This time Mother Jones is calling out NYC Mayor Eric Adams (see story here).
Days after city cops stormed the Columbia University campus, Hizzoner held a press conference.
He used it to condemn “outside agitators,” naming a retired teacher Mother Jones says “was not on Columbia’s campus this week.” When reporters asked him how many “outside agitators” there were, he answered, “I don’t think that matters.” (His cops don’t know how many non-students they arrested?) If you’re interested, some numbers are here.
A deputy police commissioner brandished a chain used by protesters to chain campus doors shut, and said, “This is not what students bring to school.” A comment (here) on Elon Musk’s soapbox, X, identified it as a bicycle chain and lock “sold at a discount by Columbia University.”
Mother Jones comments, “This is the ‘outside agitator’ narrative stretched to its limits.” Politicians have agendas, and twist facts to promote themselves and their policies. In the process, truth goes by the wayside, rational debate is a casualty, and targeted groups — in this case, protesters outraged by Israeli’s actions in Gaza — are demonized. Mission accomplished.
Why blame “outside agitators”? Mother Jones explains, “In the case of Adams, [he] refuses to see a city whose residents could be disgusted with bloodshed, so it must be someone else, an individual with questionable origins ….”
This has been going on forever. It happened during the 1960s Vietnam War protests, and more recently the Black Lives Matter protests against police killings of black men. It’s happening again as Israel suffers a major self-inflicted blow to its carefully cultivated image as a victim state. It’s important for Israel’s supporters in America to discredit the Palestinian sympathizers in their midst, to stifle public support for their cause.
This is how they do it.