WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home

When gray-haired white liberals take to America's streets for "No Kings" protests, the only danger they're exposing themselves to is ridicule.

But what happens when progressive protesters head to a foreign war zone?

Last weekend, the "Global March to Gaza" found out.

Thousands flocked from wealthy European countries like Ireland and Luxembourg, joined by activists from the developing world as well.

They planned to get into Gaza through Egypt, evading Israel's blockade -- but it was the Egyptians who turned the marchers away.

It turns out the locals didn't take kindly to strangers involving themselves in the high-stakes politics of the neighborhood.

Egyptian authorities confiscated passports and phones, arrested some marchers and gave them all the chilliest of receptions in the blazing desert heat.

Nor were police the only ones giving the wealthy white would-be saviors of Palestine a hard time: throngs of ordinary Egyptians shouted abuse and tussled with the clueless do-gooders.

In Gaza, the marchers might have far faced worse.

A similar pro-Palestine effort is in dire trouble hundreds of miles away: a thousand protesters from North Africa are held up in Libya, where the France 24 news network reports they have "no access to food, water or medicine and communications severely disrupted" and organizers say they're under "systemic siege."

Those activists hail from places like Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia -- now imagine the pale faces from the "No Kings" crowd in that situation.

Egypt might as well be Madison, Wisconsin, by comparison, yet Gaza makes even Libya seem serene.

Getting packed onto buses and deported from Egypt is the kindest thing that could have happened to European leftists trying to tour a war zone.

Protests are inane enough in the West, but when Antifa isn't around and they don't devolve into riots against law enforcement, they're a safe enough recreation for liberals who want to imagine they're "doing something."

Yet outside the comfortable confines of the Western world that protesters so often denounce as intolerably unjust, pastimes like theirs can and do get people killed.

Perhaps back home in Luxembourg a few of Gaza's self-appointed paladins will reflect on how lucky they are?

Maybe instead of protesting against immigration restrictions next time, they'll give thought to making sure Europe doesn't become more like troubled North Africa?
Don't bet on it.

It's a basic trait of the Western progressive that he (or she, or whatever the pronoun) believes both that the West is the guiltiest, most racist, most imperialistic part of the world and also that Westerners like him (or her, etc.) understand exactly what the rest of the world needs and are just the ones to deliver it.

Western progressive moralizing is the most imperialist thing of all today, especially when presenting itself as anti-imperialist or "anti-colonial."

And when people like the Egyptians, who actually know a thing or two about experiencing imperialism -- and at times perpetrating it, too -- tell Europe's or America's wannabe white messiahs they aren't welcome, how do the protesters react?

Instead of singing a merry "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" while the bus hauls them away to be deported, they can be heard in a video shared on X chanting, "F--k you, Israel! F--k you, Egypt!"

How dare the Egyptians deport such well-meaning foreign interlopers?

It's as if they think they get to set the rules in their country, no matter how enlightened Europeans feel about it.

The Egyptians have the best of reasons not to want the West's most naive leftists marching through their territory on their way to Gaza.

Egypt can hardly afford to make an enemy out of Israel at a time when Israel is dealing harshly with enemies.

And Egypt can't take in an influx of Gazans without making Gaza's problems, including Hamas, its own.

But liberal meddling knows no borders, and progressives who want the world's population to come to the United States and Europe also want the world's governments to cater to their own WEIRD values: that is, "Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic."

The WEIRDos are wrong when they're out on the streets of America's cities.

And they're dead wrong when they interfere in foreign crises they don't understand -- though, thanks to the Egyptian authorities they now hate, at least this lot isn't simply dead.

"No Kings" is an old-fashioned message; today what we need is no more royally entitled protesters.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. To read more by Daniel McCarthy, visit www.creators.com.

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