Comparing pro-Palestine protests to the ’60s is wrong – and dangerous: Stephen Mihm
Pro-Palestinian protests on college and university campuses in the US have been compared to the late 1960s, when mass protests by radical activist groups convulsed colleges and universities for nearly 10 years. The 1960s student protests began off campus with Martin Luther King Jr.'s Civil Rights Movement, which led to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Free Speech Movement borrowed tactics and rhetoric from the Civil Rights Movement, engaging in civil disobedience. In 1965, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized antiwar protests, borrowing many of the methods used in the 1960s.
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By Stephen Mihm
As the pro-Palestinian protests on colleges and universities across the United States have spread, some commentators have taken to comparing current events to the late 1960s. It's a tempting analogy: protests in an earlier era, often defined by violent clashes with police; and the same thing today. History is simply repeating itself.
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