Not Impressed With Columbia's Lecturer on Revolution

The NYPD released a photo of a chalkboard inside Hamilton Hall of @Columbia.

You can see a security plan (left), quotes (middle) and a scenario plan for the arrival of the police (right).

One quote reads, “Political power comes from the barrel of the gun.” This is a famous… pic.twitter.com/zPqKmFRR6S

— Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus (@CampusJewHate) May 2, 2024

As if the university take-overs weren't already community theater-level versions of Mao's cultural revolution, some fanboy at Columbia was inspiring himself by scribbling Mao-ish slogans while reenacting The Long March through Hamilton Hall. 

Since the NYPD released photos, we can all be vicariously radicalized by the three slogans that some deep thinker left on a chalkboard. 

1. Attack when your enemy is weak and you are strong. 

With respect to Mao, that one really isn't original to him, or to China, or to modern history. In fact, it misses the point of all the revolutionary movements that did just the opposite. They lost the battles but won the campaigns. And I include Nathaniel Greene of our Revolutionary War in that group. Greene's quote is "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." He usually lost tactically, but defeated Cornwallis strategically, where it counts. See also the history of the Vietnam War, or the history of whatever it is we call the twenty years we spent in Afghanistan. 

2. Political power comes from the barrel of a gun. 

Get out of here! The sentiment isn't wrong, and it's been put less dramatically by better men (like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. - "every society rests on the death of men"). But has our chalkboard lecturer ever asked himself who is it in America that has all the guns? Hint: it's not his side. In any case, when the city authorities decided to exercise some power of their own and end that pitiable insurrection it did so with ease. No firearms were needed. 

3. The countryside surrounds the city. 

Comrade, you ought to consult a map. In America it's the suburbs that surround the city. And that speaks to political and cultural alignment as well as to the geography. 

With all the time he must have had on his hands in Hamilton Hall, why didn't that guy ever read a book about the Halls's namesake and how he helped lead a vastly inferior force to defeat the British Empire? That would be an education in revolution worth the tuition.