By Dr. Thomas Patterson |

Mass protests have become popular with the radical Left because they work. They can achieve results unattainable through the political process or the courts by producing chaos and intimidating the cowardly leaders of our universities and government.

When the antisemitic, pro-Islamist demonstrations broke out on multiple university campuses this spring, most Americans assumed it was just naïve, ill-educated kids doing their thing. Why wouldn’t they? Protesting is a hoot. You’re showered with attention. You may even see yourself on the evening news. The gold star goes for being arrested and thrown in jail, where you are sure to be released the next morning.

The modern political protest movement began in 1968 with draft resisters who successfully opposed the Vietnam war. Another victory for the mob came from the assault on the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in 1999. Those riots are credited with establishing the international anti-globalization movement and influencing the Clinton administration to issue an executive order requiring environmental reviews for trade deals.

In 2011, the “Occupy” Wall Street type movements were focused on income inequality. Again, victory was achieved when cowed Democrats subsequently backed higher taxes and more government handouts.

The George Floyd riots of 2020 were possibly the most successful of all. A single incident of bad policing by a rogue cop touched off riots in many American cities and even internationally. The “mostly peaceful protests” included vandalism, theft, and property destruction for up to 100 days in cities like Portland, Oregon.

The consequences were light, the rewards abundant. Kamala Harris supported a bail fund for criminal protesters, few of whom faced jail time anyway. The Democrat convention of 2020 decline to condemn the rioting.

Meanwhile, Democrat cities around the country slashed police funding, eliminated cash bail, and stopped making criminal arrests in response to the rioters’ demands. The predictable result was a spike in urban crime which is still raging, driving out businesses and further decimating once proud cities.

The image of well-meaning but ignorant students out on a lark was partly true. Many riot participants were in fact useful dupes, curiously uninformed about the activities of Hamas or other Islamist groups. They seemed unaware that their chant “from the river to the sea” was a call for eradicating Jews. The orderly rows of similar tents also suggested the protests were not entirely “organic.”

The Wall Street Journal uncovered the mystery by discovering an influential activist website directing affairs for anarchists like Antifa and other career radicals. Their mission is to create chaos and eventually overturn the social order.

Thus, “organizers should not concern themselves with de-escalation or remaining peaceful” they advise. “In order for this crisis to develop further, student occupations should take buildings wherever possible” to further the goal of “making it more expensive” for administrations to refuse their demands. Putting up tents is highly recommended because it defies school policy and elicits a response, which is the point of the exercise.

This is a crisis with enormous implications. President Biden is terrified of losing left-wing political support. In spite of the fact that a clear majority of Americans do not support Hamas or the campus protesters, he took a powder again, condemning the campus protestors but also “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

The clueless president of Columbia did the exact wrong thing by agreeing to negotiate with the campus terrorists on their demands. Despite the outpouring of hate and antisemitism on her campus, she praised them for fighting for the “rights of Palestinians” and against the “humanitarian tragedy in Gaza.”

The protesters’ demands are ambitious. They include the divestiture of funds from Israel which would have the effect of financially ostracizing Israelis and a cease-fire in the Gaza war, which would hand a critical victory to Hamas and condemn Israel to a future of perpetual Islamist attacks.

Psychologists and common sense tell you the behavior that is rewarded gets repeated. America’s enemies win again.

We are a constitutional republic with a structure artfully designed to make policies and resolve disputes based on majority rule, while respecting minority rights. Conceding to the Islamist- inspired mob the right to set American public policy is a grave mistake.

Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.