Dear Weekend Jolter,
Americans who’ve never attended a dinner with Nick Fuentes in Palm Beach had more or less the same reaction to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and it was a negative one. (“My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home” was a particularly pungent smack, courtesy of the late Orrin Hatch.)
The rub is: The rhetoric that became instantly infamous that weekend and was rightly condemned is now your standard sloganeering around Columbia and other campuses. As Rich Lowry notes, “Jews will not replace us” is not far off from the chants and jeers lobbed in the vicinity of Manhattan’s 116th St. parallel these past two weeks: “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” “We support Hamas’s fight,” “We support your rockets,” “Go back to Poland,” “Jews control America,” and so on.
As Dore Feith, a J.D. candidate at Columbia Law School, writes, “The new ‘Liberated Zone’ is a vortex of Jew-hatred.”
Yet, rather than being shut down and out, the students continue to garner sympathetic treatment in the press, attract the support of faculty on and beyond campus, and inspire others to start their own encampments. While the NYPD was brought in to make arrests a week ago, Columbia’s administration has since struggled to evict its glampers; this, as classes went remote, and then hybrid, and a campus rabbi urged Jewish students to head home for their safety.
How did we get here? As NR’s editorial recounts, for one, the Democratic Party has tolerated a brewing bigotry in the ranks for too long. Some have regrets. In recent days, Democrats including Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Adams have unequivocally condemned this noxious strain of anti-Israel activism for what it is. The White House did so on Sunday, dispensing with the usual “all bigotry matters” framing — only for President Biden to dilute the statement hours later.
But something else is at play. Footage from 2017 (viewer discretion on the clip) shows in raw form the hateful rage of white supremacists gathered then. The slurs were different, some of the targets were different, and the event ultimately turned deadly — but the vitriol reserved for Jews has simply jumped from one end of the horseshoe to the other. Why can’t those standing in solidarity with the activists spewing it recognize the same symptoms of the same pathology when they present from their own side? As observed on NR’s The Editors, there’s not only a double standard when it comes to Jews but “when it comes to who is protesting Jews.” Right-wing neo-Nazis targeting Jews can broadly be recognized as bad. Rich writes that the Left’s antisemitism, however, “is very often ignored, explained away, or viewed as a regrettable excess.” Some of this, he argues, can be attributed to tribalism and the fact that protesters and their apologists share opposition to the Israel–Hamas war:
More fundamentally, through the perverse prism of the woke Left, alt-right antisemites are the victimizers while pro-Hamas antisemites are the victims. Put another way, devotees of the alt-right are racist antisemites, while supporters of Hamas are “anti-racist” antisemites, and that makes all the difference.
Always the victim, always the good guy.
The war between Israel and Hamas has produced true victims: Hamas’s original targets in Israel, and thousands of civilians in Gaza too. But the Coleman-toters cheering on Qassam rocket attacks can hardly claim to be seeking a cease-fire in their behalf. Their goals are different; theirs is the language not of victims but aggressors, while they claim the former’s mantle. Elsewhere in New York, Zach Kessel reports, one of the chants was, “We don’t want no two-state, we want all of it.” Without the tiki torches, the subtext flies undetected: “mostly peaceful” ethnic purging.
Bari Weiss likewise compared the current moment to Charlottesville’s 2017 white-supremacist jamboree, highlighting the case of Sahar Tartak, a Jewish Yale student and former NR intern who was stabbed in the eye with a flagpole on her campus. The pseudonymous AG Hamilton described the scene at Columbia as a “nightly Charlottesville-style rally.” The parallels go beyond the slogans and conduct. As Dan McLaughlin and Jim Geraghty get at, Biden’s opening response was nearly as inadequate as Donald Trump’s in 2017: “I suppose it’s just a matter of time before Biden declares, ‘You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.’”
What happens at Columbia won’t stay there. Princeton students, per Abigail Anthony’s reporting, moved to prepare their own demonstration and (absurdly expansive) list of demands, though quickly converted a camp-in to a sit-in amid warnings and arrests. Yale police officers began arresting protesters on Monday, while Harvard and other schools saw encampments spring up later in the week.
If only for their own good, Democrats (and colleges) will want to get this sorted, even if Team Biden supposedly isn’t fretting. Because, as Jeff Blehar, NR’s resident Chicago Man, notes, their convention is right around the corner . . . in a city historically known for convention-timed bedlam. Only this cycle, Brandon Johnson is in charge, and “if you thought the Chicago PD in riot gear beating protesters was bad PR for the Democrats, imagine the Chicago PD doing nothing at Brandon Johnson’s orders while large parts of the city burn.”
For Biden’s campaign, Don’t actually globalize the intifada would make a far better slogan than Jiminy, my ice-cream carton just got smaller #resistance. If only progressives in academe and politics could muster the same disdain for left-wing hate that Orrin Hatch did for right-wing bile.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
The campus-protest editorial, once more, is here: Put Down the Protests
For Speaker Johnson, no good deed goes unpunished: Mike Johnson Does the Right Thing
On a harassment campaign: Democrats’ Leonard Leo Subpoena Threatens, Panders — and Backfires
ARTICLES
Audrey Fahlberg & Brittany Bernstein: GOP Defense Hawks Keep the Foreign-Aid Skeptics at Bay, for Now
Dan Crenshaw: Of Course Supporting Ukraine Is in America’s Interests
Andrew McCarthy: Alvin Bragg’s Outrageous Conspiracy Theory
Ryan Mills: Here Come the Fast-Food Robots
Noah Rothman: The Torment of the Class of 2024
Jack Crowe: Jewish New Yorkers Rally outside Columbia to Remind Students They’re Not Alone: ‘Crying for Our Country’
Michael Brendan Dougherty: A Quarter Century of Missed Cues, National Doubt, and Getting It Right in the End
Christian Schneider: Our Televisions Are Now Watching Us
Erick Erickson: The Conservative Movement Is Defending Free Markets — from Both Sides
Dan McLaughlin: What Was the Solicitor General Thinking in the January 6 Argument?
Jimmy Quinn: Biden’s ‘Cannibals’ Tale Gives China an Opportunity in the Pacific
Sarah Schutte: Beaten by an Egg White
CAPITAL MATTERS
Jon Hartley, on why Biden’s student-debt schemes aren’t getting at the problem: Unconstitutional ‘Forgiveness’ Won’t Fix Student Debt
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
A museum about movies. It’s as good as it sounds. Brian Allen reports from (the exhibitions on) the red carpet: Hollywood’s New Academy Museum: A Star Is Born
Charles C. W. Cooke on an Apple TV+ highlight: Manhunt Will Make a Civil War Buff Out of You
Armond White is not, can’t be, fooled: Zack Snyder’s Netflix-Approved Scargiver Trailer
THESE EXCERPTS CUSTOM-DESIGNED FOR ENJOYMENT IN YOUR READING NOOK
Audrey Fahlberg & Brittany Bernstein, for our Horse Race newsletter, break down the big foreign-aid votes:
Even behind closed doors, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to allow fellow Republicans to remove their gaze from the plight of a people who have been fighting off Russian aggression for more than two years now.
As Republican senators will privately attest, the outgoing leader spends much of his speaking time during private Senate GOP caucus meetings making the moral and strategic case for aiding Ukraine — even as nationalist-populist senators within his own ranks continue to dig in their heels in opposition.
As one GOP senator put it to National Review yesterday: “He’s very consistent. This is all he cares about. At least, that’s what it appears in our caucus.”
While it’s certainly a stretch to say Ukraine is “all” McConnell “cares about,” he has pledged publicly and privately to spend his remaining time as leader “fighting back” against what he calls “the isolationist movement” in his own party. The master tactician’s relentless focus on the conflict in recent months reflects his willingness to play the long game and stick to his guns as the political winds swirl around him.
That long-game strategy certainly paid off last night, when the Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass a $95 billion, four-part national-security package that will send foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Only 15 Republican senators and three Democrats voted against the package Tuesday evening, with several GOP senators who previously opposed the measure switching their votes, including Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.
The passage of that legislation, which President Joe Biden signed into law earlier Wednesday, marks a vindication of sorts for McConnell and traditional GOP defense hawks, who have spent months pushing long-stalled aid to Ukraine amid staunch opposition from a vocal minority of nationalist-populist Republicans in both chambers who are skeptical of overseas engagement.
For now, at least, the Reaganite consensus prevails — even if the task took longer than McConnell would have liked.
Jack Crowe found a glimmer of hope amid the anti-Israel rallies outside Columbia U. earlier this week, attending a counterprotest of New Yorkers showing support for Jewish students who have been harassed:
Linda Jacknow of Long Island was in tears as she told National Review how she’d traveled to the rally alone despite her family’s concerns. She felt she had no choice but to attend after seeing what had become of an institution she’d sacrificed to send her daughter to 20 years before.
“I’m crying for our country — and for the $36,000 I paid for my daughter’s Columbia education,” said Jacknow, who attended her first pro-Israel march in 1946.
Jacknow explained that she had gone without eating out or buying new clothes in order to send her daughter to Columbia, but she now believes the university she was once so proud of is “embarrassing the United States.”
A small group of mostly masked counter-protesters showed up to antagonize the pro-Israel demonstrators. Some of the counter-protesters insisted they were merely “anti-Zionist,” not antisemitic. Others weren’t shy about sharing their true feelings.
“Jews control America,” a masked man carrying a large sign reading “Israel killed 14,000” told National Review. “Jewish money controls every political race.” . . .
The man — who identified himself as David but would not give his last name out of fear of being “doxxed by the Jews” — gave the pro-Israel rallygoers a taste of what Jewish students have been exposed to on and off campus in recent days.
Andrew McCarthy’s coverage of the Trump trial in Manhattan is invaluable reading. He explains here exactly the kind of case Alvin Bragg is trying to build, and where it goes awry:
Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s elected progressive Democratic district attorney, is trying to hoodwink the jury into believing that (a) it is a crime for a candidate for public office to conspire with others to suppress politically damaging information, and (b) that Donald Trump was charged with such a conspiracy in the indictment that has resulted in the ongoing trial. In point of fact, there is no such information-suppression conspiracy crime in the law and the indictment against Trump does not charge a conspiracy — it charges 34 counts of falsifying business records with fraudulent intent to commit or conceal another crime.
In court on Tuesday, Bragg’s prosecutors became a bit more transparent in arguing that this “other crime” is a New York election statute that contains a conspiracy provision. But the theory is ridiculous. The statute does not criminalize what Bragg claims Trump did — again, suppress politically damaging information. The invocation of it still calls for Bragg to enforce federal election law, which he has no jurisdiction to do. It is plainly intended for state elections because Congress enacted federal campaign law — which is not Bragg’s remit — to control federal elections. And, cherry on top, the election law Bragg invokes is a misdemeanor — that is, Bragg is trying to exacerbate a single misdemeanor falsification of business records into 34 felony counts by rationalizing that Trump was trying to commit or conceal another misdemeanor. . . .
Under actual federal election law, payment of an NDA is not a campaign expenditure. Under actual federal election law, even when something is a campaign expenditure, disclosure does not have to be made instantly — it has to be made in the next reporting period, which in connection with the Stormy Daniels NDA would not have been until months after the 2016 election. In Bragg’s peculiar version of federal campaign law, not only do payments to porn stars who extort hush money constitute campaign expenditures, but the moment such payments are made, the candidate — at least if he is Trump — must notify the FEC so the New York Times and MSNBC can give the disclosure maximum publicity.
Manifestly, Bragg law is not federal campaign law. Bragg is smart enough to know this, so he’s come up with yet another facile theory: The “other crime” Trump was trying to commit or conceal was a violation of New York state election law. This, at long last, sets forth the statute that includes “a conspiracy provision,” as prosecutor Joshua Steinglass reminded Judge Merchan . . . So what is this conspiracy crime? Well, §17-152 of the state’s election laws says a person is guilty of a conspiracy if he agrees with one or more people “to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”
In Bragg’s telling — dutifully quoted by Merchan in his opinion denying Trump’s pretrial motions (at p. 12) — Trump entered “a scheme specifically for purposes of influencing the 2016 election.” But wait: It’s not a crime for a candidate and his supporters to try to influence an election — that’s what a political campaign exists to do. Maybe so, Bragg counters, but under §17-152, such influencing becomes a criminal conspiracy if done “by unlawful means.”
What unlawful means? That brings us back to square one. According to Bragg, the unlawful means was Trump’s supposed violation of federal campaign law.
See? There is no difference between Bragg’s direct reliance on federal campaign law and his invocation of state election law. Either way, Bragg is illegitimately undertaking to enforce federal campaign law and, in so doing, making up his own version of what federal campaign law provides — sharply different from what that law actually says and from the DOJ/FEC standards for enforcing it.
Shout-Outs
Sahar Tartak, at the Free Press: I Was Stabbed in the Eye at Yale
Lexi Boccuzzi, at RealClearWire: Colleges Must Revive the Free Press on Their Own Campuses
Greg Norman, at Fox News: AI can predict political orientations from blank faces – and researchers fear ‘serious’ privacy challenges
CODA
A friend and I saw a group called the Hot Club of Cowtown play at a venue in Wisconsin a couple weeks back. They’ve been around a while, performing old-timey, Western swing music. They have a radiant stage presence. Nothing fusty about ’em. What you notice right away — aside from their dog, Lupa, who accompanies them on stage and is a very, very good dog — is that Elana James, essentially their frontwoman (who used to tour with Dylan), tears up that fiddle. One can almost smell smoke. “Orange Blossom Special” was one of their closers. Dig it?
Thanks for reading, and enjoy the weekend.