Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

No, the war in Gaza is not like Vietnam

A vandalised statue of George Washington on campus at George Washington University (Credit: Getty images)

America’s National Public Radio (NPR) this week likened the 2024 student protests in campuses across the USA to those of 1968. Similar comparisons have also been made in France where last week students staged sit-ins at the prestigious Sciences-Po in Paris and claimed that ‘Gaza = Vietnam’.

NPR quoted a history professor at Manhattan’s Columbia University, the focal point for America’s pro-Palestine student protests. ‘It is an uncanny resemblance to what transpired in the late sixties in this country, where US students and other people in this country were inspired to speak out and mobilise against what they saw as an unjust war in Vietnam,’ said Frank Guridy.

Decades later, left-wing politicians and protestors still don’t understand the Islamist power structure

An uncanny resemblance? The social class of the students is the same now as it was in 1968, but where are the other parallels? There are no American troops fighting in Gaza.

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