Behind the mask: Why the new US campus protestors cover their faces

Semafor ^ | Apr 23, 2024 | David Weigel

[MinorityRepublican]

The first thing you see are the masks — the N-95s, the surgical masks, the patterned cloth masks, the bandanas — which largely vanished from American life over the last two years but are a defining feature of America’s swelling left-wing protest culture.

Faculty members at New York University link arms to protect a “Gaza solidarity encampment,” most of them wearing face masks. Activists block travel across the Golden Gate Bridge, all of them in masks. Members of the March on DNC 2024 coalition show up to their Chicago press conference in face masks, removing them only when it’s their turn to speak.

Nearly one year after the official end of the federal COVID-19 emergency declaration, the regular use of face masks for non-immunocompromised people has faded from American life. Outdoor masking, mandated in many states during the peak of the pandemic, became even rarer after a 2022 CDC advisory scaled it back.

But that gradual return to barefaced life never reached left-leaning protests, where face masks are widely used and encouraged.

Part of the reason, say organizers, remains an attempt to make a point about exposure to COVID-19 and other health risks, which some in the left-wing protest movements believe remain dire. And part is the threat of a different kind of exposure — from being captured by facial recognition technology or becoming doxxed (their personal information being shared online) by counter-protesters.

[chopperk]

Surprised the Police don’t use their night sticks more often when dealing with the Hamas muslim insurrectionists.

[Chode]

ummm, because they’re criminals committing crimes and don’t want to get caught???

[Jyotishi]

Because they’re afraid of contracting COVID. Obviously!

[Retain Mike]

Well, that is the costume now.

[Trailerpark Badass]

I see teens wearing hoodies while walking outside around my town in the middle of the day when it’s 90 degrees.

[PIF]

They cover their faces with diapers because some are not students, but Antifa and others, more cover their faces because they don’t want their parents to see them on the news, others because they want to get a prestigious job when they graduate.

[discostu]

Because they pay enough attention to see how facial recognition was used against the J6 people.

[Yardstick]

I can believe that one, simply because I still see left-wingers wearing the stupid masks while going about their daily business, like shopping for groceries or whatever. The left latched onto the COVID scare for ideological reasons and many of them, especially the hardcore types, haven’t let it go. Get a bunch of them together and I’m not surprised it would turn into a mask fest.

I also think their masking is a subtle homage to the Intifada and other Islamic movements that featured face coverings like the keffiya and balaclava. European street radicals like the Black Block and Antifa also wore face coverings. For these college lefties, wearing COVID masks may be a way to capture a bit of that same vibe but with a modern spin on it.

[blackdog]

Fist punch target will solve our masking thugs problems.

[blackdog]

Because it’s in the protest action guide book from Soros, Zuckerberg, and Klaus?

[Flaming Conservative]

Because they are COWARDS!

[Chickensoup]

This is marxist totalitarian Antifa.

They plan to kill.

[frank ballenger]

Just before the end of 2019 when the Chinese Communists unleashed the full force of their Covid bioweapon on the West, there were local laws being enacted to make wearing any types of masks illegal. Most were rubber face types. The masks had led to more criminals getting away.

What a change a few weeks later.

If pro-Israel people are now surrounded or followed or attacked they should quickly pull the masks off their tormentors. Will the judge say “You allowed the criminal to be identified but it’s their right to keep that secret?”
It’s not a hijab.

[RetiredTexasVet]

Nothing to do with fear of Covid. Fear that their faces will appear in the news and forever on the internet .... years down the road someone will dig up their part in kill the Jews.

[Romulus]

It’s a LARP: transgressors outside the law, standing up for Right in the face ofthe Man, who would crush them if their identity were discovered. At home, they all wear Batman pajamas.

[FLT-bird]

Yep. There is a reason Southern states passed laws against wearing masks in public between the 1920s and 1950s. Contrary to what Yankees/the Corporate media think, the Klan and the violence they cause was not popular in the South.

[Political Junkie Too]

Why the new US campus protestors cover their faces

The answer is simple: they support and pattern themselves after terrorist dictators.

There was a reason that the Fedayeen Saddam ("Saddam's Men of Sacrifice") soldiers in Iraq wore masks.

It was because, by day they lived amongst the people as their neighbors. But when called to terrorize they put on the masks so their neighbors wouldn't know who was one of them.

There was the Palestinian Fedayeen in 1979.

That's what he have here now, the Biden Fedayeen, the Student Sacrificial Army. They are called up by the tyrannical strongman to terrorize on government orders.

They are our neighbors, our children, our students. They are plotting to take our livelihood from us, to take our wealth from us, to take our children from us, and to demonize us as enemies of the new societal order.

They think the masks will allow them to hide, but they won't. Today's students are easily identified by their hair color and unusual cuts, their body piercings, their body size, and by their tattoos.

-PJ

[arthurus]

Same reason bank robbers bandanas over their faces or halloween masks.

[coalminersson]

can’t wear masks in public during demonstrations. Federal law needed defining that free speech does not include hiding your identity.

[Old Grumpy]

**I think trying to hide identity is the main reason.**

I agree with you. They don’t want certain people to know they are the ones “protesting.”