HANDS OFF DR. BRAY! MAGA Turning Point Smear Brings Terror Threats to RU Professor
The Charies KIrk initiated,Trump inspired and pro-Israel billionaire funded fascist group Turning Point apparently has a Rutgers chapter. They believe having a professor on campus who wrote books against fascism makes them uncomfortable. So much so the fascist group has started a smear campaign against the Rutgers professor. They have initiated a petition – and of course Fox News came running at once to take this very low level 5 minute exercise of starting a petition and turned it into a whole news episode.
Fascist Turning Point’s Rutgers “chapter” is using the same narrative that pro-Israel advocates use against free speech to try to stop us from speaking out against the Israel brand of genocidal fascism. The fraudulent IHRA narrative of conflating Judaism with Israel’s genocide and thus not worthy of criticism now has bipartisan support in NJ legislature. That IHRA narrative also has fascist MAGA roots in that the idea of codifying IHRA was first done as an illegal executive order in 2019 by none other than Trump himself and that order provides the basis for NJ’s fascist law proposal. Funny how pro-Israel and pro-fascists think so much alike!
So if a professor wrote books against fascism and how to oppose fascism – who do you think would feel uncomfortable? Maybe fascists?
The New Brunswick Patch is now reporting that the professor in question Dr. Mark Bray, in the Rutgers History Department has been doxxed on Reddit by one of his students and has now received multiple death threats. He is quoted in the Patch that he is leaving the country out of concern for his safety.
He has published four books, including the national best-seller Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House 2017), which is the first transnational history of postwar anti-fascism and has been translated into seven languages. His most recent book, The Anarchist Inquisition: Assassins, Activists, and Martyrs in Spain and France (Cornell 2022), explores groundbreaking transnational human rights campaigns that emerged in response to a brutal wave of repression unleashed by the Spanish state to quash anarchist activities at the turn of the twentieth century and is based on research in Spanish, Catalan, French, and Italian from twenty-four archives in Spain, France, England, the United States and the Netherlands. Bray is the co-editor and translator of Anarchist Education and the Modern School: A Francisco Ferrer Reader (PM Press 2018), the first definitive English-language collection of the works of early twentieth century Catalan pedagogue and revolutionary Francisco Ferrer. He is also the author of Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street (Zero 2013), a historically grounded, socio-political analysis of the Occupy Wall Street movement based on 192 interviews with organizers in NYC that has been translated into Spanish and French. From Dr. Bray’s Faculty page at Rutgers:
This is not the first time that violence and threats have resulted from supporters of MAGA and Charles Kirk in NJ.
Recently a school district went into lock down due to threats from MAGA and pro-Kirk of violence over alleged comments by a teacher in that district that angered some fanatic KIrk supporters.
Two seventeen year old girls in Cranford NJ were recently mowed down by a stalker who had accused one of them in a broadcast livestream 6 days prior of having said something bad about Kirk. The alleged perpetrator is facing double homicide charges.
The petition that the fascist Turning Point chapter is circulating is claiming that the presence of this teacher at Rutgers is somehow encouraging violence but their MAGA team already has two notches – two 17 year old girls – on their kill stick – and they have forced at least one public school lock down. Now their smearing and doxxing of the professor is resulting in death threats. Ironic that Kirk is touted as the supporter of free speech but his followers at Rutgers – the frauds that they are – are traipsing all over the academic freedom that Rutgers prides itself in – because – my God – a professor disagrees with their fascist views.
Fascists should feel uncomfortable. Fascists are making US uncomfortable now. My opinion is not obligated to comfort anyone and the truth along with time are the ultimate tyrannies. We do not need these fascist groups – be it on pro-Israel grounds or on pro-fascist grounds trying to intimidate and bully professors or our learning institutions.
At this point – with the death threats being generated by the hate spewing Rutgers chapter of Turning Point – if the fascist group has a charter – maybe it should be revoked. Leading a campaign of death threats and doxxing against professors – it is time for the university to start taking a closer look at the type of student Rutgers is attracting and possibly figuring out a way for its staff to be protected from violence of the students it is recruiting.
The Rutgers community including students, faculty and staff needs to organize and prepare itself to defend from more attacks from the presence of fascist groups on the campus. Ominous days are ahead for all of us everywhere!
