The purpose of this article is to provide linkages to retributive political actions centred in the USA aimed at erasing a long standing commitment of the responsibility of institutions of higher education to correct and ameliorate historical social, racial and moral injustices and inequalities with a political ideology that denies their legitimacy through guilt by association. This ideology proceeds through a series of actions such as demonising academics on the left (e.g. Marx, Freire, Marcuse), half -- baked conspiracy theories, forms of symbolic and physical violence along with legislative suppression of dissent combined with censure and punishment. It must be recognised that institutions of higher learning are fragile places. Their form of respected disputation is often not valued or respected in larger domestic spheres such as in the USA and leaves them politically mute and highly vulnerable. However, to tamper with and intrude in academic discourse carries huge risks for any society in which knowledge about the nature of reality is essential to its development and progress. The current political climate in the USA is one in which authoritarian/outright fascist attacks on institutions of higher education and their curricula are becoming fashionable. It is a dangerous trend and a threat which must be taken with utmost seriousness and alacrity both in the USA and internationally.