Genocide Is in the Streets

It's not a revolution: It's fascism with a postmodern gloss

And “Death to America!”

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Various commentators—John Podhoretz of Commentary, Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review—have described the current plague of leftist, “anti-Zionist” demonstrations as a pre-revolutionary situation. Podhoretz noted in a recent podcast that the protests have grown more radical, angry and violent with the passage of time, much as the Vietnam-era civil rights and antiwar movements spawned New Left revolutionary terrorist groups like the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army. He mentioned Days of Rage, Bryan Burroughs’ history of that abortive revolution, which was published in 2015.

As it happens, I read Days of Rage when it first came out, and I recall being surprised by how much I’d forgotten—or never knew—about the fifteen-year period, 1970-85, covered by the book. From 1969 to 1973 I was in uniform, serving on active duty. From 1973 to 1978 I held various menial jobs, and from 1978 to 1984 I was in college and graduate school. The tumultuous events recounted in Days of Rage—bombings, bank robberies, kidnappings, cop killings—apparently made little impression on me at the time.

Perhaps that’s not surprising. By the time I returned to civilian life, the war in Vietnam was effectively over for America, if not for the Vietnamese. My six years on campus were peaceful; student activism seemed to have expired along with the military draft. The fraction of the New Left that had become radicalized and went underground to carry out its campaign of revolutionary terror was a tiny one—and America is a big country. Burroughs notes that over an eighteen-month period in 1971-72, there were some 2,500 terrorist bomb attacks. But few of those bombs caused loss of life or serious damage, and the public seems to have shrugged them off as events of no significance. The revolutionary drama that was enacted in the underground back then included a marked element of farce.

The revolutionary rhetoric of the New Left has not aged well: “Killing a cop just because he's a cop, that'll happen. And that should happen. And there's nothing inhuman about it at all. It's survival. It's the most human thing in the world.” Thus the Weather Underground’s Bernardine Dohrn, the It Girl of the Revolution. And that’s far from the worst thing she ever said. At a Weather Underground “war council” held in Flint, Michigan, in December 1969, Dohrn took the stage to praise the Manson Family’s most notorious crime: the Tate-LaBianca murders earlier that year in Los Angeles. “Dig it,” she told her comrades. “First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach. Wild!”

Dohrn then held up three fingers in a Manson “fork salute.”

But despite their nihilism and murderous rage, the comrades of New Left were comically inept revolutionaries. They spent much of their time fantasizing about the implausible coalition of the disaffected that would overthrow the system under their leadership. Petty rivalries and power struggles, self-criticism sessions, bitter debates over strategy and tactics consumed their energies. Most fundamentally, the comrades misread the mood of America. Their belief that “revolution was in the streets,” that young people and minorities would band together to vanquish “fascist Amerikka,” was pure fantasy. What in fact happened was the opposite: America turned rightward. Though he was not really a conservative, Richard Nixon’s victory in the 1968 presidential election was an omen, and twelve years later, the election of Ronald Reagan sealed the deal.

But pari passu with America’s march to the right occurred the Left’s long march through the institutions, especially those of higher education. University campuses became revolutionary enclaves, their denizens alienated from the American mainstream. And in that hothouse atmosphere, the toxic ideologies on display now in the ranks of the “anti-Zionist” Left germinated and flourished.

With all due respect to Messrs. Podhoretz and Dougherty, I must therefore dissent from their view of the current situation. This is not a pre-revolutionary moment. Yes, the protesters have taken to chanting “Death to America”—but they mean America, not just the current system. The anti-Zionist Left stands revealed as the agent of a hostile foreign power, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which advocates the destruction of the Great Satan (America) and the Little Satan (Israel). It explicitly calls for mass murder amounting to genocide. The historical analogue that occurs to me is the German American Bund of the 1930s.

Dare we call it treason, then?

The Constitution of the United States includes a precise definition of the crime of treason, this to ensure that charges of treason cannot be used against political opponents and dissidents. Article III, Section 3 states that:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Now, there can be no doubt that Iran and its proxies including Hamas are enemies of the United States: They say it themselves. But when the protesters who’ve occupied part of Columbia University scream “We are Hamas!” are they “adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort”? Legally, this may be a close question. But unquestionably, the anti-Zionist Left is pledging allegiance to a hostile foreign power. The mask has dropped; these people are not mere dissidents.

Those of them who are foreigners constitute a national security threat. How dare they, guests of this country, harass American Jews on campus and in the streets? How dare they run around shouting “Death to America”? They should have their visas revoked and be sent packing.

Those of them who are American citizens are of course entitled to all the rights of free speech and assembly that the First Amendment guarantees, regardless of the unfathomable evil they preach. But the First Amendment does not shield them from the condemnation of their fellow citizens—and for the sake of this country’s soul that condemnation must be loud and continuous.

Also worthy of condemnation is American higher education, which more than any other institution has nourished this cancerous growth on the body politic. It’s simply outrageous that in the name of academic freedom, tenured faculty members are allowed to spew out the most disgusting antisemitic hate speech, so reminiscent of that notorious Nazi rag, Der Stürmer. It’s outrageous that university presidents and administrators coddle the ugly bigots who harass and assault Jews on campus.

This isn’t revolution. It’s fascism with a postmodern gloss. It’s the valorization of genocide. And American universities today, like German universities in the Thirties, incubate that fascism.

Disgracefully, neither the President of the United States nor any member of his administration have issued a forceful denunciation of this wave of antisemitic hate and violence raging across the country in the name of “Palestine.” Instead, they’ve been floundering desperately to appease the unappeasable: The people they’re attempting to placate hate America. That Biden & Co. refuse to acknowledge this obvious fact constitutes a glaring and shameful failure of leadership.

It's left to the American people, then, to stand up against the spirit of these latter-day Nazis, making it crystal clear that the toleration enjoined upon us by constitutional protections does not imply sympathy or approval. Let us repudiate their genocidal shouts of “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” with one word: “Shame!”