I mean, young people have been dramatically more pro-Palestine since long before social media. Grain of salt and all, but I don’t think it’s a wild claim on its face, especially once you account for the nature of network effects / filter bubbles.
The world has changed a fair bit in the last 30 years.
I remember reading the newspaper about the Shining Path in Peru, and about the Iran-Iraq War.
The Falkland Islands War was a big one. The school librarian had a map open showing where the British Navy was on their way down.
Right! Glasnot, and perestroika in Russia, and the Solidarity movement in Poland. And the German teen who flew into Moscow and landed on Red Square.
Ferdinand Marcos going into exile, and his wife's bajillion shoes.
Tienanmen Square.
Oh, and of course the fall of the Berlin Wall back in 1989.
Israel has had a larger prominence in the US mind because of it being the Holy Land. I know people who went there to see where Jesus lived, for example. We also had some teens from a kibbutz visit our high school and talk about their life.
In addition to the newspaper, and the TV news shows, my family subscribed to National Geographic, and well remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl , a refugee from the Soviet-Afghan war.
How much more global do you need?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/geography...
Most people in the 1980s couldn't have pointed to Ethiopia on a map, but they knew of the starving children there.
Most people in the 1980s couldn't have pointed to Afghanistan, but they knew Rambo went there in Rambo III, and that Reagan supported the "freedom fighters" there.
Most couldn't have pointed out South Africa on the map, but they knew who Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela were.
Why do you need to know where Palestine and Israel are on a world map in order to be aware of what's going on there?
> I do not think it was representative of most Americans experience in recent history.
Is your understanding of the global consciousness of the 1980s based solely on your perception of geographical knowledge of the era?
Do you really think modern geographical knowledge is significantly better?
This isn’t exclusively a TikTok problem, or an Israel/Palestine problem, or a young people problem, or a left/right problem. Algorithmic suggestions are extremism generating machines.
I'm not sure if those teens even know how to spell Yemen.
Even if we take what you’re saying at face value, the notion that you can’t speak out about something that is wrong because there are other things that are also bad is preposterous.
We are talking about teens here, you basically chastising children for not taking to the streets when they were 10 years old, when the Yemen conflict started.
First, it's factually inapposite, because we don't have a bunch of disproportionately pro-Saudi American companies and billionaires trying to intimidate people speaking in favor of Yemeni civilians, considering ad blitzes to gaslight and obfuscate the issues, etc. We don't have a significant pro-Saudi bias in the media such that it views the conflict there as worthy of constant reporting and also as a relatively black-and-white struggle where Yemeni civilians either are getting what they deserve or are merely unfortunate collateral damage for justifiable military actions. We don't have a strong contingency of people in this country trying to act like speaking out against the killing of Yemeni civilians is being "pro-terrorist".
Second, it's logically inane to say that someone's criticism of something is invalid because they didn't speak out or criticize some other thing that they most likely don't even know about.
I'm not saying the criticism of Hamas and/or Israel is invalid, I just found it worth pointing out that there are conflicts that teens somehow can make up their mind on (that's TikTok's claim, not mine) and strong enough that they take to the streets for that, while they likely haven't heard of other somewhat comparable conflicts (support by "their government", civilians dying, half the world away, ...) at all.
Maybe it's just the general media circus (Yemen _isn't_ very present in the media, after all), but "algorithm" or not, I'm considering TikTok part of that media circus.
As such, "the kids are just voicing their opinion" seems a rather shallow excuse to me: They pick up what gets amplified. Having no idea about Yemen but strong opinions on "who's the baddie" in Gaza (since folks like to talk colonialism: it's clearly the UK) doesn't sound like an independently formed opinion at all, and so I'm not willing to let TikTok (et al) off the hook.
And nothing I pointed out about how differently the war in Yemen is situated in the Western consciousness (i.e. basically not at all) versus this one matters?
I believe that most American teens opinions on this matter are influenced by either anti-Islam or anti-Jewish messaging they read through social media, and not a genuine interest in the conflict.
People tend to get up in arms and out in the streets when their concerns aren't being addressed. They tend to be a lot quieter, even if they have major concerns, if they are. Sort of the concept behind "silent majority."
neither are true.
Sure they care now, but where were they when they were 8???
There definitely fucking were protests against the Iraq war o_O
Really, for all of the examples you provided, the situation is either that a) our government wasn't among the bad actors or allied therewith (e.g. Syria--do you want people to protest ISIS or the Asad regime or something? What would be the point?); b) there were protests, and there was criticism, and there was condemnation, and you seem to be ignorant of them so you assume nobody else cared either
The Syrian stuff really started during a different media era.
Palestine launched a surprise attack killing thousands and now they face the same thing.
The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), which is taken very seriously by militaries, requires distinguishing between military and civilian people and assets, only pursuing military targets and objectives, and when civilians will be harmed, requires that it be in proportion to the military benefit.
Here are a couple of links. The first is the authoritative International Committee of the Red Cross's very usable LOAC page, and the second is the application of it to the Gaza war by leading experts:
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1
https://www.justsecurity.org/89489/expert-guidance-law-of-ar...
Take communism. There were many grassroots communist regimes in the 20th century, and certainly not all controlled by Moscow, but they all degraded into very tyrannical regimes, caste societies by following very similar paths.
I think they're probably right, in that it's not just their algorithm that has had this impact. It's all the algorithms, their social circle, the propagandistic media that's not fed by an algorithm but designed the old fashioned way such as TV, and of course their faculty of reason which is often discounted when we talk about this sort of thing.