THE GAZA PROTESTS MIGHT NEUTRALIZE JANUARY 6 AS A CAMPAIGN ISSUE

This happened overnight at Columbia University:

Dozens of protesters seized Hamilton Hall in the early hours of Tuesday morning, moving metal gates to barricade the doors, blocking entrances with wooden tables and chairs, and zip-tying doors shut.

Protestors carrying barricades entered Hamilton through the leftmost door of the building at approximately 12:30 a.m. Shortly after, a protester broke the window of the rightmost door of Hamilton as dozens more formed a human barricade directly outside the Hamilton doors. Within minutes, protesters sealed Hamilton while hundreds more flooded in front of the building.

News consumers will see broken windows a lot in the next day or two -- and possibly for much longer than that:

#NOW Glass doors into Hamilton Hall inside Columbia were smashed up, protesters stormed in occupying the building, barricading doors with metal gates, blocking entrances with wooden tables and chairs, and zip-tying doors shut.pic.twitter.com/dXxErABRWL

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) April 30, 2024

Does this remind you of anything?



The story of January 6 is contested. Republicans want you to see it the way Tucker Carlson did:



Only Republican zealots think January 6 was peaceful. But it will be harder to make the case that January 6 was intolerably violent when pro-Gaza demonstrators are doing things we associate with January 6 insurrectionists.

HAMILTON HALL HAS BEEN OCCUPIED @Columbia pic.twitter.com/xPWFdeEOX9

— Jessica Schwalb (@jessicaschwalb7) April 30, 2024

Republicans have been doing this kind of compare-and-contrast for years, of course. They've argued that the protests held in the wake of George Floyd's murder were riots led by Black Lives Matter and Antifa terrorists. In their own media, they cherry-pick the worst visuals, and contrast them with the most placid clips of January 6.

Obviously, that's persuasive to Republican voters and less persuasive to everyone else. But bad footage of the Floyd protests exists, and it undoubtedly has some impact on how middle-of-the-road voters see that time period, and January 6 in particular.



An argument that isn't made often enough is this: On some level it doesn't matter whether other protests were more violent than January 6, because January 6 was about overturning the results of a democratic election. As bad as the violence may have become in the worst of the George Floyd protests, those protesters seized temporary control of the streets -- they didn't attempt to seize ongoing control of the government in defiance of the will of voters. It may be bad to smash store windows or overturn police cars, but elections are fundamental to our system of government. The correct way to measure the seriousness of what happened is not the degree of violence, but the danger inherent in the potential outcome.

But we rarely hear that, so the protests are judged based on how unruly they look. And the campus protests are looking worse.