Conservative Activist Chris Rufo Urges Right to Fuel Pro-Palestine Protests on College Campuses

Student protesters march around their encampment on the Columbia University campus. AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah.

Conservative activist and author Christopher Rufo declared in his Substack newsletter that pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses are a “disaster” for the left that conservatives should “exploit.”

Rufo argued in a Monday post that college protests and encampments are a losing political issue for the left, and that conservatives should create environments for them to “flourish.”

Rufo wrote :

This encampment escalation divides the Left, alienates influential supporters, and creates a sense of chaos that will move people against it. The correct response from the Right is to create the conditions for these protests to flourish in blue cities and campuses, while preventing them in red cities and campuses. If these protests become more volatile and go all the way to the Democratic Convention in Chicago, we could see a 1968 scenario. That didn’t work out too well for the Democrats.

Rufo, who often focuses on issues related to college campuses and education, said conservatives should make “the left own its pro-Hamas faction.”

He added that conservatives could risk an “overreaction,” but they should respond to any violence.

“Our leaders must appear calm, cool, rational, and successful in preventing, rather than responding to, violence,” Rufo wrote.

Police have disrupted encampments in New York, Georgia, and elsewhere. At Columbia University in New York, more than 100 students were arrested, including the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Activists at the protests are demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and that their schools completely cut ties with Israel.

“If the Right can successfully keep order in its regions, as Florida governor Ron DeSantis has done so far, and keep the focus on the disorder overrunning left-wing jurisdictions – culminating, perhaps, in coalitional discord at the Democratic convention – it will move public opinion in our direction,” Rufo wrote.