In 1936 Oswald Mosley and his fascists attempted to force their way into parts of the East End of London with the support of the Metropolitan Police. Mosley was anti-Semitic, anti-Indian and wanted to bring in a government resembling that of Italy, with him in the Mussolini role.
The inhabitants fought back with anything to hand, including cobblestones. They were supported by contingents from other parts of London - including coincidentally, my father and my art teacher.
Mosley tried again and again but was eventually defeated and England did not go fascist, unlike Spain, Italy and Germany.
This is not about free speech, this is about opposing actual evil.
“Yiannopoulos is doing a speaking tour on college campuses to promote his male “Privilege” scholarship fund.”
And right on the heels of his previous “White male Privilege Grants” raising 100K, which was discovered last august to have promptly vanished into apparently unknown bank accounts at the same bank Milo banks with, connected to companies registered to the same address Milo registers his business ventures to. Including, funnily enough, Sentinel Media, one of Milo’s previous companies, most famous for the whole thing where he got sued for failing to pay his employees.
And then, weirdly, Milo started making some larger-than-usual expenditures. But just by coincidence, I’m sure.
Even if Milo wasn’t the utter piece of shit that he is, I’d object to having him speak on campus, on account of the fact that he’s a con-artist and a fucking thief.
Really? So if a bunch of conservatives rioted and lit a car on fire because e.g. Naomi Klein was speaking somewhere, that would be hunky dory because it’s not the government doing it?
Of course not, you’d be screaming about fascism. But it’s exactly morally equivalent, and the hypocrisy is completely disgusting.
(Response: “You’re making assumptions!”)
Right, so the difference between that situation and the violent protests against Yiannopoulos’ speech is pretty obvious to me. You don’t get to initiate violence and then claim the moral high ground. Since Mosely and his henchman were the ones attacking, your father and art teacher were completely justified defending themselves.
No one was attacking the students at UC Berkeley.
This sort of behavior is the opposite of liberal. This isn’t bravery like in the civil rights protests – those people went up against hostile police officers and stayed non-violent. This is stupid kids starting the violence themselves – the police aren’t even trying to stop them let alone siccing dogs or spraying firehoses at them!
Using violence, property destruction, and similar intimidation tactics to prevent your political opponents from having their say is what the bad guys do. Being on “the left” doesn’t ensure that you’re the good guys – Pol Pot and Stalin were also on “the left”. What ensures that you’re one of the good guys is that you do a better job of living up to your (peaceful, non-violent, liberal) ideals better than the other guys. That might put you at a bit of a perceived disadvantage sometimes – that is part of being one of the good guys!
If you guys want a real answer to Yiannopolous, the only right response is to be funnier than he is. You know what a good protest would be? A flashmob dance party, a guerilla punk rock show, an art-in – something participatory that is more interesting and more inclusive than Yiannopolous’ bullshit. Most of all something peaceful. As soon as you light a car on fire, you lose the moral high ground.
Another important point. By trying to justify property destruction and violence on the part of the left, you are doing the right a favor. The hypocrisy is obvious to anyone is isn’t already hopelessly partisan.
apathy is the only correct response- no protest, no angry letters, just silence. A few students will choose to go but if there’s no protest it gives him no press. These protests are exactly what this professional troll needs to continue to make big money, and draw eyes to him.
There are plenty of fine, solid, decent protesters that go on without a hitch in Berkeley and Oakland. And then there are these masked pole wielding thugs who latch on to those protests who start breaking stuff and burning things and beating people. Guess who gets the headlines?
Put bluntly, what the Right always wants at the end of the day is a fight. If they don’t get one, they’ll take over and start making war on people. The only language they understand is violence. History shows that the only way to stop them is to be better at the violence. It’s depressing, profoundly depressing, but we have all the examples of history to show us that at some point, if the Right isn’t stopped by peaceful means, it will involve mass mobilisation. Almost all right wing organisations have a profoundly destructive bent, and Bannon’s puppet trying to dismantle Government agencies is just an example, as is Daesh destroying Palmyra, or the German scorched earth policy as they retreated from Russia killing and destroying everything, even though they knew that it would soon be revisited on them.
I left the Quakers because, in the end, I decided that pacifism is not enough when confronted with the old evil. I don’t know where this is all going, I don’t like it, but I don’t have it in me to condemn the student protesters, because history may be on their side. They may have overreacted - but at least they are reacting.
[edit - I am not “justifying” violence - since the State in theory has a monopoly of both justice and violence I find that a meaningless concept. I am reporting my own rather depressed feelings about the nature of human beings.
The European solution to the Right has been for the State to use its monopoly of violence against them. That has its own possibilities of abuse, but at least it is subject to democratic process. But what do you do when the State allows or even encourages violence and fails to take action against it, and rigs elections?]
