Here's a follow up video from the Berkeley campus about what the students there actually know about the Islamic State. To be honest, this would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. Unfortunately, I have no doubt that many of these self-same students have strong, unequivocal, and pro-Palestinain positions when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Based on personal experience, I am sorry to say that this is a pretty accurate examplar of the current level of political discourse on American college campuses. By this I mean that everything boils down to one of the following:
1) Strict materialist explanations that verge on determinism (i.e. It's all about the oil).
2) Post-colonial guilt (i.e. It's all really our fault).
3) An extreme cultural relativism that is essentially indistinguishable from apologetics ("Plenty of people lop off heads. Besides, it's really not that bad.")
4) A fetishization of indigineity (to the point of "No True Scotsman" arguments such as the Islamic State is "not really" Islamic.)
Last, but not least, "positions" more often than not boil down to a lazy political hipsterism that do not involve even the minimal investment in time and effort to research a topic (as evidenced by the almost willful ignorance of the Islamic State and what they espouse.)
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