What Others Say: Left wing must stop violent tactics
The following editorial appeared recently in Newsday:
A new battle line is being drawn in the free speech debate. Some on the left are redefining hate speech, in particular, as a form of violence, creating a rationale for using violence to shut it down.The frightening consequences of this shift were seen recently in Berkeley, Calif., where thousands of people gathered to protest racism. They were mostly peaceful. The exception was a group of 100 or more so-called antifa, short for anti-fascists. They signaled their nefarious intentions by dressing in black, wearing masks and carrying shields and pepper spray. And they attacked a small group of right-wing supporters of President Donald Trump assembled in a city park.
We’ve seen violent black-clad protesters at events worldwide, but these agitators have become more active in the United States since Trump’s election. They turned a peaceful protest in Portland, Ore., into a scene of violent chaos, rampaged in Washington on the day Trump was inaugurated, and forced the cancellation of a planned speech by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in February by infiltrating about 1,500 peaceful protesters and breaking windows, setting fires and hurling rocks at police — on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, the birthplace of the modern free speech movement. It was a disgusting di
Such incidents preceded the deadly clash between the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Va., and the counterprotesters who decried their odious words, and allowed Trump to try to establish a false moral equivalence between the two.
A similarly troubling development is evolving on campuses. Many liberal students demand protection from speech with which they disagree, calling for “safe spaces” and chanting “shut it down.” Those with canceled appearances include conservative commentator Ann Coulter, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and political scientist Charles Murray, who has argued that genetic differences in intelligence exist between races. Some 150 students shouted down Murray’s speech at Vermont’s Middlebury College in March, and masked protesters who might not have been students pushed and shoved Murray and his left-leaning faculty interviewer, who was injured in the confrontation. Dozens of students were rightly disciplined for their roles in the fiasco.
Navigating the free-speech marketplace is not easy. Some ideas are revolting by any reasonable standard. But strength lies in understanding that good ideas will prevail in open debate, and that you cede the moral high ground when you use violence to stake your claim there. Liberals must condemn their philosophical allies who use violence to deny someone else’s free speech, even if those words are vile, just as conservatives must condemn violence employed by some on the extreme right.
White supremacist groups are planning rallies this fall. Opponents will counterprotest. College students are returning to campuses. Yiannopoulos and Coulter have been invited to speak later this month at Berkeley. It’s important we get this balance right.
Hate speech is deplorable. But the only thing that should be shut down are the groups that use violence to stop
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4 comments:
"They signaled their nefarious intentions by dressing in black, wearing masks and carrying shields and pepper spray."
Wow. Imagine how appalled RWD would have been if they'd been carrying Nazi flags and guns.
political scientist Charles Murray, who has argued that genetic differences in intelligence exist between races.
Hey RWD, think about this sentence you wrote. Why would a POLITICAL SCIENTIST have any standing to argue about supposed genetic differences between races?
Charles Murray's crap has long since been debunked six ways from Sunday. If universities would stop inviting him to speak as if he's some kind of authority then college kids wouldn't have to spend their time protesting his garbage.
Milo and Coulter are even worse. At least Murray pretends to be an academic, those two exist only to say inflammatory shit and then be "shocked, shocked" when they get rightly protested for being idiots. This isn't about "free speech" this is about shithead college republican wingnuts wanting to provoke liberals by inviting crazy speakers to campus.
"Charles Murray's crap has long since been debunked six ways from Sunday."
It has indeed. But that will never matter to RWD, or indeed many conservatives, since what he has said, and goes on saying, confirms their worldview, which is that white men have most of the power and most of the money because they are smarter and work harder.
Hence his latest stunning "research," which shows that poor white men are poor not because rich white men are destroying our economy, but because poor white men just won't work hard these days.
(Spoilers: it's because liberal woman and gay people have destroyed any chance that poor white man has of getting married and believing in Jesus.)
The memory of the Nazi regime and how it came to power will be a long-lived one over most of the earth. So these 'appeasers' who want to just let them do their thing with no consequences are embracing the Neville Chamberlain model that they used to disparage when it suited them. People who feel the need to hate need to be driven back into the dark cesspools that they came from and looking the other way just won't cut it.
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