Antisemitism’s Mean Girls

Today’s protester-terrorists ruin everybody’s lives.

A recent article by Zoe Strimpel in The Spectator describes what Strimpel calls the “Keffiyeh Karen”: Upper-middle-class white women who have joined the campus protester-terrorists on their antisemitic rampages. 

Strimpel sees this bizarre phenomenon, in which progressive women ally with some of the most openly misogynist people in the world, as indicative of something much larger:

In her ready and confident fury, her rudeness, her iron-fisted appetite for confrontation over infractions of what she deems political and moral gospel, the Keffiyeh Karen is related to a broader epidemic of the Gen Z Mean Girl. These Mean Girls have graduated from running the schoolyard to terrorizing the workplace. If there is one type to be afraid of in modern offices, it isn’t the lech or the shouty, hungover male middle manager. It’s the twenty-three-year-old gluten-free vegan graduate, wet behind the ears.

Strimpel calls these people “misanthropic misses” and states, “Several good friends of mine who work in corporate settings have told me tales to chill the blood—women in their early twenties conducting bullying campaigns, being proudly insubordinate to their bosses. They never face consequences.”

Personally, I don’t have much of a dog in this fight. With some worthy exceptions, I find progressives insufferable on general principles, be they male or female. As for “Karens” and “Mean Girls,” both stereotypes are products of an upper-middle-class milieu I’ve never had the privilege of living in; though like all of us, I am cursed to endure its idiocy.

However, thanks to the remarkably handy Urban Dictionary, I’ve found an interesting definition of the “Mean Girls” stereotype. There’s the expected, “Girls who are bullies and use ‘girl aggression’ (nasty comments, trickery, deceit, excluding people from events, spreading rumors, stealing boyfriends, etc.) to manipulate other girls.” But I found this particularly striking: “These girls are often popular because everyone is either afraid of them or wants to be like them. They tend to have armies of followers (‘friends’/wannabes) comprising their clique. However, few people actually like them for who they are.”

From this point of view, it’s hard not to see the campus protester-terrorists as anything other than “Mean Girls” writ large. They are bullies who, while they definitely engage in direct violence, often use passive-aggressive tactics of remarkable sophistication to get what they want. They leverage their nihilistic willingness to say and do literally anything to anyone, along with the impunity inexplicably granted them by the adults in the room, in order to amass “armies of followers” who are rightly afraid of them. Unsurprisingly, given the degree to which the protester-terrorists are indulged, many people end up wanting to “be like them.” Who, after all, wouldn’t want to be granted immunity from any and all consequences of your actions?

However, I think the last sentence of the definition is accurate as well: Nobody actually likes the protester-terrorists. In fact, it’s very probable that the protester-terrorists don’t even like themselves. There is, after all, nothing to like about a bullying, obnoxious, violent, stupid, arrogant, racist, petulant spoiled brat who believes they are entitled to perpetual unearned indulgence.

There is another reason no one likes them: While the protester-terrorists have certainly made life miserable for Jews, they’ve made everybody else’s life miserable as well. After all, Jews aren’t the only ones prevented from simply making their way across campus or enjoying a graduation ceremony at the institution they paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend. In some ways, it’s extraordinary that the general student body hasn’t risen up and physically ejected the protester-terrorists with a warning never to return. 

It’s easy to assume that students have not done so because they sympathize with the protester-terrorists, but it’s much more likely that students are understandably afraid. It is clear, after all, that if the bullies retaliate, they will be granted total impunity. In institutions as debased as today’s universities, the Mean Girls always win.

But this phenomenon is larger than campus protester-terrorism. The truth is that antisemites in general are the Mean Girls. Indeed, they always have been. Outright antisemitic violence is back in fashion these days, but passive-aggressive, manipulative emotional terrorism and blackmail are perhaps even more popular. And like the Mean Girls at your average high school, antisemitism does not just afflict the Jews. It afflicts everyone. It ruins all our lives.

There is, however, a simple solution to the Mean Girls, though the adults in the room appear loathe to admit it: Don’t be afraid of them; don’t be like them. People may defer to them and indulge them, but the truth is that everybody hates them. Even if people cannot admit it to themselves, no one likes anyone who bullies, disrespects, and terrorizes them on a regular basis. People will often do almost anything to achieve social popularity but, deep down, they despise the people who torture them as the price of admission. If you do succeed in being “like them,” you become just another wretched narcissistic sadist with an emaciated soul. In the end, you are left with nothing but the solitude of your own scorn.

At some point, I imagine, people will simply decide that they’ve had enough of the Mean Girls, on campus and elsewhere. Certainly, enforcement and accountability will go a long way toward curbing their abuse.

In some ways, however, the real problem is the adults in the room. Mean Girls will always be there in some form. Thus, it is essential for the people who should know better to take appropriate action against them. It is time to tell the adults in the room who refuse to take such action, whether they be university presidents or professional politicians, to please exit the premises. Their services are no longer required.