We have been discussing the rollback of free speech on university and college campuses, particularly when it comes to conservatives or right-to-life advocates. As discussed recently, conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulous has been the target of some of the most egregious effort to silence certain speakers and prevent other students from hearing opposing views. The latest such protest was held at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). After protesters blocked fellow students and faculty from entering to hear Yiannopoulous, campus police found an alternative avenue for the audience. However, a bomb threat was later called in and the room cleared by police. Once again, there does not appear to be outrage at the effort of students to block access to such speeches for other students and the denial of free speech on campus. I have no problem with protests but preventing speakers from being heard runs against the core values of an academic community.
Protesters held feminist signs and hung a large sign reading “Bruins Against Hate.” Given the blocking of other students, it appears that these Bruins also hate free speech. Hundreds of students and faculty were forced to find a different way to the auditorium and it is not clear why they should be displaced rather than have UCLA security guarantee regular access to such events.
When the event finally began, two feminist protesters proceeded to shout down the event. They were then escorted out (which is still better than the performance at DePaul last week). The event then went on as planned but a bomb threat was received near the end of the event.
The concerted effort to silence opposing views at UCLA is chilling and disgraceful. It is not enough for these students to protest. They have shout down speakers and blocked access to the auditorium. Universities are places for opposing views to be heard and tested — not censored or silenced.
Stalin was part of the winning team. For that matter, so was Turkey (whose forced removal and cleansing of Armenians was an inspiration to others). And it’s not ‘The Left’ or ‘The Right’ who does their best to silence opposing opinions; it’s people. “I don’t what you have to say; it makes no difference anyway. Whatever it is, I’m against it.” The best way to overcome opposition to eliminate it, not compete with it.
I’ve been reading here for about a year.
Every single case of squashed speech is virtually nothing compared to anyone who:
1. Denies the common Western view of “holocaustianity.” In seventeen (IIRC) EU nations and Canada, persons are imprisoned at this minute for the felony crime of disagreeing with the common Western version of “holocaustianity.”
From Michael Scheuer’s “Non-Intervention” blog:
“…–There is only one Holocaust that matters!: In the United States, the Israel-First faction is led by disloyal Jewish-American citizens who have bribed, intimidated, and lied the United States into a so far endless war with Islam. One aspect of their ability to do this comes from the lock they have on the term “holocaust,” which, in their usage, refers only to Nazi Germany’s murder of 6 million European Jews. Let me say, that no one in his right mind would judge this historical fact as anything but an abomination. But because Israel-Firsters use “their” holocaust” and “their” Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, to endlessly fuel feelings of guilt among contemporary Americans – even though it was the U.S., Britain and its Dominions, and the Red Army that utterly destroyed Hitler’s regime and ended the Holocaust – and to then exploit that sense of guilt to pry ever-increasing amounts of U.S. taxpayer-funded economic and military aid for Israel, and, worse, to keep the United States locked in a largely unnecessary and clearly losing struggle with the Islamists.
Now, a decent and truthful education would inform students about holocausts – or genocides – and provide them the context with which to understand that while Germany’s attempt to annihilate European Jewry was murderous and monstrous, the Fuehrer was a piker in the overall story of 20th and 21st century holocausts. The military forces of Imperial Japan, as noted above, may have killed as many as 10 million Asian civilians; Lenin, Stalin, and their Soviet successors killed up to 60 million people (3); Mao and his successors killed at least 65 million people and, as they are still in power, that number is growing (4); and, since 1973, the American Medical Association and American women have murdered nearly 59 million unborn Americans (5), and may yet skip past Uncle Joe and even Chairman Mao as the leading holocaust/genocide producer of all time. Even Israel is in the big-time, mass-murder game, with media reporting that between 1.5 and 2 million unborn Israelis – a total reminiscent of Pol Pot or Rwanda’s machete wielders — have been murdered by Israeli doctors and Israeli women since the nation’s founding (6), and this in a country that appears doomed in terms of demography. (NB: Ironically, both Americans and Israelis followed the savvy Hitlerian model of passing laws and gaining judicial decisions that define as non-human, entities that irrefutably are human beings.) One doubts the Department of Education either issues curricula to teach American students about the wide variety of holocausts/genocides that have occurred and how common they have become, or gives them a scorecard listing how many human beings each of these depravities murdered. (NB: The bipartisan U.S. governing class, after all, runs the Department of Education and profits politically and financially from maintaining the idea that there has been only one real Holocaust. It will brook no change that introduces the truth. Have you ever, for example, heard any U.S. politician – or European or Israeli politician for that matter — call for Nuremberg-like trials for the legatees of Stalin and Mao?)…”
Joseph Jones – I do agree with you on the co-oping of the term ‘holocaust’ by the Jews. Certainly the Armenian genocide was a holocaust. There are hundreds through the history of humankind. However, they have put the capital H on holocaust. 😉
KC,
It wasn’t the atheist speaker who called in the bomb threat. He was the only speaker who ever got a bomb threat.
The most important point is to understand why people, left and right, have a strong tendency to shut others up. It’s not a quality limited to right wing or left wing. It’s a quality both groups exercise. We need to understand why this happens and how to stop it.
Who needs special protection in order to speak on a college campus – Ann Coulter or a radical leftist?
I challenge anyone here to name a situation where the YR’s or Trump supporters prevented a liberal from speaking on a university campus.
Jill – the bomb threat was probably called in by an agnostic. We do not like anyone.
The Left and its policies are fundamentally weak and unworkable. They will not stand up to reasoned debate.
As a result, the opposition must be shut up and shut down.
This is a Leftist constant.
Update – the killer, Sarkar, had already graduated from UCLA in 2013. He claimed that the professor had stolen code from him (which he could have just easily proven in a lawsuit.)
He did leave a note asking people to check on his kitty in his home in MN, where he had already killed a woman whose connection to him is still unknown.