Openly calling for the assassination of the president of the United States, as Hamza El Boudali has done, is newsworthy — and not just to the Secret Service.
Just a quick Corner note here, because it’s been impossible not to laugh at the affected outrage currently being mustered online by the media and adjacent Left on behalf of one Hamza El Boudali. Who is poor Hamza? He’s a Stanford University graduate student who, in a piece by Theo Baker in the Atlantic, was quoted arguing for the assassination of President Joe Biden over “the genocide of Palestinians,” preferably via foreign military drone. (He claims his cause is “peace,” and you have to respect the moxie, at least.)
Baker — who is a student journalist and sophomore at Stanford — wrote a piece about much more than this one anecdote; he covers the larger “war at Stanford” that broke out after 10/7 but had been festering underneath the surface for years. The article also doubles as a well-written critique of the shockingly open ignorance on display from elite striver students more worried about being on the right side of a socially influential mob than anything else. (Things are dire there, folks.)
But, of course, the Leftist reactions to the piece took a predictably diversionary approach rather than address its substantive reporting or arguments, so instead we were asked: Why was this whelp (to say nothing of the Atlantic) thrusting this poor innocent graduate student into the spotlight? Wrote one: “Why did the Atlantic just target a 23-year-old student and non-public figure by full name in a way that seems intended to endanger them?”
Forgive me for stating the obvious, but it’s because he openly called for the assassination of the president of the United States. I’d name that guy, too! That’s newsworthy — and not just to the Secret Service. It’s particularly relevant when you’re writing a piece about the insanity and rhetorical extremism of Stanford’s activist class. Which brings me to another point: It seems that many who are criticizing Baker’s piece didn’t bother to read to the end of it, because if they had they would understand that Boudali is not some random computer-science graduate student: He is one of Stanford’s loudest and most openly provocative anti-Israeli protesters, and he reappears later in Baker’s piece in the role of outright provocateur and antagonist. He’s the opposite of a private figure, and all those who defend him as if he is a child with no agency are revealing their belief that certain people and perspectives deserve a patronizing sort of shielding from consequences. Even if I accepted such arrant moral nonsense, I would never benefit from it myself; such dispensations are afforded only to those of proper status and class. (Ironically, El Boudali is actually an extremely religiously conservative Muslim and proudly anti-LGBT. But he nevertheless “codes” properly into the victim class for obvious and mindless enough reasons.)
Finally, it’s impossible not to note how perturbed people seem to be that the mighty Atlantic, that edifice of respectable left media consensus, dared give voice to a perspective critical of what’s happening at Stanford in the wake of 10/7. Many on the left are vaguely aware that this sort of grievously embarrassing and indefensible nonsense exists; what matters is keeping it out of the mainstream media. Keep it to places that their social class can safely ignore. (Baker wrote a fine piece for the Atlantic, but it was no scoop. That belongs to Aaron Sibarium of the Washington Free Beacon, who wrote about all of this — including El Boudali’s various exploits — in a lengthy and thoroughly documented report nearly a month and a half ago.)
The real moral of the El Boudali affair is this: It’s a really terrible idea to announce in a public forum that you want the president to be assassinated. Beyond that, it also should be emphasized that if you decide to go ahead and do that, no amount of political, ethnic, or institutional armor will prevent you from becoming famous, nor should it.