A troubling anarchist website is encouraging anti-Israel student protesters to escalate the violent demonstrations — by urging them to hijack buildings, arm themselves, and use the protests as a “movement against the police.”
CrimethInc.com, which describes itself as a “rebel alliance,” analyzes the protests erupting across US campuses and gives students advice on how to up the ante.
“Organizers should not concern themselves with de-escalation or ‘remaining peaceful,'” one analysis of the encampment protest at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign read.
“Neither remaining on the defensive nor being compliant will protect us, but being dynamic and meeting the cops head-on might,” it continued.
Referring to the police as “militants,” the site encouraged protesting students to arm themselves in confrontations.
“Plywood, insulation board, lumber, scrap wood, metal sheeting, garbage cans, and water barrels can all be used as raw materials, and some can even be sourced from campus dumpsters. Be creative and be brave,” the analysis’s “strategic reflections” said.
It also told students to avoid negotiating with college administrators.
“Negotiations delayed the police raid — and diminished our ability to fend off the raid,” it said of the encampment at UIUC.
“The administration is negotiating in bad faith; they aim to waste our time, so we should only engage with them when reinforcements are on the way and buying time is advantageous to us.”
Another analysis of the protests at Cal Poly Humbolt urged students to “take buildings” to sow chaos, noting that campus buildings also likely have supplies to barricade against police intervention.
“It’s clear that in order for this crisis to develop further, student occupations should take buildings whenever possible,” the write-up said.
“The first action of the police was to instruct the occupiers to move to the quad. In saying this, they showed that we can wield the most power by occupying the spaces where classes are held and administrators have offices,” it added.
Disturbingly, it also directed students that the “pro-Palestinian movement must be a movement against the police.”
“At every step, police will not hesitate to brutalize those who call for an end to genocide in Palestine. In Gaza, Palestinians face the Israeli military; in the United States, we face the police. We must recognize that these forces are one and the same: they are all foot soldiers of empire,” it said.
The analysis of Cal Poly Humboldt also advised that “it is best to come to all demonstrations with goggles, gas masks, laser pointers, and shields.”
“You never know what a casual sleepover might become,” the write-up said.
Another report on protests at the University of Texas at Austin called on demonstrators to “force out the police.”
The reports come on the heels of over a week of police action and arrests at campus anti-Israel encampments – most notably the NYPD’s raid of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University on Tuesday night.
About 300 people were arrested between Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus and the City College of New York campus in Harlem, authorities said.
Those taken into custody were a mix of students and non-students whom Mayor Eric Adams referred to as “outside agitators.”
Hizzoner has also demanded that Columbia and other universities help foot the bill for the massive law enforcement operation, which came after administrators failed to quell nearly two weeks of strife on their grounds.
“One way to prevent the costs from escalating is to have a zero tolerance. As soon as the tents go up, it comes down. Do not allow this to continue to expand. That is what we saw at Columbia University and that is what we saw at CUNY as well,” he said.
