antoine-roquentin:

it’s always interesting to watch people complain that attendees of universities and private schools that feed into them get the unvarnished truth about their nation’s history of atrocities as a way of proving that any anti-nationalist thought actually comes from the rich as a plot to undermine the nation. in reality, if you’re trying to maintain hegemony, you want to teach the most shuttered pro-nationalist views to the poor to indoctrinate them into nationalism. the rich require space for critical thought to perform the functions of academia, reproducing and imposing social order, and you can be sure they won’t revolt because of the benefits they gain from this order. of course, american universities are becoming proletarianized to a degree because companies don’t want to pay to train their employees, which is likely the driving force behind campus protest since the 60s. consequently this can also read as a freakout over the lack of separation between the parts of universities that serve the rich and those that distribute increasingly specialized skills needed for employment in a modern economy to upwardly mobile members of the working class.