Academia, Criminal law, Free Speech, Society

“I Don’t Have A Problem With It”: Professor Declares Support For Violent Attacks On Journalists and Others Holding Opposing Views

For years, I have written about the violent, anti-free speech agenda of Antifa and its academic enablers. For that reason, a recent interview in the Seattle Times Pacific Lutheran University Professor of Nordic Studies Troy Storfjell caught my attention. While there are a rising number of faculty supporting the curtailment of free speech on campuses, most avoid openly participating in physical violence or supporting such violence. Not the case with Storjell who declaring that he is entirely comfortable with the use of violence to silence those who hold opposing views.

Storfjell belongs to a group that displays the Iron Front Symbol that has become a sign for violent “anti-fascism” protesters associated with Antifa. When a columnist raised past attacks on unarmed individuals and journalists like journalist Andy Ngo who was left with serious injuries. Storfjell’s response was chilling. He simply dismissed those with opposing views as “fascists” who deserve to be beaten down. When the columnist noted that Ngo suffered a brain hemorrhage in the attack, Storfjell declared “. . . I don’t have a problem with it. There are children dying of lack of medication in concentration camps in the U.S. If one fascist gets a milkshake thrown at him . . . And beaten up. I don’t have a problem with it.”

Academics have committed their lives to free thought and intellectual advancement. The support for violent attacks on those with opposing views is anathema to everything we hold dear as academicians.

I have previously discussed how Antifa and other college protesters are increasingly denouncing free speech and the foundations for liberal democracies. Some protesters reject classic liberalism and the belief in free speech as part of the oppression on campus.  The movement threatens both academic freedom and free speech — a threat that is growing due to the failure of administrators and faculty to remain true to core academic principles.  Dartmouth Professor Mark Bray, the author of a book entitled “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook” is one of the chief enablers of these protesters. Bray speaks positively of the effort to supplant traditional views of free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” He defines anti-fascists as “illiberal” who reject the notion that far right views deserve to “coexist” with opposing views.

Storfjell is one of those who believes that he can disregard free speech or even criminal laws by simply declaring someone, even a journalist, as supporting “fascism.” The problem is that Pacific Lutheran University likely has students who hold conservative or libertarian views that Storfjell would likely dismiss as “fascist.” He is supporting violent attacks on such people who refuse to be silent or yield to his own views.

71 thoughts on ““I Don’t Have A Problem With It”: Professor Declares Support For Violent Attacks On Journalists and Others Holding Opposing Views”

  3. Troy Storfjell is Martin Niemoller after a prefrontal lobotomy – but with his amygdala electrically wired to infatuate him with violence against those he dislikes.

  4. This will not end well for those on the left that advocate a violent response to the blessings of free speech that is our Constitutional heretage. These people are true believers who see the ends justifying the means. At the moment it is working; sort of. Those on the right are far more able to engage in barbarity but have, up to now, chosen not to because they understand the nature of combat far better than the soft, pampered denizens of the classrooms. If the left pushes past the tipping point the right will make them pay.

  5. Leftist seems to seriously believe that the utopia of 1984 will be achieved, I think they will regret the day they tried.

    1. @antiorwellian

      What do you mean? Being a leftist means never having to say you’re sorry. They just double down when this or that theory doesn’t work.

      It’s creationism for liberals.

      antonio

      1. antonio, “leftist” and “rightist” are vague concepts which obviously can include millions of people who just as obviously cannot be categorized by personality types or even moral turpitude.

        Who are you talking about so I can make use of your observation.

    1. Thanks, Jill. Everyone should watch it, including — and especially — Jonathan Turley.

  9. The problem with Professor (and I use the title loosely) Troy Storfjell is that he and his friends don’t answer the question, “Who decides what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.”

    1. The answer to “Who decides what is acceptable…” is inherent in their behaviour.

  10. I think history has shown us what happens when one group tries to force its values on another. Not good. I haven’t heard the word tolerance lately. That used to be a word used by left wing liberals.

    1. It was always a pose. The left has always been more hostile to a general franchise to transact in markets. The only place they favor it is in the traffick in vice goods.

    2. Solomon said “there is nothing new under the Sun”, and so it is with leftists.

      Margaret Sanger and her politically progressive coterie wanted to sterilize Blacks, Jews, immigrants of Mediterranean descent, basically anyone who wouldn’t look good in a group photo at Harvard after James Conant established antisemitic quotas there.

      Speaking of which, Asians are the new Jews at Harvard, but it’s restrictive quotas all the same. Kyle Kashuv, who can write better than most journalists, was turned down at Harvard, but his Parkland classmate David Hogg, whose English composition skills are so dismal he was turned down by every campus in the University of California system, now attends Harvard.

      The Supreme Court spent eight years schooling us on the value of a Harvard Law degree; Obamacare only passed their review through the back door – as an example of Congress’ power to levy taxes Obama promised us we didn’t have to worry about. Most other Obama initiatives which went to SCOTUS died there. So much for the “professor in Constitutional law”.

      Left-wing tolerance? FDR threatened to pack the Supreme Court with people who’d do his bidding. So have several Democratic senators. So much for respect for the law and the separation of powers. Their tolerance has always gone away when their desire for power over others is thwarted.

  11. I have no problem with it either, so long as the fascists continue to murder children, lock them in cages, snatch them from their mothers’ arms, run over protesters and threaten me with civil war. Reasonable responses are laughingly ineffective with unreasonable people. The Prof focuses on free speech only; I do not.

    1. You unmitigated jackass. If those of you on the left don’t smarten up, those on the right will decide to act, and it’ll be too late to stop the power of the beast you’ve enraged. You have NO idea, because of the disdain you hold towards those you think of as less than you, what they are capable of.
      Let’s start with your willingness to deny people Free Speech. If you think you can get away with that, if you think that attacking people you don’t agree with, as Antifa does, you’re going to get rudely awakened.

    2. Bring it, you f***ng keyboard warrior. It’s no threat; And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

    3. Are you serious? Hitler would love you and your Brown shirt response to Free Speech. The only reason you are able to espouse these ludicrous opinions is the conservatives in our country belief in Free speech no matter how stupid or ignorant the person believing that Violence against those that don’t agree with them is acceptable. And you wonder why we support the second amendment. We have to support it to protect our right against those that don’t believe in this country and want to take our rights away by force.

  12. https://buchanan.org/blog/50-years-ago-the-day-nixon-routed-the-establishment-137693

    What are the roots of our present disorder, of the hostilities and hatreds that so divide us? When did we become this us vs. them nation?

    Who started the fire?

    Many trace the roots of our uncivil social conflict to the 1960s and the Johnson years when LBJ, victorious in a 61% landslide in 1964, could not, by 1968, visit a college campus without triggering a violent protest.

    The morning after his narrow presidential victory in 1968, Richard Nixon said his goal would be to “bring us together.” And in early 1969, he seemed to be succeeding.

    His inaugural address extended a hand of friendship to old enemies. He withdrew 60,000 troops from Vietnam. He left the Great Society largely untouched and proposed a Family Assistance Plan for the poor and working class. He created a Western White House in San Clemente, California.

    In July, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.

    America approved. Yet the elites seethed. For no political figure of his time was so reviled and hated by the establishment as was Richard Nixon.

    By the fall of 1969, that establishment, which had led us into Vietnam and left 500,000 U.S. troops there as of January 1969, had turned against their own war, declared it “an unwinnable war” and “Nixon’s war,” and begun to cheer the huge anti-war protests scheduled for October and November.

    David Broder of The Washington Post was one who saw clearly what was happening: “It is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and movement that broke Lyndon Johnson’s presidency in 1968 are out to break Richard Nixon in 1969. The likelihood is great that they will succeed again.”

    In a cover story titled “Nixon in Trouble,” Newsweek echoed Broder:

    “From almost every quarter last week the nine-month-old Administration of Richard M. Nixon was under sustained attack and angry fire, and increasingly the target of the attacks was Mr. Nixon himself and his conduct of the Presidency.”

    On Oct. 15, some 250,000 descended on the capital for the largest demonstration in history. A stunned Time declared that, instead of resisting its demands, Nixon should prepare “the country for the trauma of distasteful reversal.”

    Time wanted Nixon to declare Vietnam a lost cause.

    But by now, Nixon, realizing his presidency was in danger of being broken like LBJ’s — but believing he was reading the nation better than the establishment — had decided to wheel and fight.

    On Nov. 3, 1969, Nixon delivered an Oval Office address that was carried live on every network. After reciting the case Ike, JFK and LBJ had all made for resisting a Communist takeover of South Vietnam, Nixon laid out his own policy, the rationale for it, and urged the “great silent majority” to stand by him for peace with honor.

    The network commentators almost universally disparaged Nixon’s address as repetitive and unresponsive to the crisis of his presidency.

    Washington’s elites, however, had misread the nation.

    Have something to say about this column?
    Visit Pat’s FaceBook page and post your comments….

    An instant poll found that 70% of the country supported Nixon’s declared policy. A coalition of 300 House members endorsed Nixon’s stand. Liberal Democrats in the Senate rejected Nixon’s policy, but Southern and conservative Democratic senators backed him.

    Ten days after the “silent majority” speech, Vice President Spiro Agnew, in Des Moines, launched an assault on the unholy matrimony of media power and liberal bias. Agnew questioned whether the networks near-monopoly over the primary source of information for the American people should be permanently ceded to so tiny and unrepresentative an elite.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y97l3n8pVP8

    VIDEO: Spiro Agnew: Television News Coverage Speech – Des Moines, Iowa – Nov 13, 1969
    Note: Audio version and full text of speech can be viewed here…]

    All three networks carried Agnew’s speech live, but were rocked on their heels by the reaction. Scores of thousand of telegrams and letters poured into network offices and the White House, with the vast majority agreeing with the vice president.

    The liberal establishment had sustained a historic defeat.

    By December, Nixon was the most admired man in America. His approval rating in the Gallup Poll was 68%. Only 19% disapproved of how he was conducting his presidency. Dr. Billy Graham was the second-most admired man, and Agnew third.

    Nor was this but a blip in the Nixon presidency. When, three years later, Democrats nominated the most impassioned and articulate of their anti-war senators, George McGovern, Nixon would crush him in a 49-state landslide.

    In Watergate, the establishment would get its pound of flesh for its rout by Nixon in November 1969 and its humiliation in November 1972. But that establishment would never recover what it lost — the respect and regard of the American people in the ’60s and early ’70s.

    JFK’s “best and brightest,” whose hour of power was “Camelot,” were broken on the wheel of Vietnam. After taking us into Southeast Asia, they had washed their hands of their own war and declared it immoral.

    So great was the loss of esteem for the establishment among the silent majority, America’s elite would soon cease to call themselves liberals and change their names to “progressives.”

    ————————–
    i dont agree with every little thing in this essay by pat buchanan, but it’s instructive

    turn out in phalanxes to vote in 2020 and the landslide can happen again

Comments are closed.