You can't bargain with fascists

First, something funny that reader T sent in. A lot of good answers, but A+ for Chellie Pingree (D-ME-1) for suggesting farmers are going to dump manure on the Capitol steps, and also A+ for Lateefah Simon (D-CA-14) for turning the question around on the white guy and asking him what he’s going to do about Latino men and White women.

@waltermasterson

I went to Capitol Hill and spoke to Congress members.

Here’s a link to the Threads version if the TikTok embed doesn’t work.

Now, something unfunny. Even though Columbia University crushed student protests, repeatedly, by calling in the NYPD multiple times, in actions that ultimately led to the resignation of the University President, Minouche Shafik, the Trump Administration is still retaliating:

Are there anti-semitic students at Columbia who hassled some Jewish kids? I’m sure there are, and I’m guessing the campus authorities dealt with the anti-semitic kids pretty harshly. That shit doesn’t fly anymore at colleges. Are there students who aren’t anti-semitic, or who are Jewish, who protested against Gaza? Of course. This is how it works when you’re 18-21 years old. You protest against the injustice of the day. Only now, even peaceful protests or occupations are broken up by riot police.

There are a lot of issues around the supposed hard line against anti-semitism taken by Trump, the same guy who hangs out with nazis. His supposed anti-semitism is wrapped up on all the weirdness of the evangelical Christian view of Israel as the defender of the Holy Land, in the existence of some really rich donors to the Republican Party (like Miriam Adelson) and I’m sure a bunch of other factors (including the reality that most New York City Jews are Democrats). But the key point for the administration of Columbia University is that they brought the cops to their campus, and far exceeded the bounds of how they should have treated their students, to absolutely no avail.

The outcome for Columbia would be similar if they had just told Republicans to fuck off. They’re an object of hate for the fascist regime—compromise is impossible. I was in the gym this morning and one of the Fox chyrons was “Liberal Columbia Professor Criticizes DOGE”. If there’s a round-them-up list that Trump or Musk has, you know damn well that “Liberal Columbia Professor” is at the tip top of that list. That would be true even if Columbia had expelled every damn kid who said a single bad word about Israel’s occupation of Gaza.

The lesson that very few seem to be taking home is that capitulation is only seen as weakness, and that it will make your situation worse, not better.