The Protest Derangement Class: A Response to John McWhorter

TLDR: Counterprotest think-pieces in the news are obsessed with a long list of made-up, hypothetical, unlikely risks of the college anti-war movement.
Pro-war counterprotestors, especially in the media, are sociopaths who use therapy-speak to dress up their conservativism in polite language.

it's really, really hard to sell someone on 4'33", a modernist music piece that - for those who are not familiar with it - requires an audience to sit in silence for the titular four minutes and thirty-three seconds listening to the sounds generated by the environment around them. it's a statement as much as it is a composition, and it is an actual composition - a provocatory one, sure, but if you accept the idea of improvisation and of noise music (which this piece contributed to create), then "the noises around you are a symphony" becomes a fascinating exercise in artistic focus

there was an incredible chance here to recontextualize the piece using the chants of the protesters in the background. it would have been one of the most incredible performances of 4'33" in history - this is the kind of opportunity a good professor dreams of having during their classes. like, imagine that same situation, but afterwards everyone has a discussion about how the piece made them feel with those noises in the background. there are entire analyses written about how different audiences and environments will cause the performance to land differently. this could have been an incredible chance to persuade skeptics that 4'33" is an incredible piece of art.

it's utterly insane, absolutely maddening, to me, that a music professor would require absolute silence for a piece whose stated thesis statement is that true silence is impossible and that we should approach the noise that surrounds us as music.

reactionary "kids these days" boomer rhetoric aside, i have no idea how i would ever be able to live with myself as a professor if i had completely and entirely dropped the ball on what would have been one of the most profound performances of 4'33" in my memory. like, after hearing my professor say "i was gonna do 4'33" today but the protests are too noisy" i would immediately demand a refund on my tuition costs, because it would be aggressively apparent to me that my professor has not reached the expertise in the field of artistry to be able to teach it competently.

but also the obvious; free palestine, fuck zionism, and fuck pearl-clutching moderates especially. imagine whining to a newspaper about the noise of an anti-war protest. imagine whining about drums and chants while the subjects of that protest hear the echos of bombshells and rapid-fire bullets without end.

especially fuck the moderates.