- No Demonstrating Allowed
Arrests by masked ICE agents caused a feeling of violation in many Americans, a feeling of nakedness, as in stripped of a protective freedom. Authority now seems able to ignore a Constitutional right – protection from anonymous accusers.[1] Authority has practically declared that when it is used, there need be no one, identifiable, to hold responsible, and if its power is abused, no one to “hold blameworthy” – except, in a perverse way, the victim.
Thinker Rebecca Solnit writes,
“One of the prerogatives of power is to be in charge of blame, and abusers routinely exercise that power to make their own acts someone else’s fault[2]….In mainstream discourse, it’s become standard to blame the excesses of the right on the left.…(Right and left) are unconsciously regarded as akin to a husband and wife in a traditional marriage….The right is granted masculine prerogatives and the left feminine responsibilities for the right’s behavior.”[3]
That is, dissent these days somehow must appear, to the right, as a kind of disrespectful, feminine backtalk. If such persists the right’s role is to strike and – especially if harm is done – to screen away its responsibility – by in effect saying (as Solnit writes), “She made me do it.”
A case in point is a 2025 public meeting, Republican-sponsored, in northern Idaho. Activists from the left attended, one a Pro-Choice organizer who (in far-right Coeur d’Alene) had already provoked some angry scorn. Theresa Borrenpohl protested loudly that rightist speakers at the event were lying,[4] provoking the MC to say over his microphone,
“Look at this little girl over here, everyone. Look at her,” adding “We’ve got to be a little aggressive with (her).” [5]
Notably, this was reminiscent of a rodeo MC telling people to watch a feisty little calf eluding a rope. The “little aggressive” was Borrenpohl being seized by three men in completely plain dress – no uniform, no “security” message, no badge[6] – wrestled toward the door and ejected. Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris was with them, and Borrenpohl yelled to him,
“Are these your deputies?”
Their incognito strike against Borrenpohl’s dissent eventually proved to be illegal – no “security” notifier[7] – but for the hiring of these agents, sheriff Norris has never been proven personally responsible.
It is notable that sheriff Bob Norris has a federal top-secret security clearance, that in Israel he trained in domestic-surveillance style of policing with the Shin Bet espionage agency,[8] and that in Coeur d’Alene he modeled his law agency on a federal surveillance agency that he ran in 2006 in California.[9]
We’ll now move from Coeur d’Alene to other locations of conservative action countering dissent, where the power used, arguably abused, chiefly was that of lucre with an assist from the power of law. That is, the sexism that appears in in these cases lies in the fact that in the US, access to money customarily has fallen to men – in a way that has put women citizens in a second class. Compared to the power of law, this power of lucre has always been easy to abuse anonymously, and these two powers can join forces.
By the right, dissent at US colleges is now treated as anti-Israel. Countering it as are the joint powers of legal authority and large money. Billionaires, as the record will show, have funded Israel Defense Forces operations to quell demonstrations. Orders for these ops came from far away, from men invisible and non-accountable.
II. Abusing the Power of Money
As we shall see, against pro-Palestine demonstrators, billionaires – teamed with Israel Defense Forces officials – planned a pair of aggressive counter actions, to occur simultaneously at Columbia and UCLA, which actions a billionaire-funded media campaign would cause to be favorably publicized.[10]
The covert planning for all this was done using Zoom Meetings; the first, held on October 10, 2023 to organize the public-relations campaign, featured US billionaire Jordan Blashek[11] speaking with IDF Reserve Capt. Oded Hermoni[12] and IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus.[13]
 Jordan Blashek |  Oded Hermoni |
Then, in April 2024, a group of US billionaires were secretly briefed[14] by IDF officer Naftali Bennett.
Next, on Zoom on April 26, Eric Adams, mayor of New York City, heard details relayed to him on this IDF briefing – relayed by billionaires Len Blavatnik and Bill Ackman.[15]
As shown in leaked logs of that meeting,[16] the billionaires discussed with Adams how Columbia’s president Minouche Shafik could be pressured to permit Adams to send police onto Columbia grounds – in order to block demonstration. Blavatnik posted an ActBlue link allowing donations to the Eric Adams 2025 Committee.[17] This Zoom planning meeting came two days after Benjamin Netanyahu declared[18] demonstrations at Columbia “must be stopped.”
The secret plan worked. The NYPD moved aggressively[19] at Columbia to break demonstrating crowds, and those responsible – IDF reps, billionaires, even Adams – could hide responsibility for this; in effect, billionaires fronted for IDF officers, Adams fronted for the billionaires, and president Shafik provided a front for Adams (because officially, it was Shafik who permitted the police to enter the campus), and as planned, first reports, favored this counter action.[20]
Although in a way far-fetched, all this really happened. Displaying details of how it happened, here’s a chronology:[21]
- Apr. 26, 2024 – Following Netanyahu’s demand that demonstrations be stopped, NYC mayor Adams heard from billionaires Blavatnik and Ackman that they would hire “private investigators” to help NYPD break crowds at Columbia. Adams accepted this offer.
- Apr. 27 – NYPD intel officers briefed Adams on results of surveillance work on the Columbia campus.
- Apr. 28 – Adams used the intel to tell journalists that “based on a series of observations,” he had plans to block further demonstration at Columbia.
- Apr. 29 – Adams appeared on multiple news shows, saying, “It was clear, after I was briefed…the extent of the outside agitators.”
- Apr. 30 – Adams got president Shafik’s permission to occupy Columbia. There, police broke up crowds of demonstrators.
And that is how it happened, how the plan was planned and executed. Why did it happen? I believe this is a further case in point for the she made me do it concept.
The next chapter treats another such case, involving a more aggressive counter measure against campus demonstrators in Los Angeles, which, relying on the invisible power of lucre, caused injuries with impunity.
That is, on April 30, 2024 – just while demonstrators were facing police at Columbia – demonstrators at UCLA faced aggressive private citizens whose action was organized by associates of Len Blavatnik and funded by Bill Ackman.
III. Male Wish to Bully With No Accountability
Even as the NYPD pushed apart demonstrators at Columbia, an anti-Palestine crowd gathered at UCLA, including men who were masked[22] and who were about to assault a pro-Palestine demonstration – while from trucked-in broadcast towers music blared from an Israel Defense Forces video. LAPD law enforcement would assist by not showing up until after the hours-long assault was complete.
This action was funded by Bill Ackman’s appeal for money to “Support Loud Video Displays of Oct. 7 Truths on Campus.”[23]
Among those gathered, one masked man swung a cudgel to beat demonstrators. This young man’s mother soon told a reporter, “Edan went down to bully Palestinian students in the tents.”[24]
Assailants also flung a pack of mice among demonstrators – intended to “cue a hysterical reaction”[25] (that is, there exists a match, in character, between the aggressive reaction frequently displayed by a man provoked by a woman’s “backtalk” and this assaultive reaction toward UCLA demonstrators).
Len Blavatnik, Ackman’s compatriot planner for the Columbia police action, likely had many admirers on the paid staff of StandWithUs, local organizer for the UCLA action.[26] Why? Because earlier, Blavatnik-sponsored researchers made a talking robot that, used by StandWithUs, was able at Brown University to harass pro-Palestine students during a public discussion.[27]
To sum up here, we have examined reactions against leftist dissent in Coeur d’Alene, New York City, and Los Angeles as parts of a syndrome of sexism and fear of accountability.
Early on, this essay hinted that America as a whole seems a case in point for this malady because holders of disfavored views feel the loss of a Constitutional right of protection from anonymous accusers impossible to face in court.
Indeed, as of fall 2024, Americans face a new type of accusation – of being “anti-American” – that cannot be confronted in court; only can be faced the accusation of some crime profiled as “anti-American.”[28] The actual source of the profiling, the Directive, will not be there to face.
IV. America 2026
This Security Directive serves anti-Palestine interests by targeting fundraising by some Muslim charities and vaguely threatens organizers of campus demonstrations.
This move was presaged by Bill Ackman publicly naming pro-Palestine demonstration “anti-American,” saying in January 2025,
“It’s not just an Anti-Zionist problem, an Anti-Semitic problem, it’s an anti-American problem.”
Then, Ackman practically equated democracy with capitalism’s economic control of production.[29]
However, some US voters seek social ownership of key production sectors. They have – over the years across America – elected hundreds of officials sponsored and funded by the organization “Democratic Socialists of America.” And, young women voters polled 84 percent for a DSA candidate recently – Zohran Mamdani in a New York City mayoral contest[30] – while nationwide since 2019 DSA campaigns have won in some 220 elections.[31]
I certainly hope this counts as progress toward twin goals – democracy serving the people by breaking a monopoly on economic power and wresting back a Constitutional right to hold authority accountable.
V. Conclusion
So, what has been said in this essay?
That lack of accountability is no accident; it’s not a matter of some individual authorities corrupted, unbalanced by power. It reflects America’s need, to date, for a societal imbalance of power – the firm need by the US economy (as currently formed) for a second class of its citizenry – of which class, the most numerous members are women citizens. This need has forced America’s democracy to go along, to be compatible, even to serve. But the record suggests strongly that US democracy can be liberated from this servitude; it seems to me that this freeing would parallel or be the same as a full liberation of US women citizens and that as a vehicle for this, a voter embrace of democratic socialism strongly suggests itself. With that, the she made me do it excuse, for abuse of authority, has a chance to disappear.
[1] The confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment gives one the right to confront face-to-face any witness who accuses them.
[2] Solnit, “The She Made Him Do It Theory of Everything,” MeditationsInAnEmergency.com,
www.meditationsinanemergency.com ›
[3] Also illustrating this view, rightists openly refer to dissenters as children – another group of second-class citizens who talk back to authority and “need discipline.” At a UCLA “counter-demonstration,” an assailant shouted to a pro-Palestine student encampment, “Stop being angry children!”Republicans long have called activist Democrats “like children”.. As soon as they don’t get their way, then they act like little spoiled children….” Chicago Tribune, May 16, 2019 “Democrats might behave this way (disrupt a televised Trump speech) simply because children do those things. Petulant children, in particular, play to audiences of other petulant children.” MSN, Western Journal March 4, 2025.
4 Local Republican legislators discussed Idaho’s attempt to deny Medicaid to women whose pregnancies end due to abortion. Coeur d’Alene Press, February 22, 2025
5 Bonner County, Idaho Daily Bee, February 22, 2025
7 Coeur d’Alene found a city ordinance violated.
8 Wikipedia
9 This was the US Department of Homeland Security’s Fusion Center for the Central District of California. Cf. Kootenai County Sheriff’s Web site. Also cf. lasd.org › wp-content › uploadsEXHIBIT A STATEMENT OF WORK INTELLIGENCE ANALYST SERVICES FOR …(JOINT REGIONAL INTELLIGENCE CENTER). There, Norris managed surveillance operations by CIA agents and FBI agents to spy primarily on dissent groups (not on suspected terror groups. Wikipedia For 386 fusion-center reports reviewed by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations I(2012), it was found that three-quarters had no connection to terrorism at all. During the George Floyd protests, fusion centers distributed documents to police filled with rumors and warnings that the protests would become violent.
[10] This secret planning was done because pro-Palestine sentiment was growing in America in late October 2023 – following publicized details of Israel’s counterattack in Gaza.
[11] An executive at Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Schmidt Futures.
[12] By then a Silicon Valley resident.
[13] Lee Fang, Jack Poulson; Lee Fang Web site, Dec. 7, 2023
[14] Washington Post, May 16, 2024
[15] Israel-Palestine News, May 17, 2024
[16] Citing leaked logs of this Zoom Chat, All Source Intelligence, December 7, 2023, Jack Poulson and Lee Fang.
[17] Ibid.
[18] New Y:ork Times, April 24, 2024
[19] Injuries to students were documented. New York Daily News, May 21, 2024. media weeks later reported this.
[20] Cf. NBC and ABC, May 1, 2024; “No injuries,” few injuries,” “’tactical strategies’ [sic] used by police”; media only weeks later did media report students were injured by police.
[21] Unless otherwise noted this account’s based on reporting – citing leaked Zoom-chat logs – by the Washington Post, on May 16, 2024.
[22] CNN, May 16, 2024.
[23] $150,000 was raised including $10,000 from Ackman. The video, posted on an official IDF channel, was “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre” (YouTube). Ynet News, October 19, 2023
[24] This was Edan On, an 18-year-old high school student from Beverly Hills, who has stated he will join the IDF after high school graduation. CNN, May 16, 2024.
[25] According to a derisive report from a right-wing Web site, Conservativefiringline.com, April 30, 2024.
[26] Said Dr. Mike Harris of StandWithUs “This event required dozens of person-hours over the course of less than a week — there are so many logistical details needed to make an event like this happen.”
[27] CampusWatch, International Business Times, Haaretz; March 14, 2016. This came while StandWithUs was teaching social-media skills to IDF supporters in the US, earning $257,000 a year from the IDF to run “interactive media war rooms” that trained and supervised young Americans to “strengthen Israeli hasbara on social-media platforms.” 972Magazine, January 13, 2015
[28] Issued September 25, 2025, was a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) that the president says calls ”NSPM 7.” Read this directive at WhiteHouse.gov, September 25, 2025.. It illegalizes – effectively – actions either anti-American, anti-Christian, or anti-capitalist, saying, in part, that because “anti-“ action…”animates…violent conduct,” all police in the US are directed to investigate persons or groups who take “anti-American” or “anti-Christian or “anti-capitalist” action – including the action of speech, directing police surveillance of Internet speech
[29] In an interview aired on January 19, 2025, titled By one broadcaster (David Vigler, a rabbi, who broadcast it over YouTube) “How October 7 Changed My Life.”
[30] In November 2025. NYCVotes.org
[31] Wikipedia