Campus protest crackdowns claim to be about antisemitism – but they’re part of a rightwing plan (The Guardian)
“In a tactic familiar from the post-9/11 landscape, GOP lawmakers and civil society leaders from groups like the ADL and the Brandeis Center have endeavored to paint student protesters and groups as ‘terrorists’. This is bad news for activists across the country: a 2024 report by the Center for Constitutional Rights details how ‘core features’ of US antiterrorism law, ‘driven by anti-Palestinian agendas’, were ‘expanded and ‘brought home’ to repress other protest movements’, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests against the ‘Cop City’ Atlanta police training center. As early as next week, the Senate could vote on a bill designed to penalize criticism of Israel by suspending tax-exempt status for ‘terrorist supporting organizations’ – which Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said would ‘dispense with the due process’ and empower ‘a single US official to act as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner of [American] orgs whose viewpoints that official disagrees with’.