the hospital. And, of course, they weren't there. And they can't be in the north because the Israelis have just literally cleared the north of all this population. So, therefore, they must be in Rafa so they're going to they I think they have very little opportunity not to go there and as I say he keeps saying a

majority of the Israeli population want them to go into Rafa and they want them. And I think, you know, this is not well enough understood, probably in the West, that the sort of sentiments that those Jews that left Germany, after being blamed for all of the great horrors that befell Germany, which had nothing to do with the Jews, the inflation, the Great Depression, the reparations that Germany was provided, but which were blamed on them. And that they came and they feel, you know, that Germany dealt with us literally. Not every country deals with its colonial settlement policy literally by killing the inhabitants. But Germany did.

If you go to South America, huge difference between the Brazilians who merit the indigenous population rather than killing them and other parts of it. So for many, and those that Netanyahu tends to represent, they feel it's either destroy or be destroyed. We can't live with the indigenous population. They'll never accept us. We're not going to marry them. So what is the choice?

Kill or be killed. And so there is a strong feeling that they have to go into ruffle amongst the Israeli population. What is the state of the IDF with respect to morale, determination, military preparedness? You know, the military preparedness is not high because they've really been operating as a colonial army for this period because they are a colonial army. And so, you know, this is very different from actually fighting a war and getting experience in either insurgency or other. You stay behind highly

fortified positions and you visit massive force on those that are not obeying you or not doing what you want. So they're not very well equipped for going into Rafa. They've got no experience of this. And many of them, I mean, it'll be mostly reservists. There are some professional forces that are well-trained, but the reservists are not very well-trained. The morale is low because they know they failed in so far in Khan Yunus and in Gaza as a whole. And they know that Israelis as a whole know that it's been a failure and there's no great victory coming. So morale is quite low.

But nonetheless, they feel compelled, you know, because where else, what else can Israel do if it can't come to terms, some modus vivendi with the indigenous population other than to try and if you like escape the trap by escalation escalation in lebanon or escalation wherever iran has now been ruled out effectively because of what happened on the 13th of april with the drone and missile um uh if you like uh flotilla that was launched to show, send the message that they have the capacity to land ballistic missiles on Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. That's the message. And it's understood by those who need to understand it,

even if it's not understood widely in the mass media. But I know it's well understood there. So I think Iran is less, and now Israel is looking at what it can do to deal with this dilemma, which is why you see the Prime Minister suddenly saying, well, we're going to be fighting the war in Gaza for 10 years. This is what he said yesterday in a speech to mark Holocaust Day. And he said, you know, whatever happens, no hostage agreement because we are going back into Gaza.

That's it. I mean, and Hamas's call for an end to the war and a withdrawal of the forces from Gaza is unacceptable to him and to the government because they promise that they will go back into Gaza one way or another and maybe continue going back for the next 10 years. When the war. Where does the IDF expect the people in Rafah to go? There's a million and a quarter human beings there. The last time these people were chased out of their homes and into a refugee camp, the IDF bombed the refugee camps.

I think the same will happen again. I don't think there can be any plan for this. And as I say, you know, the troops are not anxious for going in. So I think we may see more of a show of force in terms of putting in tanks rather than men on the ground. And then the Air Force will bomb. And they will bomb, I think, quite profusely across the entire strip. So it'll be, I think, similar. But I don't think we'll see so many boots on the ground this time. Maybe, you know, the tanks will drive around.

What I hear is the IDF are advancing. I don't know if it'll be accepted that they would like to sort of, you know, just go into Gaza but not engage in Gaza too drastically. But that probably means there'll be more emphasis placed on the Air Force. to return not only the hostages, but the reservists in the military who want to get back to their spouses and families and their jobs? Well, there is pressure. And, you know, half of it, I mean, this is the dilemma. And I described how, you know, Netanyahu, I I mean people keep personalizing him and saying you know it's all Netanyahu doing things for his political interest but there is approximately half of

the Israeli population that see this as an existential question that they've simply got to you know they've got to prevail it's kill or be killed in other words i'm putting it more dramatically but then there's another part of the population um who and i would put some of them cabinet members perhaps um eisenkot and gans and certainly um some of the opposition leaders who believe that it's possible to go back to some sort of occupation, just as they had before, but this time that the Arab states will come in and they'll create a sort of collaborationist government PA and that they'll create a collaborator of police force in Gaza and run it for, in conjunction with the Israelis. But that's just magical thinking.

It's not going to happen. It's quite clear that none of the states are going to agree to take on this role. But there is a substantial proportion. This is why you see them sort of calling for, you know, the hostages, because they want the ceasefire. And so there is a lot of pressure, and it really is reflecting this wider consensus. Let's try and get back to the sort of apartheid system that we had before, because, okay, it wasn't perfect, but, you know but it didn't mean endless war. So yes, there is this pressure coming from that side of the Israeli population.

What is the purpose of President Xi's visit to Paris and his meeting with the French president and the French prime minister? You may recall that about a year ago, Macron was in China for a few days, and he seemed to get on quite well with Xi at that time. And when he came back on the plane, he talked about sort of distancing Europe from both from America. And he talked about strategic autonomy and suggested this was the path ahead. It's a year later and things look very different. Europe is embarking on a trade war like the United States with China. The newspapers and the media is full of such language that China stands accused of progressing the war on Ukraine. And so, Macron is trying to accept that there's going to be, the EU is planning severe restrictions on electric vehicles,

and China has responded by promising to investigate the sales of cognac, 99% of the liqueurs that are consumed in China, in return. And so it's going to be an uneasy meeting, I think, in the Elysee. And he's taken along von der Leyen, who I believe the Chinese don't like at all. They've never liked her for her sort of rather brash language against China. So it's quite difficult because on the one hand, the United States is moving towards sanctioning and putting tariffs on China because it can't compete any longer with China. I mean, you know, when Yellen went and said, you've got to stop your overcapacity,

well, Europe's in a worse position. It needs to stop it. But at the same time, it can't. I don't think it is practical to try and carve out a separate trade deal with China, with the United States moving so firmly against it. I mean, look what happened to Nord Stream when they had an economic connection with Russia. That was crushed quickly. I can't see the United States tolerating Europe having a quite different trade position with China when America is having to go strongly against China because it is helping Russia in its war on Ukraine, which is, of course, not true. I mean, they talk about dual-use trade with Russia. But if you recall a little time ago, washing machines were described as dual-use machines

because the Russians were taking the chips out of them and using them in their missiles. So, I mean, anything can become a dual use component in this sort of attitude. No doubt, perhaps they'll put bands on washing machines so that the Russians dare not take the chips out. Of course, the Russians have their own manufacturing capacity for chips anyway. Alistair, thank you, my friend. I'm looking forward to the end of this week when we'll be together for a few days in northern Italy. Until then, all the best. Thank you. Thank you very much for your astute analysis this morning. We'll see you soon. Safe journey. Thank you. Well, we do have a very busy day for you. I won't go through all the times, except all of these are at the top of the hour. Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, Aaron Matei,

Anya Parampal, Matt Ho, Phil Giraldi, Scott Ritter, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, and tomorrow morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.