Anti-Israel campus aggression “reminds me of the Red Guard in China during the Cultural Revolution”
My appearance on Allen West’s podcast: “I think what you have seen is almost other worldly, how students have been captured by these ideologies and are unwilling to consider alternative viewpoints. It’s very frightening. It reminds me of the Red Guard in China during the Cultural Revolution. People who are completely intolerant and very aggressive, and people who I think have the capacity for violence.”
I was in Arizona this past week for the ALEC Conference. I’ve spoken at ALEC conferences several times in the past, but this year I was just an attendee. Legal Insurrection had a booth, and we got to make great connections. Here are Kemberlee and Kristee manning the booth with our extra-special swag.
I did have a chance to speak at two events on the topic of camps antisemitism, at a Scottsdale Synagogue (live stream on Facebook here) and also to the Chandler Republican Women and East Valley Young Republicans (no video or recording).
I also had the opportunity to appear on a podcast with Lt. Col. Allen West on LiveFree TV:
LTC West welcomes Professor William Jacobson, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Securities Law Clinic, Cornell Law School and Founder of EqualProtect.org, to discuss the line between freedom of speech, expression and assembly versus support of terrorism. This issue is particularly hot on college campuses in the wake of the recent terror attacks in Israel, where speech is often regulated, but the rules are applied unequally and inconsistently. The reason? As Professor Jacobson explains, college campuses have been “completely ideologically captured by the left,” leading to an extreme intolerance of other people’s viewpoints.
How does the assault on historical truth impact the long-standing conflict in the Middle East, and more specifically, the “River to the Sea” fallacy so in vogue with the left? Listen in to learn more!
I had to do the podcast from my hotel room on my laptop with a weak internet connection, so the image and sound quality for me wasn’t great, but the experience was great. Take a watch.
EXCERPT of my comments (transcript auto-generated, may contain transcription errors)
WAJ (06:36):
In an ideal world, we would fulfill the maxim that the answer to offensive speech is more speech. The problem is on college campuses there isn’t more speech to be had. There is essentially one uniform ideology, if you look at the faculty and the administrators. So it’s very hard. This is the dilemma we face. We want a free speech environment, but you’re on a campus where there’s only one viewpoint represented or one viewpoint allowed to express itself. So this is really a problem.
If it were up to me and they wanted campuses to be a complete free speech zone where anything went, anything lawful went, yes, I’d love that. I’d love that. The problem is, we’re in this weird dilemma on campuses where for the left, it’s a complete free speech zone. For the right it’s not. And that’s a problem. And I think it’s a problem a lot of people are recognizing.
***
WAJ (13:36):
[With regard to campus anti-Israel radicalization] … I think what you have seen is almost other worldly, how students have been captured by these ideologies and are unwilling to consider alternative viewpoints. It’s very frightening. It reminds me of the Red Guard in China during the Cultural Revolution. People who are completely intolerant and very aggressive, and people who I think have the capacity for violence. We’re seeing that throughout the country with students, but also non-students tearing down posters of kidnapped Israeli children. Why don’t you just walk by? You know, I see posters I don’t like all the time. I don’t rip them down.
There’s something that has gone very wrong with a segment of our population, and I don’t want to generalize it to all young people or Gen Z or anything like that. But there is a segment of that population, which having been brought up to view the world as completely black or white, completely one side good versus evil.
They can’t see the Israeli point of view. They’ve never heard the Israeli point of view. They’ve never heard the history. All they hear over and over again, literally from kindergarten nowadays, is occupation, occupation, occupation. Well, occupation of what?
People don’t understand the history that Israel offered to give back all those territories in exchange for peace. And the Arab world said, no, the Khartoum conference, the three no’s. Golda Meir said, after the 67 War, we will give it all back if you recognize us and let us live in peace. And the Arab world said, no. The one country initially that did make peace with Israel, Egypt, Israel gave back the Sinai Peninsula, a huge tract of land, in exchange for peace with Egypt. So they don’t hear these things.
They don’t hear the two sides of the 1948 Israel War of Independence, that the Jews accepted the UN partition plan, which would’ve given the Jews a minority of the land in what’s now Israel. And the Arabs rejected it. So they, they just don’t hear these things. They see everything as oppressor, oppressed, occupier or occupied.
***
WAJ (16:33):
[As to Rashida Tlaib] And I think the Congress did the right thing in censuring Rashida Tlaib for use of that phrase [‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’], everybody understands, no matter how much they try to word around it. Everybody understands that ‘from the river to the sea’ means the extermination or expulsion of the Jewish population of almost 7 million Israeli Jews. That’s what it means. Everybody knows what that means. Yet they play these word games that it means ‘let’s just live in peace and justice’. That argument never held sway because of the multi-decade long Palestinian terror. But if there ever were a doubt what Israel would look like if Hamas terrorists and Palestinians were to take over the Jewish population, Hamas just showed us what that would look like. Everybody’s been predicting that’s what it would look like. There’s no doubt. Now nobody can play this game that, if Israel is removed, they’ll just live in peace with each other. No, they won’t. It will be October 7th on a scale, at least a thousand times worse.
***
WAJ (18:06):
[On illegal immigration] Yeah, I think it’s a problem. And I’ve written before and said before that I think the Biden administration’s abdication of its duty to see that the laws are dutifully enforced with regard to immigration and the border is an impeachable offense. And then I think the Congress would’ve been much better focusing on that rather than Hunter Biden. Now, the Hunter Biden I think is serious because that potentially is influence peddling by the Vice President of the United States. So I’m not saying it’s not serious, but the border is what this is all about. I know you mentioned the Egyptians are tough on the Gaza border. You don’t realize how tough they are. They built a canal to flood the border, to flood the Hamas tunnels. They’re not kidding around in Egypt with that border.
The lack of border enforcement is a problem. There are many travesties in this administration, but that to me is, is the worst because one of the fundamental attributes of a sovereign nation is the ability to control your borders. And we don’t have that ability right now because of a deliberate decision by this administration,
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Comments
Thought experiment:
If, on October 7, Israelis had entered Gaza and raped, tortured, and massacred Palestinians and taken hundreds of them hostage …
… what would these “protestors” be doing differently now?
The answer is nothing.
Although I see your reasoning, it is certain that even more insanity would reveal itself. Every time it seems that the left /libtard crazies can’t get any lower, they ALWAYS do manage another irrational level of ignorance and evil.
The far left tactics have been like those from the Cultural Revolution for years!
This is something that LI has discussed before….each day reaffirms this.
Exactly right. Violent people willing to use force. The other parallel is this: the Cultural Revolution was an effort
to seize power through the idea of destroying modernity “imposed” by capitalists. These people are very similar in their goals.
I recommend “Life and Death in Shanghai” by Nien Cheng. It’s an astounding personal account of the Cultural Revolution. Both tragic and inspiring.
Just moved from a leftist hell hole.
For the past 2 years I’ve had a pair of vice grips in all of my vehicles such that I could yank the valve stems from any car hitting me. I did this after witnessing first hand several hit and runs or better yet hits with no insurance. (I’m packing more than vice grips BTW). My theory was many of these cars are stolen, driven by druggies or just plain scum bags. So rendering their vehicle immobile is a public service.
The thing is- the vast majority in the leftist hell holes don’t put the hard stop on it. The voters, the politicians, they all love these criminals. I hate making the Sodom and Gamora comparison because there are pockets of sane people (called bubbles- like homeschool coops) but these cities will burn and burn they should. But a decline of any city (or institution) is a tragedy- even if it is the unavoidable outcome of current trajectory.
I like that pockets of campus groups are fighting back. I love that community colleges don’t have this problem. I love that employers are relying less and less on degrees for hiring criteria.
The Chinese under Mao had their red guards. The Nazi’s had their brown shirt gangs going around beating up political opponents and attacking Jews.. Most people in Germany stood by and watched. As Pastor Niemoller wrote, “When they came for the Jews, I did nothing. I wasn’t a Jew. When they came for me, there wasn’t anyone to stand up for me” (paraphrase, the exact words are reported many different ways). If you don’t stand up against this kind of hate, don’t be surprised when it is your turn to be the target of hate.
It’s obvious that there is no significant difference between the Democratic Party and that of Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Islamic states. They all hate anyone who opposes their ideology and are willing to do anything to those they hate.