Chaotic US university protests could hand Trump the presidency

History echoes across Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus. Generations of activists have gathered in this place in support of free speech, civil rights and Black Power, and to protest against the Vietnam War, racism and George W Bush’s misadventures in Iraq. Cops have beaten up protesters here, flags have been set alight, Left and Right have fought pitched battles. Martin Luther King spoke from the steps of Sproul Hall in May 1967, railing against “White America, but not all white Americans” for deserting the fight for racial justice.

Mario Zelaya was in the crowd that day in ‘67 - “I was standing right next to MLK, close to enough to reach out and touch him.” - and he was back again this week to offer support to the latest (temporary) residents of this famous piece of radical real estate.

Last week a group of two hundred or so UC Bererkely students set up camp, calling for the university to divest from, and cut ties with, the state of Israel and weapons manufacturing companies they say are profiting from the current situation in Gaza.

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“I really admire the bravery of these kids and support everything they’re doing,’’ says Zelaya, now aged 84. “The more pressure you put on governments around the world the more chance they will change their policies.”

You have to admire the optimism of old age.

So far the governments of Israel and the United States, the principal targets of the protesters’ ire, show no inclination to change course. More pressingly for Mario and the folks in tents, neither does the university leadership.

“There are no plans to change our investment policies and practices, and will take the steps necessary to ensure the protest does not disrupt the university’s operations,” said UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof - an apparent threat that has neither impressed or scared the students. “You can arrest us, you can expel us, you can suspend us, but we will continue to be here,” a spokesman for the protesters said. “We’re not moving.”

The stand-off in Berkeley has shown a few signs of turning ugly (a couple of people were arrested after a tug-of-war over a flag) but nothing much to fill the police blotter. It’s a different story elsewhere.

In Los Angeles, riot police arrived in the night to dismantle a pro-Palestine encampment on the grounds of UCLA, arresting 140. The same story has been told further north, where riot cops in Portland confronted students who refused to dismantle their encampment. Fourteen arrested. On the other side of the country, the New York Police Department cleared out an occupied building at Columbia University, arresting dozens. Classes have been switched to online. Students have been ordered to stay in situ for their own safety. The cops will maintain a presence on Columbia campus until the school year ends later this month. Daily life on dozens of college campuses across the US has been impacted by the protests. More than 2,000 people have been arrested.

Police clash with pro-Palestinian protesters after an oder to disperse was given at UCLA early Thursday morning. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) (Image: free)

So much for the portrayal of Gen Z as too lazy and self-absorbed to engage with the world. The United States of America may not yet be ablaze but the flames are flickering, the smoke billowing.

There is a human cost to this mayhem but, inevitably, in a year when America will be asked to vote in the most consequential Presidential election of their lives, calculations are being made about the political costs and where they will fall. Who does it help, who does it hurt?

Typically, Donald Trump sees the ongoing foreign policy morass not as a problem to be solved but an opportunity to be exploited. The former President finds himself on trial in New York, where the tidal wave of incriminating evidence has left him in trouble up to his double chin, so the distraction is welcome. “People have to have respect for law and order in the country,’’ he posted on social media, going to claim - contrary to all the available evidence, natch - that Joe Biden is “definitely anti-Israel”.

Trump might be an opportunistic charlatan, born without irony or a single cogent thought on how to broker a workable solution to the conflict in Gaza, but he has a lizard-like instinct for weaponising chaos.

He’s wrong about Biden being anti-Israel but he’s right to believe the student protests spell big trouble for the incumbent. Even the old socialist warrior Senator Bernie Sanders, last seen giving Biden his ringing endorsement for a second term, was driven to make the comparison between the current situation in the Middle East and the foreign policy catastrophe that forced incumbent Lyndon Johnston to withdraw his candidacy for the 1968 Presidential election.

Donald 'has a lizard-like instinct for weaponising chaos' (Image: free)

“This may be Biden's Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson, in many respects, was a very, very good president but he chose not to run in ‘68 because of opposition to his views on Vietnam," Sanders said. "I worry very much that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated not just young people but a lot of the Democratic base in terms of his views on Israel and this war.”

Saunders is not alone amongst Biden’s natural allies in predicting doom. The filmmaker Michael Moore, who correctly predicted, against conventional wisdom, that Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, popped up on CNN this week, just as the network published a poll showing 81% of voters under the age of 35 are against the current administration’s policy on the Israeli-Hamas conflict. He framed his comments on Biden's approach as an appeal to “a fellow Catholic”.

“We need an immediate ceasefire. It is wrong. The mass slaughter of innocents, of children, of women, of the elderly is a sin. It is absolutely against what we believe. I know you know that too,” Moore said. If Biden did not “close the bank” on Israel then he would almost certainly lose to Trump in November.

Moore made his name and his millions peddling the easy certainties of a lefty polemicist so it goes without saying he has failed to pass GO on his way to the worst-case scenario. But over-dramatic doesn’t mean wrong. Biden appears to have recognised this, taking the usual step of publicly commenting on the protests even though, technically speaking, they are the responsibility of states’ police departments.

“We've often faced moments like this because we are a big, diverse, free-thinking and freedom-loving nation. In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points. But this isn't a moment for politics. It's a moment for clarity,’’ he said “So, let me be clear. Violent protest is not protected, peaceful protest is.”

This was a pretty nimble effort at solving a five-dimensional puzzle and for the moment it might have worked. The college year will end within the next few weeks and the students will go home. This cannot come soon enough for Biden. At the very least it will give him and his campaign the summer months to triangulate a political message that will unite the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli factions of Democratic coalition long enough to get through the party convention in Chicago this August.

Antiwar demonstrators attempt to push over a Chicago Police Department vehicle on Michigan Avenue during the anti-Vietnam War protests surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois, August 28, 1968. (Photo by APA/Getty Images). (Image: free)

In an ideal world, the most powerful man in the world will use the short time at hand to forge an enduring peace between Israel and Palestinians, making all political calculations redundant. But let’s get real, right? Foreign policy takes years and is intended to last generations.

Political campaigns are sharp and to the point, and the Biden campaign will have a lot to say about Trump’s pro-Israeli inclinations, his ignorance of Middle East history, and his stated intention to ban Muslims from entering the US if re-elected to the White House. The messages are clear - you might not like our policy on the Middle East, but Trump will be a hell of a lot worse.

Will it work? No chance, according to at least one of those who found their way to Sproul Plaza this week to support the student protesters. “People like me know there's nothing worse than genocide. We reject the framing of this issue as ‘you have to vote for the lesser of two evils’ when there is nothing more evil than genocide,’’ said Wael Bohaissay, a locally-based engineer who has had a relative buried under the wreckage of Gaza.

The Biden campaign doesn’t have much time to change the minds of many millions like him before Chicago comes around. The last thing it wants is a repeat of the street battles between police and anti-war protesters outside the 1968 convention in that same city - an ugly tapestry of violence and lawlessness that handed the the votes of middle America to Richard Nixon, and the fate of the nation into the arms of a crook. A nation has heard that story before and it didn’t end well.