I failed in my scheme to get arrested with the pro-Hamas Tenters and I failed in my attempt to get beat up by them. I’ve come up with a third scheme, however, in which I could get both arrested *and* beat up. This one is probably too time-consuming and hard on the back for me personally, but I lay it before the young folks for consideratio: set up an encampment parallel to the Hamas ones, but smaller, less obnoxious, and more law-abiding. Where Hamas has 20 tents, plows up the grass, and defies all rules, you would have 4 tents, move them regularly to save the grass, and follow all rules except rules the Hamas encampment has been violating without punishment.
The difference, of course, is to choose a cause that is more offensive to the Administration and liberals. The Administration doesn’t mind killing Jewish women and children so long as it is done off-campus somewhere, even though only a minority within it actually favor the cause of world revolution and the extermination of Zionism. So for your encampment, gentle reader, support a cause that really outrages university people.
Zionism is the obvious choice for an alterntative encampment. Put up Israeli flags and make speeches excoriating terrorism. A milder variant suggested to me by a law professor at the American Law and Economics Conference a few days ago is to put up both Israeli and Palestinians flags with the slogan “Let’s all just agree that killing and raping civilians on purpose is bad.” That, of course, is completely objectionable in pro-Hamas circles. Even to mention what happened on October 7 is considered to be in poor taste, unless you say it in Arabic while wearing appropriate headgear.
But Zionism is not the best choice. It offends the Tenters, to be sure, but they’re expecting it and no doubt have long been telling their people to hold back under this kind of provocation. Also, it doesn’t really offend the Tenter leadership much. They are anti-Zionist, true, but their real target is Capitalism, of which Israel is just a convenient symbol and a minor blemish on the glorious poverty of the Middle East. The Party for Socialism and Liberation is one of the main Tent organizers, perhaps even *the* main one.1 They are much more concerned with establishing a Liberated Zone and showing their power than they are with fighting Israel. They read Mao, not The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They hate Islamists as much as Capitalists and despise them far more. To a Marxist, Islamism is a phase 500 years out of date which would crumble if it ever encountered real Communists without Capitalists to come to their aid.2 Look at China. They’re dealing with their Moslems quite easily, even though they have be a little delicate because of public relations.3
No, although the Tenter followers maybe Islamist foreigners and atheist campus protestors, the leaders are, I think, literal Communists, for whom Israel is a minor concern. Their aim is to create as big an impact as possible using means commensurate with their tiny number of members, and to display power, which, indeed, is part of creating power. If your child makes you buy ice cream by threat of a tantrum, he has created power, but if he rubs it in by saying, “I made Mama buy ice cream”, he both displays it and increases it.4 The protesters need to get away with defiance of power and they also need to show everybody they got away with it.
So I suggest something more along the lines of what Harrison Butker did in his 2024 Commencement Address at Benedictine College. Speaking out against Hamas is daring on today’s college campus. What could be more daring? How about speaking out in favor of motherhood, apple pie, and the American Way? Do you dare think such thoughts?
I exaggerate, of course. Apple pie is not controversial. But the American Way is exactly what the Tenters are trying to destroy, and Motherhood absolutely enrages them. So set up an encampment with this theme:
Motherhood is more important than career. A successful career woman with no husband and no children is not to be admired, but pitied. She has made a big sacrifice of her personal happiness which was unnecessary, or circ*mstances have deprived her of fertility and husband and she is making the best of it. Most career women are not very successful at it, though, and have been duped by universities selling degrees, lesbians, and parents who wish they’d had a boy instead.5 As Chesterton said, “Feminism is a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.”6
I invite comment on the wording, both as to conveying the message and for exciting the passions. Perhaps I should ask Charles Haywood. Mr. Butker put it more mildly, of course. I don’t think he’s ever been cancelled before so he didn’t know how little it hurts. The cancellers don’t necessarily care much about what their target says; the point is to whip yourself into a frenzy so as to summon up the courage to say something mean, anonymously. Their verbal missiles don’t have impact, though, since they’re long on obscenity and short on wit. In the case of motherhood, we don’t even need the circular whip session to create an ecstatic frenzy. The ladies will be all charged up and ready to go even before logging in to Instagram, Twitter, and Tik-Tok. Even better, their Islamist and Leninist associates will be unable to restrain them. If they try to say “Don’t get so angry and think you have to respond to something so unimportant,” the response will be “Who are you to talk about the feelings of women! I bet you agree with them secretly. We’ve always wondered about where you stand on women’s issues!” They’ll be hit with more stones than a sodomite in Somalia. Perhaps there would even be civil war in the Hamas encampment.
So there might well be some violence against the Encampment for Motherhood. You would get press attention, with or without the violence. The Administration would hate you, and might try to suppress you. For this reason, the Motherhood Tenters would have to enter knowing the risks. Students would be at risk. They would win litigation, I think, but they might indeed have to go to court. If this were done at a state university, however, you could count on the support in the state government, if you make the effort to ask for it. Also, any attempt to crack down on Motherhood would expose the Administration at a public university to Section 1983 civil rights violation suits and Title IV violations on account of anti-semitism: attacking pro-Motherhood Tenters while supporting pro-Hamas Tenters for the exact same behavior is obvious viewpoint discrimination, and discrimination in favor of anti-Jewish demonstrators.7
The result might be that the Administration will declare a new policy banning encampments by proponents of all political views. Administrations have been generally tolerant of the Hamas encampments, so long as they weren’t so foolish as to go after members of the board of trustees.8
Footnotes
1
Has anything been written surveying the state of Communism in America today— Angela Davis’s party, the various Trotskyite groups, Bukharinites, and so forth? I wonder if perhaps there are more Communists in America in 2024 than there were even in the 1930’s, just ignored by people who think they all left for Albania in 1989. The MIT encampment was backed by the PSL, which bussed in high school students from around the area and generally whooped it up using the classic technique of ad hoc front groups (e.g. “MIT Scientists against Genocide”). Someone should take a look at Princeton’s Bridging Divides center, which issued a report, “Issue Brief: Analysis of U.S. Campus Encampments Related to the Israel-Palestine Conflict,” in accordance with the party line. Table has a 2024 article, “The People Setting America on Fire,” that is useful.
2
Afghanistan? The Soviets of the 1980’s weren’t real Communists, and the Afghans were merely the foot soldiers of the U.S. Army. China would have dealt with Afghanistan more handily; remember Tiananmen Square, where they used tanks to crush the children of their own party leaders.
3
China is being delicate with the Uighers? Yes. You’re used to thinking in Western terms. The direct and cheap way to deal with the Uighers would to drive them into the desert and let them die. China has lots of people; it can afford to use some up. Westerners just don;t think “outside the box” like that. Or, rather, Capitalist and Christian Westerners don’t— Western Communists have always thought you can’t cook an omelette without cracking an egg, and in their worldview of classes and the grand sweep of history, killing a million people is just like squishing a bug.
In Khruschev Remembers, Soviet leader Krushchev talks about a 1957 meeting.
Mao spoke about the war at this meeting . His speech content was roughly this: Do not be afraid of war. Do not be afraid of either the atomic bomb or the weapons. No matter what kind of war, we socialist countries will win. When it comes to China specifically, he claimed: 'If the imperialist impose war on us, we now have 600 million people, even if we lose 300 million, so what, this is war. Years later, we nurture new, and the population will be restored. 'After he spoke, the meeting room was in a tomb-like silence.)
4
The ice cream strategy carries some risk. If Mama summons Daddy after the “I made Mama buy ice cream” declaration, you get spanked and your newfound power evaporates. If Mama is too embarassed to call Daddy, you are golden, especially if lots of other grown-ups and children were around and let you say it. You just need to know your mama.
5
I considered anti-sodomy as an alternative theme, as being similarly able to split the Tenters into two opposite camps, of pro-pansy girls and turn-them-upside-down-and-stone-them guys. But Motherhood is an even more sensitive topic.
6
Sorry; I can’t find the source of this Chesterton quotation. The web is really messed up when it comes to quotations, obscuring more than it displays.
7
There is much to be written on the close question of what is anti-Jewish and what is anti-Israel. Has anyone discussed it in the same framework as what is anti-black and what is pro-segregation? The analogy is useful. And by that I do not mean it makes the issue simple: it is possible in theory to not dislike black people but to believe blacks and whites should be segregated; indeed, that was the general claim of segregationists in the 1940’s, and even the most extreme did not believe blacks should be expelled from America.
8
The University of MIchigan case is one where the Tenters did make that mistake. Regent Sarah Hubbard wrote,
This morning, after more than a month, the encampment on the University of Michigan Ann Arbor campus was removed. This action came days after protestors demonstrated at my personal residence near Lansing, MI. Last Wed individuals taped a three-page list of "demands" to my front door, erected 3 tents, & displayed "body bags" & toys throughout my property. They used a bullhorn & drum while marching on my driveway at 6:00 a.m. Meridian Twp police broke up the protest w/o arrests. . . We have supported their rights to free speech and diversity of thought even though they were violating numerous university policies. We provided electricity, security and access to the protestors.
A comment noted how unaware Regent Hubbard was of the comparison between her quick action to protect herself and her total inaction when it came to protecting the University:
Although the protestors’ actions at your door crossed the line, with all due respect, Regent Hubbard, the line was crossed some time before that with harassment of Jewish students on campus. It does not send a good message that the Regents of the University of Michigan will act only when one of their own number are personally threatened. You are public servants and the encampments and “protests” should have been dismantled long before they threatened you. Because they threatened those you are charged with educating and safely securing.
