"The anti-Israel—and antisemitic—protests sweeping college campuses these days are an old story with a new cause. That story is the increasing resort by America’s political left to protest in the streets as a form of intimidation and rule by the mob. When Americans on the political right do this, it’s called a threat to democracy.
For readers of a certain age, today’s protests at Columbia and other campuses echo 1968 and opposition to the Vietnam war. The kids even took over Hamilton Hall, the same building at Columbia. But the mass-protest method has become the political default for progressives when they lose the policy debate in Congress, the White House, the courts, or other institutions. They keep going to the barricades because it often gets them what they want.The clearest example was the post-George Floyd riots of 2020. The left used that murder to trigger, and then condone, riots in numerous cities against what they claimed was widespread police abuse. Looting and vandalism were justified as social-justice rage.
Fearful of these protests, Democratic mayors and city councils around the country slashed police funding, eliminated cash bail, and stopped enforcing many crimes. Vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris tweeted support for a bail fund for protesters who were arrested in Minnesota. The Democratic convention in 2020 failed to condemn the rioting.
One result was an urban crime spree that broke out across the country, and cities from Philadelphia to San Francisco are still trying to recover. But in that election year the mob created the impression of disorder that probably hurt Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election. Political mission accomplished.
Post-Vietnam, a watershed of this mob method was the assault by the organized left against the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in 1999. The riots put the “anti-globalization” movement on the political map and, anticipating protests, President Clinton's Administration issued an executive order to include environmental reviews in trade deals.
The so-called “occupy” protests in 2011 included encampments in public places in numerous cities, including lower Manhattan. The goal was to focus on income inequality, and Democrats were again loath to push back and slow to clear public spaces. The “occupiers” succeeded in changing the debate inside the Democratic Party in favor of much higher taxes and income redistribution.
Now, in this election year, the student protesters are trying to change American Middle East policy. They may not know much about the region, its history, or even that the Hamas charter calls for annihilating Jews. But they are swept up in the anti-colonialist, anti-Western, anti-American themes dominating so much of university instruction. These are the intellectual children of Frantz Fanon, the Afro-Caribbean Marxist and author.
They are also changing the political debate inside the Democratic Party. President Biden has shifted from the strong pro-Israel stand he took immediately after the Oct. 7 massacre. He now opposes the destruction of Hamas in its Rafah redoubt in Gaza. And he is publicly critical of Israel’s wartime coalition government. His accommodation will encourage the protesters to continue even once college exams are over and students return home. As in 1968, the Chicago convention will be a target.
All of this bodes ill for the country’s political future, not least if Mr. Trump wins in November. The protests are likely to be widespread and perhaps violent if the election is close. Democrats and the press keep warning about a repeat of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which was a disgrace and for which hundreds have been rightly punished. But the political left is more organized for mass protests and more likely to take to the streets.
Today’s campus eruptions may be aimed at U.S. policy in the Middle East, but they are a symptom of a larger trend toward street protest and law-breaking to achieve political goals. Political and other leaders have a duty to call this out and enforce public order, whether the violators are on the left or right."
We need to come to grips with our problems and solve them. Cultural Marxism with its "oppressor versus oppressed" mentality is on the rise and is implicated in the chaos on University campuses. Weak national and university leadership has allowed recent events to explode into a crises for Western culture and values.
National Leaders must seize the day and end the chaos. Ignorance, shallow thinking, perceived victimhood, appeasement and outside instigation is dangerous. Hopefully, recent - but tardy - actions taken by Columbia University and the New York police force may serve as a templet for actions at other universities.
A May 4, 2024 Wall Street Journal Op Ed "The UAW Has a Gaza Policy," adds another troubling factor. It features Shawn Fain, President of the United Auto Workers who supports the protestors and opposes Israel's efforts to exterminate Hamas. By way of contrast, Lane Kirkland, President of the AFL-CIO for 16 years was a patriot who supported free enterprise and served on the Board of the Polish American Enterprise Fund that supported entrepreneurial activities.
UAW Leadership Activism
"The United Auto Workers’ newest members are already getting more than they bargained for, but not in the way they were promised. The union’s leader is all in for campus lawbreaking and he’s denouncing Israel for its war against Hamas.
UAW President Shawn Fain chose to dive into the debate over anti-Israel campus protests this week and how police should respond. Writing on X (formerly Twitter), Fain said his union opposes “the mass arrest or intimidation of those exercising their right to protest, strike, or speak out against injustice". That would be a fine statement in a vacuum. In the context of the protests, it’s a defense of mass trespassing and harassment of Jewish students at Columbia, UCLA and elsewhere.
Mr. Fain foreclosed any doubt about where his sympathies lie when he said, “This war is wrong," as is Israel’s campaign to root Hamas out of Gaza. He said the UAW “has been calling for a ceasefire for six months,” meaning the union wished to halt Israel’s war of self-defense. This after Hamas mutilated women and children while also killing 1,200 Israelis and taking hostages in a surprise assault.
Those views may come as a surprise to Volkswagen workers in Tennessee, who chose to unionize last month, or Mercedes workers in Alabama, who will decide whether to join the UAW by May 17 . The union is eager to organize workers at fast-growing southern plants, and it’s promising higher wages. But that pitch is conspicuously in solidarity with Hamas and Ivy League delinquents. Worker's dues will support Mr. Fain’s ideological causes.
Mr. Fain’s anti-Israel policy may be aimed at appeasing a separate, growing constituency within the UAW: graduate students. By last year more than a quarter of the union’s 400,000 members were university employees, mostly assistants and adjuncts. Columbia’s chapter demanded the university divest from Israel, and its members showed up to protest. UAW members were among those arrested when police swept campuses Tuesday night.
Mr. Fain’s leftist politics are far removed from 20th-century union leaders like George Meany and Lane Kirkland, who were stout anti-Communists. Auto workers should know the radical politics they’re being recruited to endorse."
Couple Fain's values and policies with those of Teachers' Union leaders and you begin to get a sense for how our major institutions can quickly change our culture in dangerous ways. Add aggressive efforts by those who wish to end America's positive impact on world history and we have the makings of a disaster now unfolding. Perhaps the wheels really are coming off.