While I understand why some liberals get frustrated when left wing analysts stress the bipartisan nature of the US establishment's efforts to create a new McCarthyism, and support for deploying an already existing police state against student anti-genocide protestors, I'd like to think that months into the Kelpto Kaiser's openly fascist presidency, it's clear to reasonable observers why this matters. The conflation of anti-genocide, with antisemitism and support for Hamas, an organization the US government had labelled as "terrorist" long before Trump took office, as well as public demonization of student protestors calling for the larger US establishment to sever ties with Israel, and the normalization of militarized police responses on university campuses, all supported by both the Biden administration *and* the larger "liberal" capitalist establishment, are so foundational to Trump's expanded fascist repression of protestors and critics, that you can't separate one from the other; even while acknowledging that Downarket Mussolini is using that bipartisan support in appalling ways Biden did not, to drive his larger fascist agenda.
The other reason you can't separate the support of the larger liberal establishment from the fascist shit Trump is doing to anti-genocide, pro-Palestinian protestors now is because said liberal establishment hasn't actually stopped engaging in their own acts of fascist repression targeting student protestors. For an example of what I'm talking about, let's return to my home state of Michigan, where sharp-minded readers may recall Dem state AG Dana Nessel got into hot water in April after she allowed FBI (so, federal) agents and local law enforcement to smash in the doors of pro-Palestine anti-genocide activists connected to the University of Michigan, and then told a bunch of big stupid lies about why that didn't mean she was working with Trump to target student protestors. Well I'm sorry to say the targeted harassment and intimidation of pro-Palestine activists at UM continues, but this time it's coming from the university itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/06/michigan-university-gaza-surveillance
University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters
"The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.
The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield."
There are a lot of local political winds in the background of this story, but the key point here is that UM is hiring private goons to intimidate activists calling on the university to stop supporting Israel's genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the majority of which are their own students. Furthermore, there's no evidence whatsoever that Trump is making them do this; UM, which proudly bills itself as a Midwestern bastion of enlightened liberal culture and a leadership factory for broader American society, just really wants to scare students into silence on its own, and in doing so happily prosecutes Trump's agenda for him.
The point I'm getting at is that when a school like Michigan, acts against its own students and communities in the precise way Trump would do himself, it's hard to believe that school sincerely opposes Trump, or even his fascist policies. And while this is just one school, this act of doing one thing and saying another is being replicated all across the broader US liberal establishment in both the public and private sectors. This has helped, and continues to help Trump in his quest to intimidate American universities and crush dissent under the guise of fighting made up antisemitism half of that liberal establishment continues to falsely insist exists broadly on the anti-genocide left. Until such a time as so-called "liberal" leaders stop supporting actions and ideology that harms protestors and furthers the goals of a fascist regime, they will remain a vital part of this story.
#UM #Fascism #Gaza #Genocide #Palestine #Israel #Protestors #Trump
