It was the year 1518, when Mrs. Frau Troffea went out through the streets of her city dancing frantically. The neighbors were surprised, no wonder, poor Frau couldn't seem to stop dancing, which drew attention in the context of the poor routine of the place. Frau Troffea continued like this for several days without any interruption, even when the pain was reflected on her face. Her tortured body was making a superhuman effort and no one understood how she could hurt herself so much. But it happened that when a few hours had passed since the beginning of her endless dance, a neighbor joined in her dance. The contagion grew and before the end of the week more than thirty people were dancing day and night with identical painful and deadly consequences. The dancing horde suffered its casualties, of course, since the dancers fell flat when their hearts or lungs stopped responding.
According to the chronicles, more than 400 people were "infected" by the famous dance plague, a real event that affected Strasbourg and that became a model case in the history of mass hysterias, was the famous "dance plague," as described by John Waller in his book "The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness" that describes the phenomenon in detail. Centuries later, another mass hysteria seems to have gripped students at US universities. The exponential growth of anti-Semitism that was evident after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, reached a point of incredible effervescence after Iran's attack on Israel days ago. It seems that with each attack on Israel they become enraged, excited, assertive and emboldened. Something much more serious than a student demonstration is happening in the hearts of the new North American generations, the new elites, those who are going to govern the country in less than a decade.
The various camps, barricades, speeches and other demonstrations that are taking place unapologetically shed the pacifist veneer they wore until a couple of months ago. They also got rid of the “anti-colonial” shortcut key to the traditional left’s narrative regarding its rejection of Israel. Not even in the most Israel-phobic Middle Eastern countries has plain and simple hatred towards Jews been shown so blatant. They no longer ask for a ceasefire, nor do they ask for two States, nor do they talk about decolonization. They are loudly calling for the extermination of the Jews. The camps that have taken over the universities are comparable, today, to the wildest statements that the leaders of Islamist terrorism make internally, those that are secretly leaked, because they themselves understand the negative of their exposure.
Much has been said about the fact that these student demonstrations have always existed in times of war, and it is real. Students have always set up barricades, painted graffiti, clashed with authorities, occupied buildings, and broken laws and civic agreements to make a political point. But what we are seeing in the camps is not an "anti-war" demonstration, it is a demonstration in favor of Hamas winning the war. The cries we are hearing call for the elimination of Israel and "ethnic cleansing." They have shouted "Burn Tel Aviv to the ground," and have praised Hamas, called for "Go back to 1948" and happily upheld their slogan "From the river to the sea."
It was expected that a generation educated in hatred of itself, its culture and complete ignorance of the consequences of its actions would quickly move on to physical violence without measuring tone or consequences. They have not stopped for a minute to consider whether it was wrong to stick a flag in the eye of a fellow Jew or whether it was wrong to prevent a Jewish professor from entering the university. And no, they are not just a bunch of agitators. They are a generation of young people who attend the most expensive universities in the world, whose families are the elevated in North American society and are the ones who are tearing down the posters of the children kidnapped half a year ago. They are a social group that conscientiously applauds the rape, kidnapping and murder of Jews. That this kind of hatred exists at the heart of the highest seats of knowledge and power in the United States is no longer disturbing, it is terrifying. We need to be honest and realistic about what is happening because this hate was not manufactured just six months ago and it is not going away in the next few years. This is excitement with a pogrom. It is a mass hysteria based on anger and death.
There is much talk about the crisis of Western civilization and there are many reasons. But few things illustrate this decadence more than the fact that civilization itself is attacked from within the elites. This suicidal narcissism is not typical of the old and well-known "student demonstrations," this is self-hatred, it is hatred as a linking element. So powerful is this hatred that they are singing praises to those who would hang them from a crane if they had the chance. They are applauding those who would take away their right to applaud. Absolutely everyone, men and women and very particularly non-binary fluids, would be murdered for the exclusive purpose of punishing them for being unfaithful. They ask for the right of those whose objective is to silence them, to kill them, to devastate them in every possible way... How much do you have to hate what surrounds you to want its destruction so much, at the cost of burning your own flesh?
Student demonstrations usually reflect the sign of the times, that is also real. The students in the anti-Israel camps are saying something about this very dark time. Every time the State of Israel is attacked, these demonstrations intensify, each time one more step in radicalization that never recedes. A spiral of collective hysteria of radicalized and despotic intensity is growing before our eyes. It's not like French May, it's like Kristallnacht.
The explanations about how mass hysterias are unleashed are very diverse, there is talk of submission to sects, the ingestion of hallucinogens and many other reasons, but the common variable is contagion. The truth is that since the day Hamas massacred 1,200 people in Israel, antisemitic hatred has not stopped spreading. The permanent torture of the hostages who remain in the hands of the terrorists and the hellish and bloody death of those murdered that day has caused satisfaction in a very important, influential, powerful and privileged part of American society. A massive psychosis has been unleashed, without masks, which is not affected by historical explanation, political debate, military statistics or electoral calculations. None of these variables allow us to calibrate the phenomenon.
The narcissistic tantrum of rage against Western civilization is no longer a sign, a tattoo or a song: it is a group of people who want to pierce their companions with a flag stick. This minefield of open hatred towards one's own does not even resemble the cruelty of the conquerors of ancient times, because these young people do not detest the enemy, they detest themselves. Nor is it the old student activism against war, the consumer society or whaling, it is the consequence of the hatred for civilization itself that has been incessantly instilled in universities. It is the hatred of one's own history, one's own skin color, one's own art, one's own music, one's own language. Hatred of Israel is only a temporary and extreme part of that deep feeling. It is in the academy where hatred has been encouraged and it is no coincidence that the academic authorities have cultivated it to the point where they can no longer handle it. They are decades of teaching and learning contempt for the West, they are geological layers of students who are later teachers, parents, politicians, managers, artists, all have sucked from the same narrative that all the evils in the world are due to the West. It makes sense that they find the massacre against what mass hysteria considers "evil" attractive.
It is urgent to understand that they are going to justify any savagery, that they are going to praise every perversion, that they are going to frantically dance this dance of death even at the risk of ending up buried if they bury the West with it, This thirst is not quenched only by the pain of the Jews. If the anti-Israel camps do not put Americans on alert, mass hysteria may engulf the country. When the hysterical, uncontrollable and destruction-hungry hordes break all limits, a presidential election will not be enough to stop them.
