Washington and Lee University Offers Course on ‘How to Overthrow the State’
“How will you attain power? How will you communicate with the masses? How do you plan on improving the lives of the people? How will you deal with the past?”
For months now, Washington and Lee University in Virginia has been struggling over whether or not to strip Lee’s name from the school, based on his association with the Confederacy.
Yet the same school is now offering a course on how to overthrow the state. How’s that for irony?
Jordan Davidson writes at The Federalist:
This Virginia University Offers Course On ‘How To Overthrow The State’ And Write Your Own Manifesto
Want a formal education that includes an in-depth analysis and application of Marxist principles? Look no further than the prestigious Washington and Lee University.
Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia is offering a course titled “How to Overthrow the State?” according to Breitbart News.
A course description on the university website describes the “Writing Seminar” as a way to “place each student at the head of a popular revolutionary movement aiming to overthrow a sitting government and forge a better society.”
“How will you attain power? How will you communicate with the masses? How do you plan on improving the lives of the people? How will you deal with the past?” the course description asks.
Class material will primarily focus on Marxist and revolutionary figures such as Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Mahatma Gandhi to “explore examples of revolutionary thought and action from across the Global South.”
We are not interested in getting anyone fired, and we believe in academic freedom. Still, you can’t tell me that leaders at Washington and Lee don’t comprehend the significance of such a course, as the American left is burning American cities and toppling historic statues.
Former House Speaker and historian Newt Gingrich opined on Twitter:
Washington and Lee University’s course on “how to overthrow the state” is one further sign of the insanity taking over higher education. The alumni should rise up and show how to overthrow a crazy college administration.
— Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) September 4, 2020
Tyler O’Neil of PJ Media notes that this comes in the footsteps of not only riots, but the 1619 Project:
Amid Riots, Washington and Lee University Offers a Class on ‘How to Overthrow the State’
This fall at Washington and Lee University (removal of Lee pending), students will learn reading writing, arithmetic — and “How to Overthrow the State.” As antifa riots have continued in Portland for almost 100 nights, students at the Virginia university named after George Washington and Robert E. Lee* will study Marxist revolutions in the Global South, complete with role-playing regime change.
Writing Seminar 100-18, “How to Overthrow the State,” will award each student three credits toward graduation…
While there is nothing wrong with studying Marxist revolutionaries like Che Guevara, it does seem a bit unnerving that a university class would encourage students to emulate them and to “overthrow the state” — especially amid violent riots and looting in cities across America…
Washington and Lee students will take a crack at “rewriting history,” just like The New York Times‘ “1619 Project.” That effort in Marxist critical theory preaches that various aspects of American society, such as capitalism, are oppressive and racist. Indeed, the Smithsonian briefly taught that even things like science, the nuclear family, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and politeness itself are oppressive aspects of a “whiteness” culture.
The professor who is teaching this course has apparently received some push back and possibly harassment. We do not wish to be any part of that. The school released this statement:
The W&L History Department wishes to express its solidarity with and support for our colleague, Matt Gildner, who has been the target of a harassment and intimidation campaign that threatens academic freedom. Please see our statement below. pic.twitter.com/e7gv0tV4lY
— W&L History (@GeneralsHistory) September 5, 2020
How nice that advocacy of insurrection gets defended by the administration. What about defending critics of Black Lives Matter rather than administratively joining the mob?
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
Do these ( insert expletive) really think we are all so ignorant we don’t know teh left controlled all Washington form 1956 to 1994 after that we have 3 globalist presidents. If you have a problem with the country being as you put it driven into the ditch its YOUR party that did it.
I would love to be able to take that course, I’d write a full blown paper for it, and I want to see their faces when I lead with “The Very first thing I do is round up Every College Professor in the country and Execute them, because that is the source of the rot. Next I give all their students a choice – Join Me or Die!” And I’d instantly execute any who give me any leftist claptrap in response.
I wonder how much they would like that paper.
All federal funding should be pulled for all colleges in America.
All federal guarantees for student loans should also be canceled for future loans and revoked for current loans.
We will see how fast these schools change.
Having some idea of how Washington and Lee used to be, I’m embarrassed that this version exists.
Lee allowed his name to be added. It is ironic that he renounced the very concepts being taught there now. Well, at least we know in part what is being inculcated into these so impressionable minds.
I guess we need to bone up on courter-rewvolutionary tactics.
Seems like Che Guevara would a good example of what not to do. Every revolutionary movement that he lead failed miserably.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1302290474192044033
Paul Joseph Watson video, worth the time.
I’m putting my Faith in November 3. If it completely falls apart in this country in spite of a crushing defeat for the left at the ballot box, I’m sorry, but we didn’t get a Constitution and Bill of Rights for nothing.
“…crushing defeat for the left at the ballot box…”
Thus the “vote” by mail fraud. No ballot box to be secured.
The left has conflated ballots with votes. A vote is cast by a valid voter in a secure ballot box. A ballot is whatever can be found in storage boxes or mailbags or whatever and then treated like they are votes by the Democrats. Democrat vote-by-mail states should not have any ballots counted as votes unless they can clearly establish that every ballot is a true vote just like one can do for a real vote at a poll.
Why would they stop at getting rid of just Robert E. Lee (who was quite a revered figure at W&L when my son was a freshman there around the turn of the century)? Didn’t George Washington own slaves? Pretty short list of who you can name things after nowadays!
“Fidel and Che” … or “Lenin and Mao” as replacemens?
Well in fairness, the University namesakes, Gen Washington and Gen Lee, both had experience in armed conflict with a central government …..
So now they have an official course that overtly advocates this. To supplement entire curriculums that covertly advocated it for decades.
Seems like it could be a worthwhile class. However, I expect it will be taught with a pretty extreme bias. I kind of doubt they will make much mention of anti-communist revolutionaries such as Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel.
lee was many things but one of those things was a born and bred southern gentleman to his core–lee, not lincoln, is the man who ended the war–in a supreme act of courage and honor he effected the south’s surrender and thereby put an end to the bloodshed
an imperfect man, true, but a good man just the same
and thereby put an end to the bloodshed
A humanitarian would have done that after Vicksburg, when the Confederacy very obviously became untenable. The two years after that served little purpose except to rack up dead bodies, and maybe to “uphold the honor” of, well, something-or-other.
Our colleges and universities are already full of political operatives disguised as professors. I’d be interested in this course, because I firmly believe in knowing my enemies. That is part of the reason why I’ve also read The Origin of Species, Das Kapital, Revolution for the Hell of It, and the Koran.
But if somebody actually wanted to teach something straightforwardly worthwhile, I would suggest “Avoiding Riots 101,” a study of how the City of San Diego has (mostly) avoided the fate of Portland and Oakland, through responsible action on all sides of the “police brutality” accusation.
It would be nice if someone, somewhere, modeled peaceable political action and debate that works.
“We are not interested in getting anyone fired…
We do not wish to be any part of [some push back and possibly harassment]…”
Then what are your suggestions to address Big Academy’s problems.
Also, we?
Speak for yourself, kimosabe.
For some time now, morality is no longer a force of conscience in the average American institution — intellectual, entrepreneurial, or otherwise.
Remove that considerable check from Tocqueville’s list of features about America’s experiment in democracy.
And send a memo to JB at Amazon: American democracy dies in a general climate of amorality, too.*
____________
* Are the boys and girls in your Washington Post’s newsroom working at their competitive, torch-bearing best (to keep the light of truth shining, and) to nail down for the record the identities of those “sources” alleging President Trump’s (or, if not, the same sources’) possibly “heinous” slander against our Marines (and president), who, willingly or not, but heroically, to be sure, lost their lives against the Keiser’s belligerent and murderous forces in 1918 at Belleau Wood, France, in their “teufelshund” effort at “making the world safe for [you, in particular, and] democracy [in general]”? Huh, Jeff?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_Dog
Honestly,
It’s an interesting topic for a Poli Sci class.
As a young Army Officer, one of the professional reading lists had this now classic on it:
Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook Paperback – November 12, 1979. Edward N. Luttwak
“Coup d’État demonstrates that scholarly analysis can be good social science and at the same time fun to read. It is nontechnical in approach and informal in style… Moreover, Edward Luttwak’s familiarity with the basic concepts and problems of political science is evident throughout. He is seldom superficial and never trivial in his treatment of his subject. The result is a book of value to everyone interested in the sudden changes of government that occur so frequently in many parts of the world and also curious as to why they so often seem to result in more of the same… We can all have the satisfaction of understanding the strategies and techniques employed, and we can enjoy learning them from this lucid and witty book. (Virginia Quarterly Review)”
“An extraordinarily competent and well-written work, displaying very wide knowledge of the ways in which coups, both successful and unsuccessful, have actually been organized. (Times Literary Supplement)”
https://www.amazon.com/Coup-d%C3%89tat-Practical-Edward-Luttwak/dp/0674175476
“How will you deal with the past?” the course description asks.
Well, I don’t know. Maybe, learn your history, or you will repeat it?
Would someone kindly tell me what the Global South is?
In theory, the Southern hemisphere.
In common usage, the third world
Thank you!
This is a legit field. More people should study it seriously, not in the brainless ’70’s “Revolution for the —- of it” style but as a serious topic. Things like Ragspierre, Benito, Bonaparte, Pol Pot, etc happen, and we should all know why. They shouldn’t be ignored just because some of them were communists. The “Lessons of History” do us no good if we never even learn what they are.
Luttwak’s book has its merits. Curzio Malaparts’s The Technique of Revolution [1931], ditto. Malaparte was a supporter of Mussolini, though strangely enough he considered Hitler to be of no account. The US Marine Corps’s NAVMC 2890, Small Wars Manual [1940] is not exactly in the same vein but still of value. Ditto for Finer’s The Man on Horseback [1962]. There are a number of histories following in some detail the era of the First and Second Triumvirates and the transition of Rome from a republic to an empire, the work of indiviuals rather than the military as a whole, and so pretty close to being coups. Rubbish like the notorious Anarchist’s Cookbook is useless and dangerous, as it’s filled with formulas for explosives which will almost certainly kill the fledgling bomb-maker foolish enough to follow the recipies.
Americans really should know this material. An uneducated populace is just ripe for something similar to happen yet again. This does not mean that I have any confidence that this particular course will teach anything useful, but the general subject is important.
“academic freedom is necessary not just so faculty members can conduct their individual research and teach their own courses, but so they can enable students . . . to acquire the learning they need to contribute to society.”
Comedy gold. That is not what “academic freedom” is about. That’s what ordinary everyday freedom is about. The “academic” variant is a Trojan horse with some pretty nasty stuff inside.
If we have any readers at W&L, I’d hope they would take the course and pay attention to techniques. This sort of discussion can’t just be for the ones who want to overthrow the government.
These imbiciles need their throats cut. Plain and simple. The, what do you call it, not a university, not a college, not even a school? How about the’Den of Vipers?’ Good enough, but anyway, needs to be burnt to the ground and afterwards the ground where it once stood needs to be salted so that nothing will ever grow there again.
I am retired Federal Agent and live in rural Va and the last thing a bunch of college kids want to do is try to overthrow the state. They are playing a game that will get deadly but hey everyone is a Facebook tough guy until they get on the two way range. I keep telling people that if the young, white, left thinks they can pull this off they are dumber than I thought. The problem is the children on the campuses that are victimized by professors who place no value on life. They might pull this off in an urban area but it ends badly in a rural area. I do not agree with violence however I have seen enough equal and opposite reactions to hypothesize how this ends.
Defund Washington and Lee.
No more student loans backed by the taxpayer.
Or we could make the course feel more real by using loaded guns. They have to lead their troops into battle, if they screw up they’ll probably get shot by rival marxists. It could be a win win situation for America.
WLU is private
I’m so glad I didn’t take that job there several years back.
Defund them …
A federal investigation for 18 U.S. Code § 2384 seditious conspiracy is clearly warranted and would generate an interesting discussion.
Um, no. The first amendment clearly bars any such investigation. The Supreme Court has been very very clear that advocacy of anything is 100% protected speech, and any law purporting to restrict it is void.