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Victor Davis Hanson@VDHansonWhy the Epidemic of the Violent, Crybaby Protestors?After seven months of nonstop pro-Hamas protests on campuses and in our big cities, a certain predictable and monotonous pattern has emerged.The placards calling for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel (“From the River to the Sea”) are now amplified with ever more venomous rhetoric and performance-art demonstrations—from “Death to Israel! Death to America!” shouts (vintage 1979-80 Tehran) to flag burning to chasing and assaulting Jewish students, to defacing iconic monuments (including veterans’ cemeteries), storming classrooms, and to interrupting congressional life on the Hill.Yet when a college president or government official on rare occasion calls the police and a few arrests or even suspensions follow, the fiery protestors melt.We were led to believe by their hateful sloganeering and disrespect for the law that they were the descendants of the do-or-die 1917 Bolsheviks, or the thuggish 1930s Mussolini black-shirted toughs. But on the slightest pushback by authorities, they metamorphosize into hot-house plants that whimper in “I can’t believe this is happening to me” undergraduate style.Last fall, we first saw glimpses of the fragility of the hate-Israel crowd at Harvard, where outrage followed when the names of violent protestors were spread among potential employers.At Vanderbilt, the thuggish demonstrators that broke into an administrative building when confronted with police removal descended into preteen whimpering—to the point of claiming it was so unfair because one protestor needed to change her tampon. During the near-day long pout, they further sobbed that the officers tasked to keep them away from university officials were treated with food from Panera Bread, but the poor protestors were not.When masked Pomona protestors swarmed the president’s office, they oddly found themselves subject to arrests and possible suspension. And then on spec their fury turned into self-pity and lamentation.At a Bakersfield, California city-council meeting, a fiery revolutionary, Ms. Riddhi Patel, screamed at the city council members in pro-Hamas fashion. And then she cowardly shouted out a murderous Parthian shot: “I hope one day somebody brings the guillotine and kills all you mother—…We’ll see you at your house. We’ll murder you.”Yet after throwing down the Maoist gauntlet, Patel was reduced to prepubescent sobbing at her hearing where she faced 18 felony counties. (Did she assume Bakersfield was Yale or San Francisco?).So questions arise: why do these fire-and-brimstone revolutionaries calling for death and destruction wear masks? What or whom are they afraid of?Why not show the world who they are and proudly advance their revolution?Why, after signaling their anti-establishment fides, do they fall into sobbing fetal positions when confronted with the possibility of being expelled from what we thought were their despised universities?Various explanations come to mind, none of them mutually exclusive:1) This helicopter-parented generation is fragile and wilts when exposed to real consequences, since they have never really faced any—or much of anything beyond their sheltered lives;2) Many sprout from mother-ship universities where their bullying of cowardly administrators means they are further coddled by protective DEI apparatchiks, convincing them they are gifted, special people;3) They mostly come from upper-middle-class, well-off families, or the elite of the Middle East. Or they are on generous foreign student support and thus are used to having their way, given their parents have groomed them to go to elite schools, get cattle-branded degrees, and plug into lucrative jobs. Any interruption in that cursus creates hysteria;4) They saw that the looters, arsonists, vandals, and assaulters of summer 2020 faced no consequences while the demonstrators of January 6 faced prison sentences. Thus they concluded that the leftwing administrative state would always exempt them (and it usually does) from all consequences;5) They fear their coddling parents will be mad if their suspensions or arrests retard their oh so precious career paths;6) Those on student visas and green cards who praise Hamas, trash the U.S. (literally and figuratively) in a manner that would get them jailed or killed in their romanticized birthplaces assume self-loathing Americans will always either appreciate or tolerate their hypocrisies. The more they show hatred toward the U.S., the more they are paranoid about being sent back to Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Jordan, or any of the beloved homelands.What would end the street-theater violence, the student anti-Semitic bullying, the shut downs of bridges and freeways at commute hours, the mobbing of classrooms and lectures?1) Arrest violent offenders and charge them with major felonies when they threaten lethal violence (i.e. the case of Ms. Patel), stop commuter traffic, break into a lecture hall, or disrupt Congress;2) Expel all students who violate university rules; arrest those who commit violence; bar them from re-admission;3) Put a simple hold on all student visas for 1 year to sort things out;4) Deport all on student visa-holders who are suspended from universities; and deport all green-card holders who break federal or state laws;5) File federal racketeering charges against the interstate organizers of violent protests that shut down or occupy public buildings, disrupt transportation, and endanger public safety.6) Get the government out of the student loan business; tax university endowment income; reduce non-scientific government grants to campuses.Just a few expelled students or deported visa holders would work pour encourager les autres.9:51 PM · Apr 19, 2024
This is at Columbia University (NYC), long known as a home for communists:In response to “horrific” scenes of antisemitic harassment at and around campus, the Orthodox Rabbi at Columbia/Barnard sent a WhatsApp message to more than 290+ Jewish students this morning recommending that they go home until it’s safe again for them on campus:https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1782045735736820222
Wouldn't this cause all of the Jews to flunk out of school?
Babylon Bee: Columbia Protestors Clarify They Only Want Death To America After America Is Done Paying Their Student Loanshttps://twitter.com/TheBabylonBee/status/1782866624250327194
