‘This is not cancel culture’: DeSantis defends call to ban pro-Palestinian groups at Florida colleges

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‘This is not cancel culture’: DeSantis defends call to ban pro-Palestinian groups at Florida colleges
politico.com

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended his call to ban pro-Palestinian groups from Florida state colleges Sunday, after one of his Republican presidential primary opponents, Vivek Ramaswamy, slammed the demand as “a shameful political ploy.”

“It’s unconstitutional. It’s utter hypocrisy for someone who railed against left-wing cancel culture,” Ramaswamy posted on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday, alleging that it violates students’ right to free speech.

DeSantis held firm Sunday.

“This is not cancel culture. This group, they themselves said, in the aftermath of the Hamas attack, that they don’t just stand in solidarity that they are part of this Hamas movement,” DeSantis said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

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It's only cancel culture when it happens to fascists.

To be fair he's right. It's not cancel culture. It's institutional racism.

I don't agree with anything DeSantis says but Define race? I'm not seeing this leap.

I think their really, and I cannot stress this enough, paper thin argument was that Palestinian isn't a race per se. They also are ignoring the very clear intention that is discrimination based on nationality which is illegal in most cases in the US (see customs and border patrol for exceptions that shouldn't be granted but are in fact institutionally legal).

Again their point is fairly pointless, useless even, and they could've said it without coming off like an asshole trying to nettle at a topic they don't understand. But I do think that was the point to their poorly constructed question.

For reference what is happening is federally illegal and specifically goes against the protections against national origins (see the section on public accommodations): https://www.justice.gov/crt/federal-protections-against-national-origin-discrimination-1

That’s how I read their question as well. I just went with the snarky answer :)

desantis didn't say anything when literal nazis were hanging out with desantis flags in front of disney world so really i don't wanna hear from him on this.

He retweeted a DeSantis promotional video a fan made, which featured Nazi imagery.

FYI -- The "fan" was later found to be on staff, unless we're thinking of different events, which, sadly is always possible!

Well, pretty sure he'd be marching with them if there weren't any cameras.

The party of small government everyone!

Came here to say this.

Not that fascists care at all that others point out their hypocrisy. They don't hold themselves to any standards, so if they are hypocrites, it simply does not matter.

I had a friend who was radicalized during the pandemic by LoTT's original account, and he doesn't seem to care about the fact he likes yuri and loli stuff, all while calling LGBTQ+ people "pedophiles". He just responds with the gigachad meme and a "who cares". (Ironically he does think of male-on-male shota as pedophilic, likely he just calls sex acts he doesn't like as such.)

Had to look some of those terms up (ETA: and, uh, yuck). Still don't know what "LoTT" is?

But yeah, the right goes ALL IN on hypocrisy when it comes to their Qtarded nonsense. They don't care about kids being trafficked, at all, they just want to smear others with terms they know most will find revolting.

Even if Gaetz was caught, on video, balls deep in someone underage, they'd still support him. How many of theirs have these problems, besides Groomer Gaetz? Donnie himself of course, even talking about his own daughter FFS. Then there is Hastert. And Roy Moore.

I went to go find you a list, searching google for "republican pedophiles" and... got distracted. There were 422,000 results and then Google says "It looks like there aren't many great results for this search". Uh, Google... Google... don't make me use another search engine.

I did find what I was remembering, granted - not a truly great source but seems to be largely sourced, if you care to venture back towards Reddit for a minute: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/vgmary/texas_gop_adopts_shockingly_explicit_antilgbtq/id27rvz/

Can you explain Yuri so the rest of us don't have to look it up?

I'm assuming it's not a King of Fighters character.

"Yuri is a Japanese media genre that focuses on intimate relationships between female characters, often with lesbian themes."

Oh. So just lesbians. That's not weird at all. I thought it was going to be some other type of underage bs

Well that's the wikipedia definition, I think it is really common for the relationships to be of students, maybe ambiguously aged or in college in the plot but appearing young.

Hate this guy. Fuck Israel.

Hate this absolute ghoul as well. Fuck Hamas.

So you think Palestine should just let themselves get genocided?

Hamas represent Palestinians like the KKK represent people from Tennessee. Some people support them, most don’t.

It’s possible to support Palestinians while denouncing Hamas as murdering terrorist wankers.

It’s equally possible to support Israelis and Jews while finding the actions of the Israeli government reprehensible.

Hamas is the only group meaningfully defending Palestine from the attempted genocide. Not at all like the KKK. They would only be like the KKK if they were doing it unprovoked. Palestine has a right to defend itself against genocide, and the only way that seems to work in Israel's eyes is killing Israelis. Peace is not a language that genocidal states understand.

Hamas is the only group meaningfully defending Palestine from the attempted genocide. Not at all like the KKK. They would only be like the KKK if they were doing it unprovoked. Palestine has a right to defend itself against genocide, and the only way that seems to work in Israel’s eyes is killing Israelis. Peace is not a language that genocidal states understand.

Hamas directly provoked the current outbreak in violence by murdering over 1,400 Israelis. Mostly civilians, and many of them elderly and children. They took 120 hostages.

Hamas aren't freedom fighters - they're terrorists.

But who provoked that provocation. Israel had killed 22.4x as many Palestinians than Israelis had been killed by 2020. To act like it was unprovoked is pretty dumb. You can argue about the effectiveness and morality all you want, but don't act like nothing led to it.

Who’s says it wasn’t provoked?

Intentionally murdering civilians is still terrorism. It’s wrong when Israel does it, it’s wrong when Hamas does it.

The implication from your statement is Hamas provoked the attack through an unprovoked action. It's implied that you're justifying Israel's genocide because Hamas provoked them. However, Hamas was provoked as well. Is their attack justified?

Considering he said "It's wrong when Israel does it", it doesn't sound like he is justifying Israel's genocide.

If Hamas were attacking IDF facilities, ok, that would seem to be a desperate move that could be seen as provoked. I could perhaps understand that approach.

Hamas instead striking innocent civilians cannot be condoned.

Neither can we condone Israel going scorched earth without regard for collateral damage. We should be sick to our stomachs every time an Israeli representative responds to a question about mitigating civilian casualties with "It is simply imperative that Hamas be destroyed" clearly showing they are perfectly fine with Palestinian casualties.

We can recognize that both sides are culpable for their actions. We can recognize several opportunities for peace that have cropped up, but failed to some key extremist Zionist or Palestinian keeping it from happening.

So sick and tired of folks that need to see one side or the other as unambiguously justified when ESH.

You’re reading a lot into what I said that isn’t there.

Israel isn’t justified. Hamas isn’t justified. They’re both murderous bastards and civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, are being killed.

So what should Palestine have done, just rolled over and let them continue slaughtering them?

The real slaughter started after Hamas murdered a thousand civilians.

How can you justify killing innocents to achieve a political goal?

Oh, do palestinian lives not matter or not count? Or are you really so stupid you believe all Israeli propaganda? Because reality is that the "real slaughter" started decades ago, and has been done entirely by Israel.

I don't know how you can justify it. Ask Israel. They have killed dozens of Palestinians for every Israeli killed prior to this attack. I wonder what we're up to now...

You can’t. Israel don’t have the moral high ground here.

The slaughter of one group provides no moral justification for murdering another.

No, Israel provoked that attack by committing 30 years of war crimes on Gaza, and attempting to steal all of their land. What exactly would YOU have done in reaction to an enemy intentionally starving your people for 30 years? I know that compared to how America would have reacted, Hamas is a full on pacifist

NOT murder civilians, including children and babies?

There’s no justification for murdering innocents, no matter who does it.

i like to believe they’re still trying to type up a response that justifies killing civilians without actually saying it outright

Nope, killing Israeli civilians is justified. Ideally they kill soldiers, but any Israeli they find is good. Remember, the IDF has compulsory service. So all of them are guilty of the genocide. But a better reason is that, since the US made them overwhelmingly powerful, it would be absurd to expect Gaza to fight back along traditional lines of warfare. Whatever they are capable of doing to hurt the people genociding them is justified.

Israel will not respond to peace. If they don't kill every Israeli they can, Israel will genocide them. It is downright absurd to suggest Gaza is beholden to any traditional rules of warfare in the face of genocide.

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Oh, is that what Hamas is doing? Preventing genocide?

To a degree, yes. The only reason Israel hasn't invaded Gaza full force already is that Gazans have Hamas as a credible threat. Obviously not enough Israelis have been killed yet to fully end the genocide, but Hamas is forcing Israel to think twice.

Obviously not enough Israelis have been killed yet to fully end the genocide

listen to yourself, this is abhorrent.

Killing genociders is good, actually.

Hand-wavey justifications are so in right now.

Not a justification. If a country is committing genocide, it is good to kill them. Period.

“It’s not a justification, I’m just saying they’re in the right for this reason.”

Do you know what the word “justification” means? Are you arguing based on some specific meaning that only you know about? I feel like I’m being gaslit, next you’re gonna say that you never said killing civilians indiscriminately was a good thing.

Yes, I am not justifying it because it does not need to be justified. It is always good to kill genocidal people. I don't think I said that killing civilians is good, just that it's necessary. When they make it us or them, it is morally correct to choose yourself.

You can say that’s not what you’re doing all the live-long day, my guy, it doesn’t change the fact that what you’re LITERALLY DOING is providing justification. Just because you believe it’s an objective truth, given you can’t even consider the idea you may be wrong, doesn’t just make it objectively true.

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Israel's reluctance to just full on destroy Gaza is not because they were afraid of Hamas, it was because they knew that they would be judged and treated unambiguously as 'the bad guys'. It seems like October 7th was a gift to Israeli government itching for a justification to just go all in.

Your logic would have been that Israel would have been scared off by the October 7th, but they instead decided they were fully justified to inflict as much Palestinian collateral damage as it takes to eliminate Hamas. It seems Israel will be happy if Gaza is nothing more than a smoldering crater by the end of it, and declare itself justified in response to the Hamas attack.

So no, Hamas has done nothing to prevent genocide and if anything has helped contribute to the possibility of it happening. IDF is still be directly wholly responsible for their actions, but it seems their hands were at least somewhat politically tied before.

So you would say Palestine should have just rolled over and accepted the genocide? STFU, that's a disgusting view on society. You sound like you only care about preserving the status quo.

No, they shouldn't just accept the oppression. However I was saying that Hamas is not, in fact, staying Israel's hand. Current events make that blatantly self-evident. As bad as Israel was before, it was nothing compared to their retribution for Hamas attack now.

Israel wasn't holding back out of fear of Hamas, Israel was holding back due to: -Trying to achieve their goals without as obviously looking like the bad guy. They think Hamas attack gives them a free pass, so they are taking it. -Conflicts among their government. At times the hardcore Zionists are steering things, but not always and even while steering they face opposition that disagree with them. Again, it's hard for the reasonable voices to speak up now without being perceived as pro-Hamas (USA had this same phenomenon after 9/11, where any concern about broad anti-Islamic hatred was perceived as being "with the terrorists").

They certainly shouldn't have to put up with Israel's treatment, and I will confess I don't know what can work. I've heard tell of several occurrences where the right answer seemed to be just in reach before some extremist Zionist or Palestinian tanked the whole thing. However, the Hamas approach is evil, vile and even demonstrably ineffective at keeping Israel from inflicting harm on Palestinians.

I would assume that the extremist palestinian or Zionist you heard of was Israeli propaganda. IMO, the only reasonable voices are the pro Hamas ones. Imagine if Jews had had a group like Hamas in 1939. Don't you think the Holocaust would have been significantly less bad if a group of Jews had been able to effectively terrorize the Nazis? In 1939-1945, the only good German was a dead German. I don't see why it should be different now.

Israeli propaganda would blame Zionists? That would be an odd stance. I refer to various documented peace talks. A very obvious one was when a Jewish nationalist assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, derailing the peace process of the time. That is hardly Israeli propaganda.

No, if the Jewish population resorted to indiscrimate terrorism that would have not overcome nazi oppression. See this current scenario, Israel was not scared off by a big terrorist attack, they took it as a free pass to drop any pretense of restraint. Now if Hamas had specifically attacked IDF or police, I could see, but they explicitly targeted civilians. It is hypocritcal to be pissed over Israeli harm done to civilians while explicitly taking a pro-Hamas stance.

Hamas did not explicitly target civilians, they launched rockets indiscriminately, and targeted military. They aren't able to aim rockets and have them hit Israel, thanks to US funding. Israel has never been interested in peace, it's not like that assassination was the reason it didn't happen. The propaganda is the lie that they do want peace. Israel has always only wanted palestine's land, which they've been colonizing for nearly a century.

It would certainly have been better if Jews had done some terrorism on Nazis. But by your logic, you'd be telling the Jews to cut out the terrorism, because it's making the Nazis not want to come to the table. Violence is the only thing genocidal people understand. Until you make then bleed, they will never give in.

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Also when it comes to the radicalized right wing and their rhetoric about Palestinians, anyone else reminded of the way the right would talk about South Africa?

"This group, they themselves said, in the aftermath of the [shooting], that they don’t just stand in solidarity that they are part of this Christian nationalist movement." Sound familiar?

But do go off about how it's not what you called "cancel culture."

Edit: To be clear, I'm aware that cancel culture is just "moderation" rebranded to scare right wing idiots into a tribal mindset.

It's cancel culture when it happens to them. When they do it, it's called boycotting.

Except that's not really how boycotting works when they do dumb shit like buy shoes just to set them on fire.

Nah, cancel culture is real. They are the primary ones that wield it. They simply call being held responsible, cancel culture in an effort to distract everyone from that fact.

Very true. Just like they are the biggest proponents of political correctness. The actual kind, not the basic human decency they have rebranded as "political correctness". Just see how they behave if someone does not do the right thing around a piece of cloth (flag) or when someone violates expected rituals done when a certain song is played (anthem) at a....checks notes....sportsball game.

Same thing for their accusations of others being emotional, being a snowflake, engaging in culture wars and so on.

It's always projection with them.

Cancel culture? That's not what it means. This is censorship culture.

Desantis doesn't want people educated, he wants them angry

That's not what it means

That's because "cancel culture" doesn't actually mean anything.

For more meaningless I’d look to woke. Being cancelled does mean something specific. As far as a “culture” of it, yeah, not so sure.

I'm wondering how many of the current commentors actually read the article, lol. Firstly. The title is wrong as he's only challenging ONE group. Students for Justice in Palestine, so that's click bait.

DeSantis is making a claim that the group he's basing this on has claimed solidarity with Hamas, a terrorist organization. Like, should we be letting pro Hamas people just float around collage campuses?

Now, that's what we should be looking at. We should be asking if this is just a racist political stunt. If you look up Students for Justice in Palestine, you'll see articles claiming they have put out messages that are anti Semitic and pro hamas in nature. The chapter at this Florida school has apparently made it abundantly clear they are pro hamas. Professors and pro Jewish groups have written the management at the school and have been writing their representatives to address this issue.

Can you chuds fucking read and think for yourself? Like, yeah I hate DeSantis as much as the next guy but if you just shovel this biased political shit into your brain without a second thought you're not better than any republican who posts hurrr durrr liberals on Facebook.

If you don't take the time to actually look passed the headline, then you have no idea if this is a dickwad with too much power or if this is something else entirely. You don't know if this is a targeted racist effort against students or if these are pro hamas students openly supporting (and potentially financially supporting) Hamas

And just to add, you can be against this decision, saying it's not the government's duty to handle religious and cultural affiliations of students. But at least actually know why you'd be against it, ffs

Edit: further, he's not banning them, he's only deactivating their official status, which means they cannot access school funds or materials for their purposes. They are still free to gather as any group has a right to.

It's not up to the government to decide that. That's the whole point of the first amendment.

This is assuming they don't move past words.

I addressed that

And I'm disagreeing. He's still limiting free speech. I don't have to like what they are saying to realize their speech is still being limited by his actions. Say things we don't like you get your funding cut.

Say bomb on a plane get your freedoms cut. It's not the same

...how are you disagreeing with a point you agreed with? Are you just trying to be an argumentative tool today or something?

It sounded like you were agreeing with the decision. Are you not?

I was criticizing the fact that no one read it and decided to be upset at a headline alone. My point was that there is always more context to a story and context is important. You can't just see a politician or party you don't like do something and be upset, that's just fucking stupid, you have to know WHY you should be upset. What will end up happening is a voter base so fucking stupid they'll elect someone from the other party that ends up doing the same thing, but it's okay because you voted for (D) or for (R), right?

I acknowledge at the bottom of my comment that this isn't the government's business, but then even added that this is a public university and these groups are essentially school sanctioned clubs and can use school assets and potentially money for some things, and that this wasn't a ban, but a deactivation of official club status, meaning they can't use those assets or funds to support materially hamas (not that there were accusations of using school funds for hamas, just that it was technically POSSIBLE)

Even more context, suddenly things aren't so black and white.

I kind of agree with the groups deactivation, however DeSantis being the one to do it is problematic, he allowed Nazis at his rally and even retweeted Nazi propaganda at one point. So this puts him at a position of being by a hypocrite and racist. While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the groups deactivation on principle, I don't like that it was done by this person with these views, because this opens up room for him to do other problematic shit related to the current political climate that I don't agree with.

I also think the issue is problematic because it was a government setting itself into religious matters. That's a bit troubling to me, and yet it was an official religious group in a public university

Again, not so black and white. I KIND of agree with the deactivation on principle, but I actually disagree with the government doing it, and I disagree witb DeSantis using his position of power to push an agenda.

I think many people here see "DESANTIS DID A THING!" and just lose their fucking mind. That's fucking stupid. Everything has layers and context and many points of view. Do I think "DESANTIS DID A THING" warrants outrage? Yes, we absolutely, but I think it shouldn't be the full stop when forming an opinion.

They are welcome to say whatever they like, but they are not guaranteed help from the government to actively spread their message.

They aren't banned or even kicked out, they just can't use school resources to advance their organization. They can still gather, they can still speak openly, they can still get their education.

Reading more deeply, this seems reasonable enough. I've seen a lot of conservatives equating "don't kill innocent Palestinians" with "Hamas supporter", but in this specific case they went out of their way to mention there's room for that but not room for "Hamas is our movement".

The world seems to have broken when there are obviously bad guys on both sides of the conflict...

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Do you believe pro-IDF groups should be allowed on campuses despite the fact that they are genocidal collaborators?

No one is being banned from campus, and as long as the group isn't just a generic Jewish group, as long as they have come out in support of the actions of Isreals military, then yes I would agree with a deactivation

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Someone should tell DeSADIST that no matter how much he punches down on marginalized groups, he just doesn't have the hateful branding that little d does, and never will. At least little d has a weird kind of charisma that appeals to a certain type of person. DeSADIST just doesn't have it, no matter how many elevator cowboy boots or white go-go boots he hobbles around in.

As stupid as it is, humans are still selecting their leaders by height, which is bad news for ronnie. Little d lies about his height (and weight), but he's probably around 6 feet.

Ron DeathSentence

I'm personally surprised Ramaswamy of all folks is the one bashing it for being unconstitutional

You'd think he'd shrink from that line of attack considering his flagship policy is to throw one of the most recent amendments in the fucking trash.