Continuing to push a manufactured moral crisis about "antisemitism on college campuses" to justify the Trump regime's war on higher education, free speech, and protest rights, the fascist GOP are holding another round of HUAC-style "antisemitism" hearings; this time targeting the presidents of Haverford College, DePaul University, and California Polytechnic State University. In response to this latest perverse appropriation of Jewish identity and anti-hate activism to justify a genocide, ideological policing, and fascist repression of student activists, Congressional Democrats, free speech advocates, and Jewish peace activists are all speaking out against the conflation of anti-genocide activism with antisemitism, and these clownshow McCarthyite hearings as a whole.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/house-antisemitism-hearing

Jewish Voices for Palestine and Free Speech Slam House GOP 'Kangaroo Hearing' on Antisemitism

"Tali Beckwith-Cohen, a Jewish senior at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College, argued: "The Trump regime is using false allegations of antisemitism to disappear our friends, punish student protestors, and dismantle higher education. What we are seeing has nothing to do with keeping Jews safe, and everything to do with crushing dissent."

"Thousands of Jews on campuses across the country have spoken out in solidarity with the people of Gaza and we will not be silent," Beckwith-Cohen vowed.

JVPA political director Beth Miller contended that "the far-right does not care about Jewish safety."

"Trump and his allies in Congress are platforming neo-Nazis and Christian nationalists, all while pretending to care about antisemitism in order to take a hatchet to our communities and most basic freedoms," Miller added. "This is intended to silence the Palestinian rights movement, sow chaos, and sharpen authoritarian tools that will then be used to dismantle civil liberties and democracy itself."

Alright there's a lot of absolutely wild shit going on here, all of which contribute to the stunning DARVO-esque fascist unreality being created by this spectacle; so we've got to go through it all.

- Yes multiple GOP members sitting on this commission are either racists or antisemites themselves; including the chair, Michigan's own Tim Walberg who suggested during a recorded town hall that Israel should nuke Gaza like "Hiroshima and Nagasaki" after October 7th. Using an expansive definition of antisemitism that conflates opposition to Zionism and Israeli crimes against Palestine with antisemitism, the Republicans managed to extract groveling apologies from the University Presidents, who supported Republican lies and threw the free speech rights of their students and faculty to the wolves without too much provocation.

- Numerous Jewish students and anti-genocide activists accused the GOP members of the committee of appropriating Jewish pain and identity to justify a campaign of ideological policing, authoritarian repression, and illegal kidnapping of student protestors. This matters because while the Trump regime and pro-genocide mainstream media outlets have worked very hard to portray anti-genocide student protests as inherently antisemitic, the fact is that Jewish Americans are massively overrepresented in the anti-genocide protest movement on college campuses. Their voices are consistently erased from the discourse by an establishment working hard to manufacture consent for a US-backed genocide being conducted by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza.

- As former ACLU national legal director David Cole pointed out, anti-Israel advocacy and even actual antisemitic speech are still protected under the First Amendment; although obviously hate crimes and threats are not. Professor Cole also mentioned the disturbing parallels between this hearing and the House Un-American Activities Committee sessions from the days of McCarthyism. Finally, Cole drew the obvious connection between the GOP member's arguments and the Trump regimes larger authoritarian attempt to ideologically police and take academic control of American universities.

- Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar also pointed out the direct connection between the committee's activities and the Trump regime's ongoing campaign of kidnapping, detainment, and attempted deportation of noncitizen activists to suppress anti-genocide protest and speech. Additionally *multiple* other Democrat politicians on the committee expressed disbelief that the clearly-cynical "party of 'very fine people on both sides' or ' Jewish space lasers' does not give a damn about stopping antisemitism," particularly while openly and disdainfully neglecting to bright forth literally any other type of civil rights investigation or legal case against marginalized people being victimized anywhere else in American life.

I haven't written about Trump's fascist attempts to exert control over Harvard University primarily because after making a great fanfare of announcing they intended to fight back against the regime's ideological policing, they quietly walked back their resistance posture, repurposed their diversity, equity, and inclusion office, and shockingly agreed to share information on foreign students with DHS. For all intents and purposes, Harvard's actions represented a complete capitulation to the fascist regime's agenda, with some posturing thrown in that allowed Harvard to save face in a way for example, Columbia had not. As we've noted many times in this thread however, appeasing fascists doesn't work and once you agree to obey Trump's authoritarian edicts, you're essentially property of the regime going forward.

Harvard is now learning this lesson the hard way because despite all their cowardly bootlicking, Trump is still openly announcing the regime's intention to revoke Harvard's tax except status; something he has literally no legal authority to do according to most experts.

https://truthout.org/articles/trump-seeks-to-revoke-harvards-tax-status-despite-numerous-concessions/

Trump Seeks to Revoke Harvard’s Tax Status Despite Numerous Concessions

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

In response, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York) and three other Democratic senators have demanded that the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) internal watchdog investigate whether the Trump administration is unlawfully pressuring the agency to target Harvard.

Just weeks ago, Harvard was celebrated for resisting the Trump administration’s threats to withhold $2.2 billion in federal funding, positioning itself as a defender of academic freedom by filing a lawsuit challenging the funding freeze. But recently, the university has quietly reversed course, rebranding and altering the mission of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office, announcing that it will no longer fund affinity group celebrations during commencement, and sharing international student information with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“You mean to tell me banning affinity group graduations, handing over school records to the DHS gestapo, cracking down on protests, and dismantling DEI didn’t appease this fascist dictator?! I’m shocked I tell you,” Harvard Law School instructor Alejandra Caraballo said on Bluesky."

I think the facts of this story speak for themselves; Trump's war on higher education to enforce a white nationalist ideological framework on American life is clearly fascist, Harvard put on a brave face but ultimately chose craven collaboration with the regime's fascist agenda, and surprise, surprise, Trump has continued to threaten the University and demand further concessions. Trump is a fascist bully hellbent on controlling every aspect of our society and you don't ever stop a bully by appeasing them.

There is however a deeper layer of fascist fuckery going on here, because Trump's war on higher education also aligns perfectly with noted fascist theorist Curtis Yarvin's proposed "Butterfly Revolution" to transform America into a fascist dictatorship under Trump; part of which revolves around destroying or taking control of "the Cathedral" which Yavrin defines as the mainstream media, prestigious American universities, and important cultural institutions. I doubt Trump has ever read The Butterfly Revolution, but his Vice President, JD Vance, certainly has. He's a devote follower of Yarvin's expressly "neo-fascist" teachings, as are key billionaire TechBro Trump donors and supporters like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen. Now whether or not Trump understands that all of this is part of a plan by his nazi billionaire buddies to shatter the American nation state and create techno-feudalist "Patchwork" or "Network State" city-state dictatorships out of the smoldering ashes is more debatable; but either way, all of these guys are clearly working on the installation of a fascist political, social, and ideological framework on our society that will last decades beyond Trump's own miserable existence.