By Abe Greenwald
Thursday, March 20, 2025
Three heartening pieces of news: First, Columbia
University seems poised to comply with the Trump administration’s demands aimed
at reining in violent radicalism and Jew-hatred on campus. Second, Attorney
General Pam Bondi recently said, “The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla
property is nothing short of domestic terrorism,” and prosecutors will treat
the perpetrators accordingly. Third, Greenpeace, the environmental organization
that protested the Dakota Access Pipeline a decade ago, has been found liable for
defamation and trespassing, and will have to pay more than $660 million dollars
to the company Energy Transfer.
We’re seeing the beginning stages of a reckoning. Add to
the above the deportations (pending and completed) of alleged terror
supporters, and it’s clear that the bill for years of violent or otherwise
lawless activism is coming due.
From Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter to the woke
jihad to terrorizing Tesla, thugs and vandals have enjoyed a run of destruction
that’s been either tolerated or endorsed by important segments of the political
establishment and defended as free speech.
Those defenses are still coming in, of course. But now
they’ll actually be needed, because the rioters and trespassers are facing
judge, jury, or deportation. This is largely because of Donald Trump’s efforts
to restore a national civil peace that had started to seem as antiquated and
unreachable as dial-up Internet.
Before Trump’s election, there had been little reason for
hope on this front. When 90 to 95 percent of the charges against Black Lives
Matter rioters are dropped, when the then-president and vice president say that
the anti-Israel mobs “have a point,” when Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats
use the murder of a health-insurance CEO as a catalyst for discussing the evils
of the insurance sector, you come to think of all the political ugliness as an
inevitable inconvenience, like bad weather. Trump is at least trying to change
that.
It's true that the North Dakota ruling against Greenpeace
has nothing to do with the Trump administration, but it’s the kind of happy
coincidence that contributes to a societal shift, nonetheless. Trump or no
Trump, environmental groups aren’t going to feel so nonchalant about
trespassing on the next industrial site they target. Let’s hope the
administration goes after the environmentalist highway-sitters and
paint-throwers next.
As with all things Trump, there are some important
caveats to note. First, his administration has a penchant for bungling
things—especially, it seems, its most aggressive policies. As Christopher
Caldwell writes
at Compact, “the Trump team is moving
with its signature mix of diagnostic subtlety and prescriptive crudity.” Which
means we shouldn’t get too excited about the diagnoses until the prescriptions
have been filled. The recent moves to deport terrorist supporters are facing
serious legal challenges, and ICE has given activist lawyers a lot to work
with. Some of it perhaps even legitimate.
The other caveat is just as concerning. Trump is going
after the violence only of the left. His sweeping pardons and commutations for
the January 6 rioters is as brazen a free pass for lawlessness as anything that
Democrats have granted the radicals on their side. Whether it was a one-time
get-out-of-jail-for-free card or a long-term license to do harm remains to be
seen. If the latter, then we will be no better off than before.
But, for now, it’s encouraging to see the left-wing goons
stripped of their blanket immunity. We didn’t have to live in their world for
as long as we did. All it takes to stop them is enforcing the law—competently.
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