By Stanislav Bachev

The pro-Palestinian protests show the real face of American “democracy”

May 10, 2024 - 22:37

TEHRAN- The latest protests among college students in the US in support of the Palestine cause are a necessary part of the big puzzle of revealing the true face of American democracy and internal problems and political dependencies.

Usually, it takes time for a process to become visible to the public and perceived for what it is. Sometimes peeling off the mask of hypocrisy requires sacrifice and when the sacrifice coincides with the right historical time on a bigger global scale the result is fundamental. One world order has come to its logical end, but it is not a moment, but a process. Now the world has grown ready to understand and let go of the false understanding of the “American dream”. 

Ten or twenty years ago it was impossible to imagine that the greatest democracy in the world would hunt or arrest students applying their constitutional rights for expressing their opinion. Although it would be true 20 years ago, too, nobody would dare to stand up to it, or to make it public. Now, when the American world order is coming to an end and the US hegemony is successfully challenged when the country itself is entering its first period of imperial crisis in the course of its short history, the internal tensions rise and the government struggles to suffocate them. 

The student movement against Israel’s actions in Gaza became the needed pivotal moment to show the dependencies of the American authorities. A senior college professor was arrested by the police for trying to record the protest and make it public. More than a hundred student arrests were made in a single night. - For the unprepared viewer such statements would be more appropriate for countries which the US qualifies as authoritarian, but in reality they are an American reality. 
Nowadays can be easily compared to the McCarthy era of political repressions, but the truth is that US society is in a much deeper internal crisis and the comparison with the Cold War confrontation is too soft.

In order to be correctly comprehended it must be explained through different levels of the internal crisis. At one level are the bipartisan dependencies from donors – economic, religious, ethnical, etc. The US government and the two major parties are practically too dependent by the Israeli lobby, which funds each political campaign. It is worth remembering the case of Cynthia McKinney, the African-American to represent the state of Georgia in the House, for six terms in the US Congress. She became famous for her bravery in support of unpopular causes for the US government like the support for the Palestine cause, long before it was viral and a vital part of the process for reshaping the global security architecture, what it became in late 2023.

In the foreseeable future the US is about to face another problem which is going to create another level of internal confrontation, and a much deeper one. If the Black Lives Matter movement from 2020 showed the uncured racial problem from the 19th century and the battle for the memory and history, the future is going to show the religious aspect of the crisis. There is a huge Muslim diaspora in the US, along with a growing Latino population, and the almighty Israel lobby.

The US is creating preconditions for a full-scale internal conflict far beyond the traditional understanding of a civil war based on political confrontation. Right now the US government is abusing the first thing that created the American dream – the freedom of expression, freedom of thinking and what created the might of the young American nation – The Melting pot of different people blending into a single nation. The US society and state are facing great troubles ahead, which are going to be further accelerated after the presidential election.