Moving Away From the Template of ‘Oppressor Versus Oppressed’

Moving Away From the Template of ‘Oppressor Versus Oppressed’
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather at the University of DePaul Lincoln Park campus in Chicago, Ill., on May 5, 2024. Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images
Michael Barone
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Commentary

The violent campus takeover by protesters—some of them students, many not—has had the unintended effect of discrediting the premise underlying the protest. That premise is that the world is divided between oppressors and the oppressed, and that the oppressors are always evil and their victims already virtuous.

Michael Barone
Michael Barone
Author
Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and longtime co-author of “The Almanac of American Politics.” His new book, “Mental Maps of the Founders: How Geographic Imagination Guided America’s Revolutionary Leaders,” is now available.