Why US Students Might Come To Regret Their Protests in 2024*

They really should know what they’re doing. Not everything comes down to graduation ceremonies and exams, Palestinians and colonialism, or Israel and Gaza. You only need to read what Trump has said.

A drama of almost apocalyptic proportions is currently playing out in the United States. Anyone who thinks this drama’s final act may have some bearing on Europe, but surely does not matter to Austria, is sorely mistaken. They would have to be stone deaf not to discern some shrill echoes of the past.

You can accuse Donald Trump of many things, but concealing his plans for another term in the White House is not one of them. He has threatened to execute anyone who defies his directives and vows to remove any critics he finds in the judicial and administrative branches. He intends to deploy the National Guard, and even the military, to track down and deport millions of illegal immigrants and cancel the congressionally approved funding of any agencies that fail to obey his orders. He says he will be able to fire career civil servants at will and dismiss any unobliging judges and state prosecutors.

In short, Trump will interpret the constitutional powers of the American presidency in a way that will eliminate virtually all remaining constraints and simply sweep aside any limits set by the courts and Congress in favor of an all-powerful commander in chief. In political science, this concept of federal executive control vested in the presidency is called “unitary executive theory.”

Trump would not be the first U.S. president to use this to increase the scope of unchecked executive powers at the White House’s disposal. Ronald Reagan did so when he lifted the majority of controls introduced in the aftermath of the turbulent Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s resignation. George W. Bush did so, too, when he disregarded the congressional ban on torture in relation to prisoners during the Iraq War and the surveillance ban with respect to U.S. citizens. Yet, neither one of those presidents fought an election campaign with the declared intention of discharging power in an entirely uncontrolled manner, nor a determination to detain his critics and persecute political opponents.

By some truly warped turn of history, however, these designs on absolute power are now crossing paths with the younger generation of ill-informed hotheads protesting at privileged elite universities. These supposed members of the United States intellectual elite are carrying on through events almost like zombies, showing that they are incapable of either generalized or detailed analysis of current political developments.

All the intellectual academic brainpower at Columbia, Stanford and other universities are too caught up in the current wave of protests to see the broader implications.

‘Young People Angrily Protesting Joe Biden’s Israel policy Is the Best Thing That Could Have Happened to Trump politically in recent months’

The spectacle of unrest tearing through universities during the election campaign, deployment of police from California to New York, and violent raids to clear university campuses — all of this is playing into Trump’s hands. By far the best thing that could have happened to Trump in recent months is this explosion of young people’s anger against the Biden administration’s Israel policy. Many of my political scientist friends in the American northwest tell me that if Biden loses the election in November, it will be because of Israel.

It is so absurdly true. What began as a pro-Palestinian movement has long since morphed into a putative fight for freedom of expression. Yet, those students who appear unwilling to accept any limits regarding civility, antisemitism and racism are putting this unrestricted right to freedom of speech at risk with their actions.

For they should be clear about one thing: If Trump returns to the White House, they can forget all about any sort of free speech rights. They would be well-advised to read what he had to say on the subject in his recent interview with Time magazine. Then they will see that the police would be able to pick them up faster than they could say “First

Amendment.”

And none of those protesting today could claim they did not know what would happen. Nor anyone else for that matter.

*Editor’s Note: This article is available in its original language with a paid subscription.