Toxic Activism 2.0

Counterproductive Protesting

Erwin Chemerinsky is a name I bet most of you have never heard of, but you should. No single person has taught more soon-to-be lawyers in this country about what goes into Constitutional Law. He was named the most influential in US Legal Education in 2017. You see, he literally wrote the book most Law Schools use to teach Constitutional Law. Think I’m kidding? Here’s my copy from 20 years ago.

These days Chemerinsky is the Professor Emeritus and Dean of UC-Berkeley Law School. He’s always been a liberal but took to great pains to demonstrate balance, variance of opinions, and different perspectives in his discussions on the law; it’s what made him such a great professor. So he’s a pretty liberal professor at probably the nation’s most liberal law school (and that isn’t even really close). For some reason, to many young social warrior activists, that wasn’t enough. I’ll let Professor Chemerinsky explain:

Here is a news story on the event.

And a CNN Interview with Jake Tapper where Mr. Chemerinsky demonstrates how he went out of his way to allow anti-semitic posters on bulletin boards at the school for free speech reasons, and the difference of how dinner at someone’s home is not a public forum.

The main point I am trying to get across here is that Erwin Chemerinsky is one of the most liberal and tolerant professors there is in America. He knows more about the First Amendment than most anyone in the country. He works at the most liberal legal institution for higher learning in the nation. And for some reason, that wasn’t enough. That protestors, whose only purpose was to smear a man because he was Jewish, had to show up at his home, make a political speech at a social gathering celebrating graduating 3Ls and soon to be attorneys, and then protest, make demands and refuse to leave is patently offensive. It did more to set their cause backward than it did convince people to be more sympathetic to it. It lacked all rationality and common sense and disgraced someone who opened their home to them.

This is something I have harped on numerous times. Toxic Activism. This demonstrates it to its core, and I fear its getting worse.

I’d written about it previously here. It’s most simplest definition is some form of protest that is counterproductive to the goals one wants to achieve. For example, the environmental activists who love throwing oil or soup at priceless paintings in museums. People don’t look at them and say “I want to join them!” They say, “Who are these dumbfucks throwing soup at the Mona Lisa?” Or people forming human chains across highways during rush hour for some cause; people don’t empathize with the protesters, they empathize with the people trying to get to work and are now going to be late and docked pay. Intellectual and moral purity is required by toxic activists, and there is no sense of degree— It festers in the belief systems where if you are not 100% gung ho advocating to the fullest extent true believers are, that you are somehow insufficiently supportive, and likely a closet adversary.

It seems to have gotten worse over the last year. Absolutist social justice warriors injetcting themselves into the Palestinian-Israel conflict have taken simplistic, doctrinal, hard-line positions on what is a very complex and historically problematic issue. It’s been fought for over 1500 years and they seem to think they can solve it just by leveling labels at people and calling it “genocide.”¹ They all believe that someone can just snap their fingers and all the problems will be fixed. They all believe that only their side is in the right. They all believe that anyone not onboard with their view are part of a conspiring cabal of adversaries bent on genocide. The word “genocide” itself has been thrown around way too loosely and frivolously to boot. The worldview of many of the people protesting are far too extreme and require far too much purity for any sense of nuance, compromise or level-headedness, which is ultimately what is needed to get to some form of resolution. The harder the push, the more likely it continues. That is the paradox they have put themselves in.

There’s a Palestinian I follow on Threads, Mo Husseini. He’s consistently posted what I believe to be the soundest and most nuanced views of the whole conflict. He’s not a toxic activist of any kind, he’s the kind of empathetic activist that most of us can relate to, as we share many of the same thoughts and he expresses them so eloquently, including the frustrations. Here he is, immediately after the HAMAS attacked on Israel:

Amen. A salaam alaikum and Peace be onto you friend. We should work to be more like Mohu and less like that protester at Chemerinksy’s dinner party.

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If the graduating law students had taken the time to actually open Chemerinsky’s Constitutional Law book, they’d see that understand that despite the Chermerinsky’s hosting a school sponsored event, that that in itself does not make it a public forum. Of course, time, manner and place restrictions to the First Amendment generally apply but the protesters kept arguing that because Chemerinksy invited graduating seniors over and that it was a Berkeley Law sponsored event, that it was a public forum.

First, private property and private homes are by definition “non public.”

Second, invitations can be revoked at any time by the private homeowner’s notice.

Third, even in situations where it is public property or private land used for a public purpose, there is no right to First Amendment protections. (see, Adderly v. Florida ² where protestors illegally entered a prison to protest; “The State, no less the private owner of property, has power to preserve the property under it’s control for the use of which it was intended.”)

Good luck protesting 3Ls finding a job or passing the Bar; I’m not sure many would consider someone who so clearly lacks understanding of the law.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

“A salaam alaikum” the greeting many muslims use is the same sentiment Jews use when they say “Shalom.”

It means Peace.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

Let’s give it to Chemerinksy. From the Constitutional Law Book I used in Law School:

“This book is dedicated to my students— past, present and future.”

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. The term is intentionally a pointed one, but what is happening in Gaza is not a genocide. Genocide is the wanton mass killing of an ethnic group with the expressed intention of wiping it out. Israel does not intend to go to war and eliminate every Palestinian in Gaza and elsewhere. If Israel wanted to completely kill every Gazan they could have just done it in days by keeping the border crossings closed and by sustained and indiscriminate bombing and not the months of clearing and securing areas of Gaza looking for HAMAS. To be sure, what Israel as lead by Netanyahu has done here has been pretty diproportionate, resulting in a lot of innocent collateral deaths and casualties and has continued under suspect and illegitimate motivations. It is a humanitarian disaster. Israel has conducted a horrible, mass killing, unjustified and outragous in a number of ways, but calling it a genocide cheapens the word. You want to look at what a real genocide looks like, this month marks the 30th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide. 1 million people slaughtered in 100 days. Or read up about the Rhoynigan Genocide in Myanmar.

2. Adderly v. FL, 385 U.S. 39 (1966).