Privileged students protesting on campuses lack understanding of oppression

The University of Southern California canceled its main commencement ceremony in May due to security concerns amid anti-Israel protests on campus. The majority of the class of 2024 and their families and friends must be disappointed that their opportunity to celebrate an important milestone in life was ruined by a few careless Champagne Marxists.

When the terrorist group Hamas launched its brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, it probably had never envisioned it would find its loudest supporters at America’s elite universities, where a four-year bachelor’s degree costs more than many Americans’ mortgages and the majority of the student body are children of the rich and powerful.

The Champagne Marxists claim they care about the Palestinian people. But it’s likely that most of them, if not all, have never been to Gaza. Most couldn’t locate Palestinian territory on a map. Many are clueless that when they chant “from the river to the sea,” they are calling for the elimination of the nation of Israel — because they don’t know the names or locations of the river and the sea.

Yet this ignorance hasn’t stopped them from labeling Israel a “colonizer” and willfully ignoring atrocities committed by Hamas against Israelis on Oct. 7. In fact, emboldened by ignorance, they held candlelight vigils for Hamas terrorists killed by the Israeli military; projected antisemitic slogans on buildings on campuses; harassed and threatened Jewish students; tore down posters of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, while putting up photos of Hamas terrorists on campus to memorialize them; and disrupted a private dinner party hosted by a Jewish professor in his own backyard. Their latest protesting tactic was to occupy open campus spaces and turn them into tent cities.

The encampment at Columbia University has received the most public attention. Student protesters at the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” reportedly sustained their revolutionary zeal with various organic, vegan, and gluten-free food choices, including  $12 croissants and $14 avocado toasts. Despite a sign inside the encampment saying, “Resist colonial power by any means necessary,” these Champagne Marxists couldn’t give up their privileged lifestyle made possible by “colonial power.”

After all, those overpriced foods gave Champagne Marxists the energy to dance to the rap song singing, “F-uck Israel,” call Jewish students “Nazi,” and tell them to “go back to Poland.” One pro-Palestinian protester held a sign that pointed to a group of pro-Israel protesters and called them Hamas’ next target. Several Jewish students reported being physically harassed on campus. Columbia’s rabbi urged Jewish students to leave campus because the school wouldn’t be able to keep them safe.

Initially, at the request of Columbia President Minouche Shafik, the NYPD tried to clear the campus encampment by arresting about 100 protesters, including Isabel Jennifer Seward, the daughter of a UPS senior executive. Seward (whose listed home address is a $2.2 million mansion) walked away from a traffic accident in 2020 that killed an elderly couple in Vermont with just a $220 fine (apparently paid by her mother).

Another notable arrest was Isra Hirsi, a student of Barnard College (where the annual cost of attending is $90,000). Hirsi later complained to Teen Vogue that she became homeless and was starving after Barnard College suspended her. People who doubted her claim quickly pointed out that Hirsi’s mother is Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and her father owns a political consulting agency.

The initial arrest energized more pro-Palestinian student protesters to set up encampments on Columbia’s campus, with additional demands of divestment from Israel and turning the exclusive private college into the “People’s University.” President Minouche Shafik seemed to have lost her nerve. Rather than calling back the NYPD to restore order, she made most classes hybrid for the rest of the semester.

It’s worth asking why children of elites are so attached to the Palestinian cause. Their youth explains part of it. When you are young, you are attracted to radical ideas, you tend to be rebellious, and the idea of joining in a revolution led by the “oppressed” against the “oppressor” sounds exciting.

However, the main reason is that these hyper-privileged young people are bored. They have been insulated from the rest of the society since birth. From exclusive kindergarten to private high schools to elite private colleges, their sheltered lives are too predictable.

Even without a credential from an Ivy League college, their future is set. As American writer Caitlin Flanagan pointed out, the irony is that these Champagne Marxists who pretend they are attending “The People’s University” know only too well that they will “go to work at The People’s Hedge Fund and The People’s Consulting Firm” upon graduation.

These Champagne Marxists like to pretend to be part of a proletariat revolution because sleeping in brand-new North Face tents and shouting slogans they don’t understand in between yoga and dancing sessions add thrills to their otherwise dull and insulated lives and gives them the sort of prestige that money and power cannot easily buy.

But deep down, they are the “careless people” F. Scott Fitzgerald warned us about in his masterful novel The Great Gatsby. Champagne Marxists “smashed up things and creatures” with little regard for how much disruption or harm their actions will cause others, because in the end, they always “retreated into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

History has shown that most notorious Marxists were from families that were well-off. For instance, Vladimir Lenin was born into a wealthy middle-class family. He launched the Bolshevik Revolution and founded the Soviet Union, the first communist totalitarian regime. He taught his future successor, Joseph Stalin, how to silence dissenting voices with gulags and mass executions. Lenin was the first mass murderer of the 20th century.

Growing up, Mao Zedong enjoyed the many benefits that came with being the son of a prosperous farmer. Inspired by Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Mao led his version of the Marxist revolution in China and founded a communist regime. His socialist policies caused the deaths of more than 40 million people in China.

Anyone who thinks that today’s Champagne Marxists will never become someone as dangerous as Lenin or Mao should check out a livestream video recorded by Columbia’s encampment leader, Khymani James, in which he said, “Zionists, along with all white supremacists” need be killed. He also stated that the public should be thankful that he had not gone out to murder them yet. Last week, Columbia barred James from being on campus after the video drew backlash, but it’s unclear if the suspension is only temporary.

The rest of society should never underestimate or indulge Champagne Marxists. If no one holds them accountable for smashing up things now, some of them will someday inflict pain and suffering on many people.