illiam Jacobson at the outstanding Legal Insurrection website notes with alarmthat anti-Israel, pro-BDS faculty are organizing a nationwide campus Antifa network.
Jacobson quotes from Inside Higher Ed reports about a proposed Campus Antifascist Network, or CAN:
“The election of Donald Trump has emboldened fascist and white nationalist groups nationwide, on campus and off, and their recent upsurge requires antifascists to take up the call to action once again,” reads an invitation to join the group, posted on social media this week by David Palumbo-Liu, the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor and professor of comparative literature at Stanford University....
Network co-organizer Bill Mullen, a professor of American studies at Purdue University, on Wednesday called CAN a “big tent” that “welcomes anyone committed to fighting fascism.”
“We are diverse in our political points of view but unified by our fight against fascism,” he said. The idea is “to drive racists off campuses and to protect the most vulnerable from fascist attack.”
And of objections made by some that Trump is not a fascist? Palumbo-Liu said that is “literally an academic argument in the worst sense of the word. We need to pay attention to what is happening, not the labels that we feel are most fitting.” ....
Since Charlottesville, the network has jumped to 200 members and 1,000 followers on its Facebook page, Mullen said. Antifascist branches are being formed on campuses and the group is preparing teach-ins and self-defense materials for faculty and students who may meet with white supremacist protesters.
... In addition to faculty members, graduate students and some undergraduates have joined.
[...]
Asked specifically about the possible use of violence, Palumbo-Liu said antifa activists include those whose tactics CAN would reject. “We would advocate self-defense and defense in various forms of those who are being threatened by fascists, but not violence,” he added, saying his group can’t control the antifa label or who ascribes to it.
He goes on to warn that we can expect this campus Antifa network “to be re-directed against Israel, Israelis and Jews. We’ve seen this in Chicago, where Jewish symbols were banned at an LGBT event, and Jewish LGBT groups have been attacked.”
Before even learning of this campus Antifa network, Jacobson had “warned to expect violence on campuses this semester":
Legal Insurrection @LegInsurrection
Antifa has been weaponized, expect violence on campuses this year directed at anyone in the center or right of center https://twitter.com/LegInsurrection/status/897775546645577729 ...
“The teaming of the BDS and Antifa movements is the single most dangerous development I have witnessed in the many years I have been covering campus BDS,” Jacobson concludes. “Antifa will give BDS even more muscle to intimidate and threaten those who oppose the BDS agenda.”
All the more reason to marginalize Antifa as domestic terrorists and deal with them accordingly.