Here we go again.
It’s time for the pre-presidential-election civil unrest.
Let’s take a quick tour through the quadrennial street riots that have taken place during my own lifetime.
In late 2011, Occupy Wall Street took over lower Manhattan. Suddenly, everyone living in an already tent-sized New York City apartment suddenly had camping equipment. The 99%, as they called themselves, took to the streets to protest greedy big banks.
The fight for a $15 minimum wage was enough to stir the population to erect a tent city for 59 days called “Occupy Wall Street.” It was enough to secure President Obama’s second term.
In the summer of 2016, the self-proclaimed “trained Marxists” of the Black Lives Matter movement planted summer protest seeds that would be followed up in 2020 by some of the worst anti-cop riots in the history of the United States. Boycott these businesses, suspend these friendships, yada yada yada.
Now, agitators, antifa, and the like are taking advantage of Ivy League student unrest surrounding a game of cat-and-mouse on the other side of the planet. It took only 12 years for cries of “We are the 99%” to become “We are Hamas”—not in the Middle East—in Manhattan.
Precisely one year ago, if you asked any of these students the definition of “apartheid state,” would they be able to answer you?
If you asked one of these world-changers how they felt about “apartheid,” they’d ask for the time, address, and if they should bring a case of Natty Light.
If I were a gambling woman, I would bet a lot of money that, as Ivy Leaguers camp out on their schools’ finely manicured, freshly sodded quad, very few could accurately describe the tensions in 20th century South Africa or apply the concept accurately to the Middle East.
What about “intifada?” Would the average mind behind a nose ring know the Arab word for a violent “shaking off” of the state of Israel?
One year ago, the news cycle was laser-focused on the “fiery opening statements” in E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against President Trump—not Israel. Your average Yalie didn’t own a three-man tent. She had no issue with a caramel macchiato from Starbucks, the now-boycotted chain deemed “complicit” and “vested” in the “genocide” of Gazans.
I hedged these bets prior to the video evidence that circulated Wednesday.
Someone filmed two sheep-turned-mercenaries at the boisterous NYU campus protest. Neither girl was an NYU student. Neither can explain why she’s there.
They claim they had gotten wind of the need for bodies at the riot, and they went.
The war across the world escalated drastically in the fall. The “occupation” these highly educated young adults speak of has been going on for “years.”
But the encampments only show up now because prior to this moment, it wasn’t convenient for someone’s cynically opportunist political game. The anger begins now because it’s started trending on TikTok.
The slogans, the signage, the decision by… non-outdoorsy-types, shall we say, to pitch tents in front of a library—it’s all centrally scripted.
The silly rhymes at Columbia match those in Cambridge, and identical picket signs ended up both in New Haven and at NYU. Even the tents themselves, without the help of “genocide-complicit pressure target” Amazon, showed up to both Columbia and the University of Michigan, overnight. They’re identical, too.
For you and me, it’s plain to see that the unrest works on an almost-perfect four-year cycle, with a new slew of college students—and a new general election—on the horizon. Obviously, someone must be behind the sandwich platters sent to Morningside Heights.
But to suggest to the dorm warriors there exists an evil billionaire puppeteer stoking the flames of the Current Thing would be preposterous.
The good news is, most have no clue what they’re talking about. The bad news is, university administrators are willing to negotiate with them.