Video: Pro-Palestinian Protester Demands Boycott of Nike, Apparently Forgetting What She's Wearing
When not burning down the country, leftist protesters occasionally can provide a source of unintentional tragicomedy.
In a Wednesday post on the X social media platform, Addison Smith of Newsmax posted a side-by-side clip and close-up still photo of a pro-Palestinian protester using a bullhorn to call for boycotts against various major companies, including Nike.
Predictably, the close-up photo showed the confused young woman sporting a pair of Nike shoes.
“Anti-Israel protestor demands everyone boycott Nike for doing business in Israel. She’s wearing Nike Air Forces,” Smith said in the post.
Anti-Israel protestor demands everyone boycott Nike for doing business in Israel.
She’s wearing Nike Air Forces. pic.twitter.com/yvjkS41RFq
— Addison Smith (@AddisonSmithTV) October 25, 2023
The sad irony, in fact, runs even deeper.
While rattling off the names of companies targeted for boycott, the woman’s voice first broke as if from strain or the nerves of public speaking. Thereafter, however, she maintained a steady pace and volume.
“We call on you to boycott Starbucks, McDonald’s, Disney, Nestle, Coca-Cola,” she began, yelling out each name.
The irony came seconds later when, after naming five more companies, she raised her voice to yell “Nike!”
Whatever this poor young woman might think about the seriousness of her cause, we must hope that posterity, at least, will see through the present madness.
After all, by now these leftist protests have a lather-rinse-repeat quality about them. The protesters need only an oppressed group du jour — actual beliefs make no difference — in order to fill the streets.
How else, for instance, can we explain a recent “Queers for Palestine” rally in New York? Gaza’s Muslims, of course, have harsh penalties for “Queers.”
Likewise, how else can we explain Black Lives Matter’s affinity for Hamas? The former envisions global decolonization on racial grounds and openly espouses the doctrines of Karl Marx, while the latter pursues a Nazi agenda of eradicating Jews to make way for an ethnic state.
None of it makes sense. The underlying beliefs in both instances contradict one another.
In “The True Believer” (1951), author and amateur philosopher Eric Hoffer advanced one possible explanation for these inconsistencies among radicals.
Hoffer argued that ideology means little to the “true believer.” In fact, he suggested that a garden-variety Nazi could easily become a Marxist, or vice versa. But neither a Nazi nor a Marxist could embrace a stable, rational order dedicated to protecting individual rights.
Above all, the radical “true believer” craves what Hoffer called “united action and self-sacrifice.” Here we find the “tragic” part of the leftist tragicomedy.
That desire for “self-sacrifice” stems from deep dissatisfaction with one’s individual existence. Thus, in “united action” the “true believer” abandons the self and finds elusive meaning.
Christians, of course, understand self-sacrifice, for we are called to surrender our lives to God. Alas, leftist radicals surrender theirs to something else.
Hence the apparent interchangeability of leftist protests.
In short, what leftist protesters say and do makes little difference. What matters — to them, at least — is that they say and do those things as part of collective self-abnegation.
Perhaps this partly explains the inconsistencies, even if it does not render them any less glaring to others.
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