Fascism or Common Sense?

Although police authorities in various jurisdictions around the world are beginning to crack down on protestors on university campuses, the student movement in support of Hamas terrorists continues to grow.

Many university authorities have been reluctant to have police move in and clear their campuses of protestors. They also appear to refuse to expel students who illegally occupy their campuses and prohibit fellow students and faculty members from accessing classrooms and offices.

Indeed, among these occupiers are many who are not students at these institutions, nor, in many cases, citizens. They call for the death of Jews around the world and for the destruction of Israel. They attack Jewish students and promote support for Hamas and for the October 7^th terrorist action. They chant their support for sharia law and for global intifada. In many recent cases, they even call for death to America in America! Their rage and hate speech are evolving to not only include Jews but western values in general.

A reader recently accused me on Facebook of becoming a fascist as I report my opposition to these occupations, call for more effective immigration screening, and policies that call for immigrants to adopt and respect the receiving state’s values as a pre-condition for residency and eventual citizenship.

Does this make me a fascist?

First of all, what is a fascist?

Well, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines fascism as a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

My response to these accusations is: is it fascism for a citizen to demand that police arrest those who break the law?

Is it fascism to demand that authorities crack down on hate speech and violence aimed at a religious or ethnic group?

Is it fascism to demand that political leaders provide safety for all and move to allow all students and faculty members to attend classes without disruption?

During the past six months we have seen many leaders bend over backwards to cater to protestors despite their hate speech and calls for violence. We have seen police ordered by their political masters to allow demonstrators to take over the streets of our cities in the name of a misguided support for Hamas and terrorism while impinging freedom of movement for the rest of us.

Why?

One only has to follow the money.

According to the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), an NGO specializing in threats and propaganda based at Rutgers University, a report from the US Department of Education (DOE) on April 6, 2023, states that American universities and colleges have received US$47 billion in donations from foreign sources of which $19 billion have no recorded nor reported dates of receipts.

In the latest DOE report of October 13, 2023, the total amount of unrecorded, undated donation receipt is US$22 billion out of a total of $51 billion to date. What’s more, over 50% was from authoritarian and antidemocratic Middle East governments, according to the veteran accountant hired on the recommendation of accounting firm KPMG to verify NCRI’s data.

Indeed, between 2014 and 2019, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates donated at least US$4.4 billion to numerous US colleges. Together with donations from other Middle East nations, over the five years in question, more than US$5 billion was donated to American universities from authoritarian Middle Eastern nations.

The top five universities that benefitted from these donations include Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh), which received US$1.4 billion, Cornell (US$1.2 billion), Harvard (US$894 million), MIT (US$859 million), and Texas A&M (College Station, Texas) which received just over half a billion dollars.

The next five universities include Yale (New Haven, Connecticut), Northwestern University (near Chicago, Illinois), Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, Maryland), Georgetown (Washington, DC) and the University of Chicago, which received, US$495.8 million, US$402 million, US$401 million, US$379 million and US$364 million, respectively as of the report dated 30 March 2020.

I was always taught that you don’t get something for nothing.

I would conclude that money buys influence. In this case on university administrators, their curricula, professors and ultimately students!

Is it any mystery why university administrators have tacitly supported these demonstrations and university occupations when they are so beholden to funding from country’s whose geopolitical interests are served by these student movements?

Is it any mystery why the tents that have sprung up on campuses across North America even before Israeli forces entered Gaza appear to have been bought from the same supplier, or why the occupations across North America and Europe appear to be well coordinated?

Is it fascism to question the motives of politicans and academic leaders when they are recieving billions of dollars annually?

I don’t believe it is.

I continue to posit that all citizens of democratic countries have the right to demand that immigrants adhere to the fundamental values of the country to which they emigrate. They have the right to deport those who come to agitate or try to impose a violent creed and openly attack the fundamental values of the receiving state.

Does this make me anti-immigrant?

Not at all.

I am the son of immigrants who came to Canada and adopted Canadian values as their own. They did not bring the prejudices, hatreds, or conflicts of their country of origin. Rather, they enjoyed the freedoms offered by Canada and respected the rule of law that was then in place.

Today, Canada is governed by a multiculturalism that doesn’t work, by a Charter of Freedoms and Liberties that seems to protect those who seek to destroy it, and by politicians more interested in their reelection or in the interests of their political base rather than in providing good governance for all.

Our values are eroding, and the commitment of leaders to defend those values diminishing to the point where one cannot really define what those values are.

I do not believe that opposing this is facism.

It is only common sense.