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I am sure you would not apply this level of charity to Israelis chanting anti-Palestinian or anti-Muslim slogans.
When people are burning flags and chanting death to a country, they are not making a distinction between "neoliberal elites" and ordinary citizens of that country. It would not even be completely unreasonable to point out that if you think the "neoliberal elites" deserve death, then the people who vote for them and pay taxes to their regime are complicit. This was the justification for 9/11 and basically every other terrorist attack on American soil or against American civilians and military personnel.
When people say "Death to ____," they mean Death to ____, not some abstract and nuanced political objection to ____'s current political leadership.
Which universities in the Middle East are pushing Western gender studies courses? Would love to know how those are going.
In mild, mild fairness, I could imagine that, like with North Koreans, the modal Iranian might carry much less hatred towards an ordinary American in isolation compared to the totality, but that probably doesn't scale well.
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