For some time now we’ve been hearing rumors that the increasingly violent pro-Hamas protests on American university campuses were not really “homegrown” activities at all, but were being incited by outside groups of paid, professional agitators. Now, following some investigation into police reports released by officials, we appear to have confirmation. Quite a few of the protesters arrested at Columbia University were not affiliated with the school. At City College, that was the case with more than half (60%) of those arrested. So who are these professional agitators? The media is describing them as “veteran protesters,” but they appear to be getting their funding from people associated with George Soros. (NBC News)
At UCLA overnight, 210 people were arrested when officers cleared an on-campus encampment in a chaotic scene, officials said.
New York City officials said that a significant number of people arrested this week at campus demonstrations were not affiliated with the schools. Nearly 30% of the people arrested at Columbia were unaffiliated with the university and 60% of the arrests at City College involved people who weren’t affiliated with that school, the mayor said.
Dozens of people have been arraigned in New York. The district attorney said 46 people who were detained at Columbia have been charged with criminal trespass and 22 people detained at City College were arraigned on one count burglary and obstructing governmental administration.
To be clear, some of the people involved in the protests and riots are students at these schools. Others are leftist faculty members who may have some relevant experience in protesting from their own days in college. But many of them are outsiders with no connection to the schools. After moving in and making arrests, the police have been finding all sorts of printed “educational material” scattered around the protest sites. That included instructions for how to properly use a crowbar to break into buildings and designs showing how to make a riot shield out of a plastic trash can. We’ve also noted how expensive tents and large deliveries of plywood boards keep showing up from Home Depot. Somebody has to be paying for all of that and it’s probably not a bunch of frat brothers living in a dorm.
If you need additional proof that none of this was a purely “spontaneous” response to the fighting in Gaza, check out this investigative report from the Wall Street Journal. They discovered that “professional” agitators had been training protesters for months before the unrest started.
The recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses came on suddenly and shocked people across the nation. But the political tactics underlying some of the demonstrations were the result of months of training, planning and encouragement by longtime activists and left-wing groups.
At Columbia University, in the weeks and months before police took down encampments at the New York City campus and removed demonstrators occupying an academic building, student organizers began consulting with groups such as the National Students for Justice in Palestine, veterans of campus protests and former Black Panthers.
The students had quite a crew of “educators.” The instructors included veterans of activist groups and rioters such as the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. The group Students for Justice in Palestine didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. They have been percolating under the surface for quite a while and fomenting antisemitic speeches and demonstrations all across the country with a very well-organized social media network.
The description of the “study groups” is rather chilling as well. They reviewed archival footage of past protests and riots, studying how both campus officials and police units responded. That allowed them to be prepared to counter those efforts when others sought to stop them and enforce the law. They learned just the right public messaging that would be effective in buying themselves more time and holding off the inevitable official actions to round them up. For several weeks, that training obviously paid off and they were able to keep the madness going.
Now the situation appears to be calming down a bit, but don’t let that appearance fool you. They will be back, though some of them may take the rest of the summer off. It is a virtual certainty that they will show up at the DNC convention in Chicago, so the mayor and the Chicago PD need to be ready to take rapid, harsh action to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control.