Stanford student calls for the destruction of America, Israel

A student and an alumna from Stanford University are calling for the destruction of both the United States and Israel through the publication of Static—an openly progressive student-run journal at Stanford.

Manny Thompson ‘15, a graduating senior and alumna Laura Perez ’14, co-authored the piece in which they label the Founding Fathers “racists” and call for the liberation of “Black and Palestinian people” in America and Israel.

“If we are working towards a world in which Black and Palestinian people are finally free, then by definition we are working towards a world in which both these states no longer exist,” the article states.

The article, “ISRAEL HAS NO RIGHT TO EXIST – AND NEITHER DOES THE U.S.” opens with the line, “Earlier this week, our campus newspaper refused to publish the following piece without citing a single factual error.” Manny Thompson told Campus Reform that The Stanford Daily “would not publish the piece because they found the tone to be ‘vitriolic’ towards the State of Israel.”

The Stanford Daily did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for comment.

“There are many people on campus that seemed to agree with my position arguing for the abolition of the U.S. and Israel.” Thompson told Campus Reform, adding that anytime he writes a piece someone always responds to him, but made it clear that “it has always been staff members who work for campus publications and not the general student body.”

The Stanford Review, the university’s conservative student paper, responded to Thompson, arguing that he “misses several important points.”

“Mr. Thompson’s article serves as a sort of denouement to our year at Stanford, where many activist movements have dominated and sometimes suffocated discussion on contentious issues,” Review staffers Brandon Camhi and Wayne Shu wrote.

Manny Thompson also told Campus Reform he was not looking for controversy and merely likes expressing his interests, which include “economic, racial, and climate justice.”

According to Static’s history, Static was an independent student blog which began in 2011. A year later, Static merged with the Progressive—a former official campus publication—and now prints a quarterly journal. Static receives funding from the Associated Students of Stanford University, the school’s official elected student body.

Static’s stated goal is to “reclaim our power to self-narrate, and to lend visibility to incredible activist-identified individuals that [sic] are making change [sic] in the Stanford community and beyond.”

“While I think it makes some fair assertions of a need to pursue equality in our own country, likening the American media's shock-value induced ‘War on blacks’ to the horrors of actual warfare incurred on the citizens in Israel and Palestine is a cataclysmic reach on the part of the authors,” Cameron Wisdom, a student in the field of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford, told Campus Reform.

Wisdom is a former editor-in-chief of the Citrus College Clarion and a recent transfer.

Static did not respond to Campus Reform’s requests for comment.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @gabnadales