Last Thursday, a small group of about 30 students at the University of Mississippi held a protest against Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which have killed an estimated 34,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and about half of them children. The demonstrators were outnumbered about ten-to-one by counter-protesters, who mocked and jeered them, pelted them with food, and sang the Star Spangled Banner to show them who’s a real American. In some cases, the mostly white crowd of counter-protesters also shouted obscenities and racist slurs at the demonstrators, which was OK because when there’s more of you than there are of them, that’s just democracy.
The mob of very fine people turned particular wrath upon a Black woman demonstrator, shouting “Lizzo! Lizzo!” which was clever because she was fat, as well as “Fuck you fatass, fuck you b-tch” from one southern gentleman, as well as “Lock her up!” because that’s what you shout when women don’t share your politics.
One especially creative young man bobbed up and down, waving his arms and hooting like a chimp, but since we can’t know his heart can we say he was motivated by racism? (Yes, we fucking well can.)
Here’s video from the Mississippi Free Press, but it shows the ugly asshole being a racist, so viewer discretion advised.
Among other sentiments hurled at the demonstrators, members of the crowd also chanted, “Fuck Joe Biden,” “Who’s your daddy,” “Take a shower,” “Shave your legs,” and “Your nose is huge.”
As police eventually dispersed the demonstration — on “Rebel Drive,” a reminder of Ole Miss’s charming former mascot celebrating the fun-loving (and slavery-defending) scamps of the Confederacy — some protesters also shouted “Thank God for Dixie,” an endorsement of either the popular brand of paper cup, or of the land of Jim Crow and lynching.
Quite a few Mississippi Republicans praised the counter-protestors for drowning out the demonstrators with patriotism, including Gov. Tate Reeves, who posted a video of the crowd singing the national anthem and twote,
The ‘protests’ at Ole Miss today. Watch with sound.
Warms my heart.
I love Mississippi!
Secretary of State Michael Watson retwote a Libs of Tiktok video calling the huge crowd “The correct way to deal with Anti-American pro-t*rr*rist protesters,” because obviously one can’t oppose mass killing of civilians without endorsing the Hamas terrorists who murdered over 1,200 Israelis, it’s simply not possible to oppose both instances of horrific bloodshed. To that, Watson added his own encouragement, “Let’s go, Rebs (three US flag emojis),” but certainly not in a slavery-endorsing sort of way, it’s just heritage.
While Reeves and Watson didn’t include the overtly racist stuff, that wasn’t the case for US Rep. Mike Collins (R-Georgia), who twote out the video clip above, adding the comment “Ole Miss taking care of business.” As a screenshot from Judd Legum’s newsletter highlights, Collins’s copy of the video was borrowed from a tweet by white-power lunkhead Richard Hanania, who mocked the “Hamas loving fat girl.” See? Collins had the sense not to retweet the whole thing!
The fallout — over the racist shit and the Rs praising the racist shit — followed pretty quickly. The university’s chapter of the NAACP condemned the “reprehensible actions exhibited by the counter protesters toward the students,” and university administrators eventually got around to condemning the racism part too, after a fairly pathetic attempt by UM Director of News and Media Relations Jacob Batte to downplay and bothsides it in a statement saying free speech good, adding,
While today’s demonstration was passionate and several protesters and counter protesters received warnings from law enforcement over their actions, there were no arrests, no injuries reported, and the demonstration ended peacefully.
By Friday evening, however, Chancellor Glenn Boyce seems to have noticed all the national media attention the funny monkey guy and racist chants had attracted, saying in a careful statement that
university leaders are aware that some statements made were offensive, hurtful, and unacceptable, including actions that conveyed hostility and racist overtones.
Boyce said that one “student conduct investigation” had been opened, and others might follow, and added that “people who say horrible things to people because of who they are will not find shelter or comfort on this campus,” so let’s hope that turns out to be the case.
The racist dipshit was also quickly expelled by his fraternity the day after the incident; the frat said the “racist actions in the video were those of an individual and are antithetical to the values of Phi Delta Theta,” which is just and proper, and good for all those at Mississippi who have also condemned the incident. Hope the same happens to any others whose racist crap was caught on camera.
Not that the sentiment was shared universally; Cass Rutledge, chair of the Ole Miss Young Republicans, issued a statement calling the anti-war demonstration “pro-terrorist,” and explained that even in a good ole boy safe space, the danger is real:
“Thursday’s pro-Hamas demonstrations at Ole Miss are a reminder that no college campus — no matter how red or blue — is immune from Joe Biden and the radical left’s inability to categorically and unequivocally confront anti-Semitism and condemn Hamas terrorists.”
The statement said hooray for the First Amendment, under which “leftist pro-Hamas demonstrators have the right to make fools of themselves,” adding that “it is a breath of fresh air to see so many America-loving patriots fight bad speech with good speech.” Good speech like, well, you read the first part of this article.
As for Mike Collins, he initially put on a brave act, condemning mean leftists for going after the good patriotic kids, and contrasting them to the dirty hippies and radicals at “the Ivy Leagues and large metropolitan campuses,” if you know who he means and he thinks you do.
Somebody may have pointed out to Collins that unless you’re actually Donald Trump himself, praising racists isn’t a great look, so by Monday, he began backpedaling, with a long statement insisting his retweet of the video (from a racist dipshit’s account) simply happened to be one of many examples he’s posted of good decent kids at schools that are “outside of the Ivy Leagues and coastal elite institutions” who are “standing up against the pro-Hamas, anti-American, Antifa anarchists.”
Eventually, Collins says he was shocked, shocked when someone pointed out the video included “a single individual during the Ole Miss protests” who just might have “treated another human being improperly because of their race,” and if that’s the case “they should be punished appropriately, and will hopefully seek forgiveness” or perhaps run for the state legislature.
However, he non-apologized, at the time he posted the video from the white supremacist shitheel, “I did not believe that to be the focal point of the video,” although now he understands that there “certainly seems to be some potentially inappropriate behavior that none of us should seek to glorify,” so lay off, will ya?
In any case, Rep. Collins is over it, and is staying classy, as this whimsical, fully appropriate tweet from earlier this afternoon makes clear.
Oh, so it’s OK if you name a band that, but not if a Republican patriot says it, you leftist hypocrites?
Now everything is fine, and you all just try and avoid potentially inappropriate behavior like being a fucking racist, OK?
[Mississippi Free Press / Daily Mississippian / Popular Information]
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