Taryn Thomas went from a committed Black Lives Matter and pro-Palestine organizer to an outspoken critic after hard encounters with campus activism and a trip to an exhibit that humanized victims of the Nova Music Festival attacks. Her story traces the moment a movement she believed in flipped into something hostile to America and Israel, and how seeing ordinary victims up close forced her to change course. She joined Glenn Beck to explain what happened and why she now speaks out against the radical turn she once helped lead.
In high school and later at Stanford, Taryn threw herself into activism without hesitation. She believed those movements were on the right side of history and spent years organizing and leading on campus. The shift started slowly and then accelerated into something she simply could not recognize.
Taryn joined Glenn Beck on a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program” to share her journey, the October 7 attacks’ impact, and how the pro-Palestine movement at Stanford evolved into something that could only be described as “anti-Israel and anti-American.”
She remembers being told early on that “for [black people] to be free, Palestine has to be free.” That message stuck with her and guided much of her activism. It wasn’t just a slogan; it became a lens through which she judged everything.
By college she was ready to lead the coalition efforts and organize protests after October 7, 2023. Taryn helped mobilize student demonstrations and was part of the early encampments that appeared on Stanford’s campus. “By October 20, Stanford already put up its encampment, ‘Sit-In to Stop the Genocide.’ This is before the families had even finished identifying its dead. This is a week before a single [Israeli] soldier had even crossed into Gaza,” she tells Glenn.
The rush to brand the situation a genocide and to ostracize anyone who mourned Jewish lives made her uneasy. The movement rewarded extreme positions and punished nuance, which pushed moderate voices into silence. Taryn found herself wanting a two-state solution but afraid to speak up.
“I felt like I wanted a two-state solution, but … I never wanted to talk about it with anyone because everyone was anti-Zionist, and it felt that … the safest position was the most radical one,” she says. That pressure to conform hardened into something darker by June 2024. What had been protest and solidarity slid into aggression and vandalism on campus.
One protest crossed a line and shattered her patience. “They broke into the Stanford University’s president’s office and caused $700,000 in damages, 12 students received felonies, and they spray-painted disgusting things, such as ‘death to Israel,’ ‘death to America,’ ‘kill cops,’ ‘pigs taste best when dead,’” she recounts. Actions like that exposed the movement’s real direction and convinced her it had become anti-American.
After she began to distance herself, Taryn was invited to the Nova Music Festival exhibit, expecting to see propaganda that would reinforce her old views. “I thought I would find Zionist propaganda and Zionist lies, and I wanted to reaffirm my pro-Palestine position more than anything,” she admits. Instead, the exhibit unraveled the narratives she had been handed.
“I found instead, you know, half-written ‘I love yous’ and last messages sent to parents and loved ones,” she reflects. The items were personal, messy, and plain human, not political symbols. Seeing those notes and videos made the victims feel like peers, not abstractions in an argument.
At the exhibit she also heard the celebratory messages from attackers and their families. “One of the audio recordings that we had heard was a terrorist calling his dad saying that he had killed 10 Jews with his own bare hands and celebrating. And I thought I was going to hear horror, and instead the dad congratulated his son,” she tells Glenn. “This was who we were calling our martyrs. … I always called myself an anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic, and that completely deconstructed that,” she adds.
That emotional reckoning changed everything for her. She realized the movement had flattened real people into talking points and that many of the victims were ordinary people like her friends and neighbors. “That could have been your kids; that could have been my friends,” she laments.
Returning to Stanford, Taryn was scared to speak out at first but knew she could not stay silent. She later traveled to Israel and saw daily life there, which cemented her decision to speak up publicly. “It made me realize I need to start speaking up about this,” she says.
To hear more of Taryn’s story, watch the video above.
