“Zionist!” A ’60s Jewish, Berkeley Leftist Learns About Revolutions Eating Their “Own”

A demon, once released, is an uncontrollable beast. That one should therefore be careful when opening a gate to Hades is a lesson many have learned, the hard way. The latest example is one Erwin Chemerinsky, “Distinguished Professor of Law” at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

Chemerinsky just got schooled in the law of the jungle — in this case, to be precise, in the law of left-wing revolutions. You see, the professor “is an old-school 1960s leftist radical. He’s also Jewish,” writes commentator Andrea Widburg. “This week, he learned the tried-and-true lesson of all revolutions: The younger generation is more radicalized and will inevitably turn on its revolutionary progenitors. Thus, Chemerinsky, who is now the Dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, was shocked to have his law students scarily and aggressively turn against him for being a ‘Zionist.’”

As for the particulars, I’ll mirror Widburg and reprint the academic’s statement on what befell him when he failed to imbibe the “revolution’s” latest Kool-Aid concoction. To wit:

April 10, 2024

I write this with profound sadness. Since I became a dean, my wife and I have invited the first-year students to our home for dinner. We were asked this year by the presidents of the third year class to have the graduating students over for dinner because they began in Fall 2021 when COVID prevented us from having dinners for them. We were delighted to oblige and designated three nights – April 9, 10, 11 – that graduating students could choose among. I never imagined that something that we do to help our community would become ugly and divisive.

Last week, there was an awful poster, on social media and bulletin boards in the law school building, of a caricature of me holding a bloody knife and fork, with the words in large letters, “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves.” I never thought I would see such blatant antisemitism, with an image that invokes the horrible antisemitic trope of blood libel and that attacks me for no apparent reason other than I am Jewish. Although many complained to me about the posters and how it deeply offended them, I felt that though deeply offensive, they were speech protected by the First Amendment. But I was upset that those in our community had to see this disturbing, antisemitic poster around the law school.

The students responsible for this had the leaders of our student government tell me that if we did not cancel the dinners, they would protest at them. I was sad to hear this, but made clear that we would not be intimidated and that the dinners would go forward for those who wanted to attend. I said that I assumed that any protest would not be disruptive.

On April 9, about 60 students came to our home for the dinner. All had registered in advance. All came into our backyard and were seated at tables for dinner. While guests were eating, a woman stood up with a microphone, stood on the top step in the yard, and began a speech, including about the plight of the Palestinians. My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop and leave. The woman continued. When she continued, there was an attempt to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her that you are a guest in our home, please stop and leave. About 10 students were clearly with her and ultimately left as a group.

The dinner, which was meant to celebrate graduating students, was obviously disrupted and disturbed. I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.

The dinners will go forward on Wednesday and Thursday. I hope that there will be no disruptions; my home is not a forum for free speech. But we will have security present. Any student who disrupts will be reported to student conduct and a violation of the student conduct code is reported to the Bar.

I have spent my career staunchly defending freedom of speech. I have spent my years as dean trying hard to create a warm, inclusive community. I am deeply saddened by these events and take solace that it is just a small number of our students who would behave in such a clearly inappropriate manner.

Erwin

Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law

University of California, Berkeley School of Law

One could wonder, however, if Chemerinsky was likewise appalled when pro-abortion zealots swarmed “conservative” Supreme Court justices’ homes in 2022 or when violent agitators attacked pundit Tucker Carlson’s residence in 2018.

In comparison, the Berkeley interlopers were relatively nonviolent, though they sure left the professor nonplussed. The following two-part tweet includes a video of what transpired at the dinner event and the protesters’ deceitful claims about it.

Chemerinsky didn’t get much sympathy from Widburg, the commenters under her piece, and many others. The X user below explains why.

As with militant secularist Richard Dawkins — who recently admitted he liked living in a Christian culture (see “Atheism’s ‘Terrible New Gods’”) — it escapes Chemerinsky that the very civility he’s expecting is a function of the Christian sense of virtue that shaped and once infused our civilization.

That would also be the Christian sense of virtue, the tradition, that he and his left-wing ilk have, knowing not what they do, spent decades destroying.

A second lesson here is this: “He who marries the spirit of the age will be a widower in the next.” There’s a reason why Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin destroyed the “old Bolsheviks” and killed former enabler Leon Trotsky, why leftist revolutions always eat their own. It’s in part a desire to destroy competitors for power, but another factor is that you’ll never be “pure” enough for the devolutionaries’ latest iteration.

As I’ve often stated, leftism, or liberalism (and conservatism, for that matter), aren’t ideologies as much as they are processes. Leftism is currently the process of continually rebelling against the status quo, against “what is,” of movement toward moral disorder. (This only ends when some leftists attain absolute power and establish their own status quo.) So no matter how morally malleable you may be, the devolution will outpace you and render you obsolete. They’ll hang you for what you say today — or what you said 20 years ago espousing that age’s leftism.

This said, Professor Chemerinsky is an old man and will likely die peacefully in a bed. Others, subject to the ever-strengthening demon he has helped loose, may not be so fortunate.