Students in America and increasingly across the world are demonstrating against the Gaza genocide. They’re right to do so, opposing a genocide is never the wrong thing to do.

The reaction of campus and civil authorities has been predictable. Send in the cops, who violently disperse the camps, similar to how they have decided homeless people aren’t allowed to live anywhere. This video, of a professor who is the wife of the Dean of admissions (and who was not part of the protest) makes the point.

Police, of course, are police because they like hurting people, with vanishingly few exceptions. Any excuse is enough of an excuse for most of them. The Professor found out how much her “privilege” really matters.

What’s interesting about all of this is how stupid it is. Attacking the protestors is, as those of us who’ve been around for many protest cycles know, not going to stop them. It’s the beginning of the cycle of protest, not the end, and it drives news. In some ways it’s a victory for the protestors’ cause.

In 1932 a large group of Great War veterans went to Washington D.C and set up a camp. They wanted their bonuses for WWI paid early, because it was the Great Depression and they needed them. Hoover, still President, sent in the Army, lead by Douglas MacArthur (and opposed by Eisenhower) and burn the camp. FDR, who actually opposed paying the bonus because he felt it helped one group without helping all, said that the scenes of brutality had just elected him.

Burning Down The Bonus Army

The Bonus Army didn’t give up, and when Roosevelt took power, he took a very different tack: he sent his main political advisor, Louis Howe, and his wife. Instead of attacking the encampment, they arranged for them to have three meals a day and a clean encampment, and FDR arranged for younger veterans to receive jobs with the Civilian Conservation Corp.

Four years later, over FDR’s veto, Congress gave the Bonus army their bonus.

The point here is that FDR essentially de-fanged people he opposed by treating them kindly. Violence produces opposition and even if it “works” it makes people hate you and harden their positions.

The protestors are right about Gaza, of course, and right that the US shouldn’t be helping commit a genocide. But even if you oppose them, the correct thing to do is to treat them kindly unless they truly become violent or massively disruptive (and even then, give them rope.)

The response of university administrators is clearly emotionally driven: they believe in Israel’s genocide and want it to continue and are offended and ashamed by students who point out the evil of what they are doing. If they weren’t emotionally compromised by their commitment to genocide, they’d be a lot more sensible, even if they disagree with the protestors.

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