Alas, the Stench of Cynicism Insinuates Itself into the Mist of The Neoliberals' Post-Peloton Workout Rush

Hind Rajab

The cynicism is what strikes me. The sheer cynicism of the ruling elites and their intellectual representatives. 

 CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and major news media have hosted neoliberal pimps to articulate every conceivable theory for the campus protests—1960's relapse, the economy, privilege, antisemitism, Hamas, drugs, radical textbooks, Tiktok, not enough sex—anything ANYTHING except what protestors say and demand, namely to divest from Israel's genocide. (Yes, I tweeted as much.) 

Is it inconceivable that solidarities are formed from an unremitting desire for justice and an inability to continue "life as usual"? At the very least, even neoliberals must shudder at the psuedo of "life as usual" in US empire. 

Emblematic somehow: "NYU professor Scott Galloway" propounding his theory that "Hamas-loving students need to have more sex." I'm quoting the New York Post, a conservative tabloid that has become a reliable news source for those lifelong Democrats who are shattered to find Palestinians being discussed as humans with legitimate claims to life, hope, dignity, and grievance. 

Tabloids are tabloids, as Siegfried Kracauer wrote, and no one whips the middle classes into a xenophobic frenzy like the petty fascisms circulated by tabloid papers whose standard is not facts or reality. "Fuck the  fact-check," tabloids say, we are held only to the standard of entertainment. The people have spoken. The hunger for "infotainment" is vast. The markets step in to provide the product.  

Let us now praise famous men who are working the career possibilities of this moral panic. 

Let us begin with Professor Galloway, whose sexpertise appears completely unrelated from his area of interest, namely "Clinical Marketing." Like the entrepreneurial prince of pain, Shai Davidai, Galloway teaches for one of NYC's MBA programs. Business is booming; hedge funds are hot; artists are caught between the multiple 'liberating' modalities of self-marketing pyramids. Galloway knows the terrain, and chose the trophy photo to exhibit on the NY Post website.

The "news piece" is short, and perhaps worthy of a close reading. So I quote in full below, with commentary:

NYU professor Scott Galloway said that college campuses were increasingly becoming reminiscent of Nazi Germany — and attributed the reason partly to young people not having enough sex.

“We need to enjoy sex,” Galloway offered to some initial confusion during an appearance on “Real Time” with Bill Maher Friday.

“I think part of the problem is young people aren’t having enough sex so they go on the hunt for fake threats and the most popular threat through history is [antisemitism].” 

Galloway appeared on the show with former CNN host Don Lemon — who later told The Post he was inclined to agree with the observation.

“It would definitely take the edge off,” Lemon chimed in by phone.

Galloway said American society would not survive if its people could not rally behind noble causes — adding that much of what he was seeing reminded him of the early rise of Hitler.

“It’s easy to poke fun at these kids, but history has a way of repeating itself, and this is how it starts. In ’30s Germany, a progressive community, a thriving gay community, excellent academic institutions. And how it started, was it was fashionable to wear a brown shirt and mock students at the University of Vienna,’ Galloway said.

“And quite frankly, I’m really disappointed more Jews aren’t speaking out.”

Galloway repeated his observation which went viral this week that if students at terrorist encampments were chanting slogans calling for the death of black or gays they would be swiftly stamped out.

And that professors who did so would never work again.

Let's break it down. What do we learn from this news article that has been widely referenced? There is an argument offered in language, and there is a sociological reading in the background. 

The first sentence makes a claim, namely: Colleges look more and more like Nazi Germany, and part of the reason for this is that students aren't having enough sex. 

The second sentence pivots away from evidence for this claim in order to note a fact, which is that 

Galloway appeared on Bill Maher's show last Friday and said "we need to enjoy sex." This is true. He did. We can be assured of it by video. 

The third sentence provides an argument for Galloway's claim. He tells us that "part of the problem" (the problem is not defined, but we can assume he is referring to the similarity between US campuses and Nazi Germany) involves this sexually-inactive youth who "go on the hunt for fake threats and the most popular threat through history is [antisemitism]." The wording and syntax make it difficult to establish whether he means that antisemitism is a "fake threat" that is attractive to unsexed youngsters or antisemitism is simply the sort of mentality that develops when unsexed youngsters look for a threat against themselves. Why does this matter? The Post's readership skews more towards Trump than, say, the Washington Post. This means that white Christian supremacists who read this article won't feel attacked for being antisemitic. Antisemitism, here, is downplayed as a sort of lifestyle issue rather than a virulent ideology based on elimination of Jews from public life and citizenship. Perhaps more alarmingly, Hitler's Nazism is tracked to a claim often wielded by incels, namely, "we aren't getting the sex we deserve as men." Hitler could not have cared less about sex. The antisemitism of Nazi Germany was rooted in a strong notion of racial citizenship and an aesthetic of blood and soil that puts following orders above individual conscience. Many Nazis believed that the "foreign influence" of Jews, particularly merchants and intellectuals, contaminated the purity of the German nation. Genocide was the method and the result. Why doesn't Galloway mention this? Should we assume that it might make his readers feel defensive? The third sentence offers no evidence for any of the following: 1) Columbia students are having less sex 2) Nazis were having less sex when they decided to become Nazis 3) having lots of sex prevents people from becoming fascists. And the reader is encouraged to simply assume or believe them.

The fourth sentence tells us that Galloway also made similar claims on CNN, a centrist liberal news network, when speaking with Don Lemon. We learn that Don Lemon agreed, and went so far as to provide confirmation for this article. The fifth sentence quotes Lemon's agreement that sex "would definitely take the edge off," although it doesn't specify what the edge is, or why Lemon was phoned for this particularly meaningless statement. 

The sixth sentence seems to quote Galloway's conversation with Lemon again. Galloway makes a claim that uses rhetorical language associated with prophecy: US society will "not survive if its people could not rally behind noble causes." He then reaffirms that "much of what he sees" reminds him "of the early rise of Hitler." Rather than noting that Jews, Roma, and communists were targeted by Nazi under the auspice of their presumed "Bolshevik politics," and speaking about how the anti-Bolshevik, anti-Communist platform of the Nazis appealed to German business leaders as well as the middle-classes, Galloway leaps into a meaningless abstraction, saying that the US, itself, is being threatened by a failure to rally "behind noble causes." Genocide and divestment, the two causes for which students are protesting, go unmentioned. Presumably, they are neither noble nor sexy enough for Galloway.

The seventh sentence continues the ominous warning (implying "these kids" are not harmless; these kids are baby Nazis) with Galloway laying a platitude ("history has a way of repeating itself") over the abyss of his non sequiturs in order to stand firmly on the "this is how it starts." The eighth sentence describes what 1930's "Germany" was like: "a progressive community, a thriving gay community, excellent academic institutions." Galloway doesn't mention how gays were considered anathema to the burgher class. He makes it sound as if all Germans were "progressive," and thus elides the international conflict between the army, the universities, the towns, and the cities which characterized this period of history. It's an oversimplification that weaponizes the word "progressive" to signal to readers that Nazis actually came out of progressiveness. 

The ninth sentence sets up the condition for how Nazism started as follows: "it was fashionable to wear a brown shirt and mock students at the University of Vienna." Then, just as one expects elucidation between fashion, mocking, and the University of Vienna (which was located in Austria, not Germany), the tenth sentence gives us an admonishment ("And quite frankly, I’m really disappointed more Jews aren’t speaking out."). 

The eleventh sentence provides summary that invokes Trump and MAGA slogans and dog whistles for the anti-woke crowd: "Galloway repeated his observation which went viral this week that if students at terrorist encampments were chanting slogans calling for the death of black or gays they would be swiftly stamped out."

The final sentence extends Galloway's anti-woke analogy and paraphrases his warning that "professors who did so would never work again." 

Twelve sentences of political marketing. 

The target audience is the political center and the Right. The authority being invoked is one of a man who is attempting to market his own product, namely, business marketing, and flagging the attention of Right-wing politicians who are looking to expand their staff or media consultant crew as they prepare for elections. The medium is a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (who purchased it for $30.5 million) and which serves as "the ninth-largest circulation newspaper in the U.S. as of 2023." It is constantly sourced by Trumpist politicians in the South. 

The cynicism expressed by so many news anchors and 'thinkers' right now is an effort to erase the deeply ethical commitment of students and faculty who refuse to continue funding an occupation by a political regime that repeatedly commits itself to ethnic cleansing and erasure of Palestinians. The protestors will continue resisting, and their enemy is also this very cynicism that parades itself as pragmatism among the ruling elite. 

No genocide is fated. It is being chosen and supported in this moment, as I type. Evil can be resisted. We tell our children this. We live by its light. And when I think of Hind, whose name was evoked by the protestors who occupied Columbia's Hamilton Hall, I hold the cynicism of neoliberals against a future in which Hind's name will be spoken by freshmen and what was done to students by their own administration will not be forgotten. 

Make it Hind Hall. Do it because this gesture doubles as a permanent occupation of that building. A permanent memorial of Hind. Why, the New York Post was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton. Surely his fusty old name cannot represent the future of what is taught.