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.
“I Don’t Have A Problem With It”: Professor Declares Support For Violent Attacks On Journalists and Others Holding Opposing Views
The idiocy of Pacific Lutheran University Professor of Nordic Studies Troy Storfjell defective ideology is astounding. It amounts to nothing more than lowbrow cretinism.
Careful what you wish for Professor – turnabout is fair play.
Dr. T. What I can’t figure out is how you can still support a Democrat party that abets and supports violence and violent groups like ALWAYS-FA and it’s members like this professor. Your support of Democrats and especially the Democrat politicians in so many cities who have given shelter and aided and abetted these violent fascist ALWAYS-FA members like this professor is concerning. Democrats that support these people are just as violent as the violent ALWAYS-Fa members.
PLU is located in the Parkland, WA vicinity, a high-crime area. Last May there was a drive-by shootings near the campus. Now to add further stress to the student population, they have a professor there who advocates violence against others.
The professor’s bio page reads that he is presently on sabbatical. He seems to be the type of person that management hopes will simply “go away” and the problem will solve itself quietly.
JT, Invite him to write about his views on this blog. Have a real back and forth with him. I want to know why Storjell believes this? Why does he want anyone to be hurt? Ask him questions directly and ask him to write about his answers, maybe on this blog where he can get comments about his thinking.
Trump want to kill Assange and he is making those arrangements right now in the UK. If Trump is a fascist and he exactly agrees with Trump, then doesn’t that make him a fascist as well?
I sent him an e-mail. I doubt he’ll answer but if he does I’ll put them both here after getting permission.
If this were just a problem with “liberals”, it could be fixed rather easily. Unfortunately, it is a society wide problem which expresses itself everywhere. Max Blumenthal, a non-violent left wing journalist, was arrested by DC police with no access to a phone call for two days. Assange, who is anti war, is being tortured by right wing Trump and right wing Boris Johnson in the UK. That’s a complete acceptance and causation of violence by right wing forces. We all need to FULL stop, now. We only serve the powerful evil by being evil ourselves.
Are we going to do something about the Leftist takeover of the education system, from pre-K to graduate school, or not?
No institution should receive public funding that engages in political speech of any particular party. They either have to abstain from politics, or grant equal time to both.
All public schools should be defunded who allow teachers to bring their personal politics into the classroom or who encourage students to strike. I don’t care if a teacher is a Communist, if all they are excellent math teachers who remain silent on their own personal convictions. No teacher shall ever grade down a student based on that student’s politics.
The public teachers union should be disbanded. It has strong armed unfunded pensions, and made it financially impossible to fire a teacher for cause. The union prevents a meritocracy for teacher compensation. There is little a school can do to remove a bad teacher, or a highly politicized one.
I am tired of my hard earned taxpayer money going to fund Democrat recruitment. I used to love NPR, but now I can’t stand it. It’s about as far Left as possible. PBS has become politicized, as well. So have public schools and universities.
A lot of us have had enough. It’s like forced union withdrawals for political donations that the members don’t believe in.
Is complain about it all we’re capable of doing?
yeah Karen actually the way they have higher education locked down is probably even more durable than the constitutional regime itself.
universities are critical chokepoints and the “conservatives” both here and in Europe basically never recovered from their laziness in the middle 20th century or earlier, when they let bad elements take it all over
Of course the professor doesn’t have a problem against people with whom he disagrees, politically. That’s one the hallmarks of a Leftist dictatorship.
He’s a brown shirt.
“Thank God for the Deep State…a higher call”
John McLaughlin, former CIA Acting Director
…and if that doesn’t make your man parts shrink upwards in fear, or your anger to boil over, you need to rethink what he meant by it.
this is incredible clip
CIA HONCHOS LAUGH AND JOKE AS THEY CONFIRM DEEP STATE SABOTAGE OF LAWFUL POTUS
post this everywhere and often, it’s a sickening verification of the socalled “conspiracy theories” we hear mocked all the time
this is so despicable. we should have a drumhead court and justice by squad at down for these “Deep State” rogues.
where’s hill and anon1 to take back their mockery of this deep state thing and admit it now that the CIA rogues have it all out in the open? waiting for apologies for calling me paranoid!
McLaughlin is mocking you. You want me to join in?
Thank God for the Deep State. These are people doing their duty or responding to a higher call…not in an chain of command that makes or institutes policy.
Anyone that believes the IC doesn’t produce assessments with an intent to make or influence policy is in complete denial of facts and history.
When an established order starts to break down, people suddenly start to notice that certain “dangerous ideas” are what is causing it. But there is no philosophical foundation for the call to violence. Every dominant order condemns it. Without exception. Today, there is a growing and furious sense that the “norms” that are codified in the Constitution, including non-violence, are failing us. Those who want to defend the dominant order today are in a panic because they think that these “ideas” – whether libertarianism or AntiFa or the howling Progressivism of the Left – are the enemy to be defeated. They use the Constitution as the rallying banner to uphold the rule of law.
But it won’t work. Even liberals like Walter Lippmann long ago realized that our government of laws depends upon how strongly the People support the established order. Today, huge multitudes of Americans, especially the young, feel no emotional commitment to preserving the Constitution. The established order, as justified by the Constitution, is like an invading army that has taken over the government. So why should they heed the rallying cry?
As before, violence may be the chosen way that the majority of people will accept. The multitudes only listen to the elites who make “laws” that serve to justify the dominant order AFTER a violent struggle determines who will dominate them. That’s how the Civil War did the job. They victors made this “Second Constitution” that suddenly became the truly virtuous “rule of law” that justified their dominance.
Believe me, if this trend continues the way it’s going, we’re headed for the next one. And as usual, the majority of citizens will have only two roles to play: as casualties of the conflict, or as distant onlookers.
The government started us down this path with “hate crimes” laws. Instead of, or in addition to, punishing someone’s actual actions, they also punish his thoughts and speech.
Ditto. This can not be over stated .
That professor doesn’t have a problem with violence against fascists he says? Oh, Ok. Guess what. Now, suddenly,. I feel like I don’t have a problem with violence against antifascists either. Roll that around in your head a while, fools.
And I still can’t figure out why think they a gay Vietnamese photographer is a fascist just because he socialized a little with some socalled fascists anyways. If I go have a beer with an outlaw motorcycle club member like the Hells’ Angels, am I a hells angel now? Because I dont even have a motorcycle, and I haven’t ridden on in 30 years! The notion that Ngo is a “Fascist” is totally preposterous and false.
Lawyers get this a lot of course. You represent a criminal, suddenly they call you a “criminal lawyer” not a “criminal defense lawyer.” So much for all that “tolerance” BS!!!
Academics have committed their lives to free thought and intellectual advancement.
Actually, they have committed their lives to being paid an agreeable salary (w/ excellent benefits) in order to have a job which is not subject to much day-to-day supervision and allows them to exercise their intellect. They’re not the least bit interested in ‘free thought’ unless they themselves are dissidents. Graduate school, faculty hiring, and tenure review weed out almost all dissidents.
well, seems like he’s an associate professor, so probably doesn’t make that much.
and on sabbatical. maybe out herding deer with the Sami?
i read some of his garbage. don’t bother, it’s garbage. He doesn’t like Knut Hamsun of course. May have built his whole career on insulting the Nordic peoples from which he got his genes.
Thanks for pointing out an absurd error in Turley’s remarks. He says things with so much style and authority that some of his BS slips by me.
The fact that Turley is a teacher makes his remark you pointed out very self serving. He likes to think of himself and his coworker/teachers as being of a “higher nobility” than us little people.
I was forced to spend time with four persons of the “educational class,” one a School Superintendent (big district), and three others were teachers. Two of them almost incessantly brow beat me into getting a higher degree. Imagine being forced to spend time with two used car salespersons constantly prodding you to buy a car! At least, if you bought a car, you’d have a car!
ha, princess, funny but true
Academics have committed their lives to free thought and intellectual advancement.
Professor, you make that statement as if the position defines the man or woman. Storfjell proves, it clearly does not. Academics, politicians, lawyers, bankers, carpenters, clergy, homemakers, etc. have no immunity to their nature. The most accurate statement you could make is that you have committed…and then you’d better be able to prove that true. We need to stop this foolish notion that credentials (or lack of them) define the character of people. It’s an intellectually lazy way of thinking that is destroying this country.
The Noble Cause Exemption.
If, I witness a woman being raped and kill the rapist, it is not murder.
We (society) are allowing more and more Noble Cause Exemptions to non-physically harmful speech.
The proper response to speech you disagree with is speech, not physical action.
If, I witness a woman being raped and kill the rapist, it is not murder.
**********************
True it doesn’t meet the legal definition of murder and because it’s modified alter ego self-defense. Not the “Noble Cause Exemption” whatever that is?
“And beaten up. I don’t have a problem with it.”
********************
That’s why the lion roars, the wolf bears its teeth and I notify about my conceal carry. Bring it on, Boy Toy Troy. You never know who you’re really dealing with, do you?
Over decades, a couple times I rolled on the mats with a couple of tough professors who can fight.
But I suspect Troy Boy Storkfell isn’t in that rare company.
He’s probably participated in a few Viking re-enactments, which he thinks makes him the real deal.
Violence can be a two edged sword – just ask Robespierre.
Fun and games as long as the opposition doesn’t decide to break a few rules (and heads).
These are the people who are brainwashing our youth. The more people think like this professor, the closer we get to civil war.
Actually no. If you’re an academic you know that students at state universities are as lost and confused as their parents, and look like them too. They are hungry for leaders with intellectual consistency, documented history of shared thought (traditions) and sound minds.
I was invited to be a guest lecturer for an upper level science course in Immunology for aspiring grad and professional students this past week on HIV. I deferred to the professor mostly but found myself speaking more than I had planned. He spoke on dated scientific models and I spoke on clinical reality. One of the students in the course is someone whom I advise and she ran into me later in the day. She reported that the students are fed up with the instructor who feeds them condescension and lots of gobbledegook. He is a visiting professor. The students apparently were thrilled I gave it to them a dose of reality, morals, do’s and dont’s, the need for assessing people to determine whether it is wise to proceed with them in intimate encounters, and actions having consequences. HIV is on the rise in the young and I was admonishing them not to be a new data point.
So be of good cheer. Some faculty at universities might enjoy support from their admins but by and large students smell the fakes. Add to that they too see the mess in our culture which makes converts of many of them: they are starving for real food
We need people like you to feed them in the flesh, mano a mano, by example.
That’s the way culture building works: one person at a time
building culture one person at a time is pretty inefficient compared to the tools of culture “building” (actually destruction) that the mass media and silicon valley have piped into every home and cell phone day after day- to say nothing of the misnamed “higher education”
probably civil war is one of the better outcomes that could reasonably be hoped for because otherwise the robotic regimes are going to grind us all into dust. if not sooner than later.
jacobin leveller robot agents owned and paid for by the billionaires, a nightmare for ordered and just society
I wonder what the good (professor) Storfjell would think if someone arrived at his offices and gave him a proper beatdown for his thinking? Since he approves of this vis a vis people he deems to be fascists, he’d be a hypocrite to object to being on the receiving end, wouldn’t he?
I honestly hope this happens to the man – but if I’m any judge of character, this idiotic twit would never expose himself to that kind of judgement. A shame – experience is a great teacher and this is a man who deserves a cement milkshake, perhaps a brain injury and a couple of broken bones, perhaps a concussion from a bike lock… all experiences that conservatives have suffered as a result of people who ‘think’ as this fool does.
I have firearms training and a concealed carry permit. I dare some antifa jackass to attack me or mine for simply wearing the wrong hat or expressing the wrong opinion. It will not end well for them.
antonio
antonio:
Always better to be judged by 12 than carried by 8. Funny how simply stating you’re a man and not susceptible to any offense of any fool that happens by truly upsets the pajama boy crowd. Behind every male interaction is the implicit threat of physical violence. It’s that knowledge of the consequences flowing therefrom that keeps the situation in check. It’s also the reason we have social lubricants like manners to avoid that “ultimate decider.” You remove that social constraint as the Left so often does and the State of Nature is here, baby. It’s an inconvenient truth that all freedom derives from the barrel of a gun. Boy Toy Troy needs to understand that basic concept of psychology, politics and common sense.
@mespo727272
I have no criminal record whatsoever and a professional license in several jurisdictions. Not a troublemaker, nor am I looking for it. And I realize that can be easily found and attempt to avoid such situations.
But I am telling you straight up, if some jackass wearing a black mask and hoodie attacks me (or a relative of mine) it will not end well for them.
Leftists really believe their own propaganda, don’t they? And since they are fighting for “justice” and a “better world” any violence they commit is really “self-defense”.
Bring it on.
antonio
Exactly, Antonio.
They typically prey upon the elderly and those of slight stature. Guys in skinny jeans don’t often try to get physical with alpha males.
Their preying upon the weak was one of the drivers behind vigilante groups like the Proud Boys. When the police are told to stand down, and Antifa takes over streets, redirects traffic, and drags elderly men from their cars, then people come together who don’t want to take it any more. Sometimes people can go too far in the name of containing the violence of ironically fascist Antifa.
Leftists oppose law and order. They oppose BP, ICE, and they take over Wall Street and defecate on the street. Antifa puts people at risk and nothing much seems to be done about it. People will fill the void of law and order on their own.
Democrat politicians refuse to enforce the laws that would keep drug addicts from living on the streets of California, pooping and leaving needles. So businesses and residents take the matter into their own hands. They drop boulders along the sidewalk to prevent camping. They play loud and discordant repellant sounds from speakers. They use hostile or defensive architecture. They build slanted benches that you have to balance on to sit, and cannot lie down upon. They install blunted spikes in corners where homeless try to camp. The dystopia became so great that desperate people are trying to get rid of the medieval conditions and diseases in their cities…so why do so many Californians vote for the very Democrats who create these dystopias? When will they make the connection between their voting behavior and the conditions in which they live?
this blocking the road stuff is very illegal and deeply dangerous to public order.
i can understand sometimes why a crazy scared kid would panic and run over a stinking freak if they stood in the road and hit his car with clubs and stuff.
one time when I was a crazy kid some bad people tried to block the road. i wasn’t having it and I hit the gas instead of the brakes. they scattered and no injuries were had by anyone
lucky them, and lucky me
if every time the stinking freaks block a road, they get run over, then the stinking freaks will stop blocking roads.
see, some folks will go to jail for it, but, in the long run it would be safer for everybody
the stinking freaks are not interested in safety, they are literally, anarchists.
anarchists are the common enemy of all civilized peoples. they spring up in every generation like so many psychopaths do.
every regime in history has suppressed them, including the Soviet Regime, which actually at one time had them in the ranks (see bakunin and marx, one time associates, later enemies) but even the Soviets had to purge them and restore a modicum of order
their day here will come too. inevitably
it may come like their day came when Mayor Daley cleaned the garbage out of Lincoln Park. Now that was a good day for law and order!
“they prey on the elderly”
out here in flyover, the elderly often carry guns. somehow freaks can smell old guys like that from a mile away..maybe they have that look in their eye like clint eastwood in gran torino. see below. so it’s rare for a freak to get his ticket punched by an old guy. it happens occasionally. but the key thing is they pick on the weak and the scared just as you suggested karen
The professor is asking for it. Good and hard.
The professor’s thinking logically affirms Stanley Fish’s wrongheaded dictum, which holds that freedom of speech presupposes that society has already decided in advance what it wants to hear. It’s a completely inane idea, which could not be more fundamentally contrary to the principles behind the First Amendment. Why have a First Amendment if that’s what it means? But this nonsense is of a piece with the general atmosphere of hostility to free speech everywhere, with virtually every prominent voice across the political and media spectrum denouncing (and ultimately seeking to censor), views with which they disagree as “fake news” or “lies”, e.g. Trump, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Times, Fox News, Twitter. the Brookings Institution, The Atlantic Council. The idea that Mark Zuckerberg is currently our most stalwart defender of this primary American value is depressing.
Nonetheless, I object to Professor Turley’s fixation on Antifa’s threats to freedom of speech without addressing with a similar level of vehemence the context in which the organization and its tactics have arisen (sample details are here: https://fair.org/home/the-false-balance-between-fascists-and-antifascists/). This is profoundly irresponsible.
So you approve of this idiot Storfjell’s thinking, and suggest that Professor Turley consider a leftist screed from FAIR?
You’re precisely as much of a fool as Storfjell, but worse, an enable of that kind of thinking. If anyone is “profoundly irresponsible”, it is you.
Free speech will only remain free as long as it is protected. You probably believe yourself to be a supporter of free speech, but you aren’t – you’re an enabler of those who would deny it to those they disagree with.
Canuck Sailor: I do not approve, I thought that was pretty clear. My second point was that Professor Turley, while correctly defending free speech in this case, is also making himself, wittingly or unwittingly, the purveyor of a political falsehood, along with the rest of the major media (with few exceptions), about who is responding to the violence and who generated it. Who started it matters. Antifa did not start it. You can call the FAIR piece a leftist screed but that’s not an argument against its factual claims. The neo-fascist right are the types who are armed to the teeth, and that run over people with cars at rallies and have physically threatened non-violent protesters (e.g. Cornell West) to the point where the line between violent rhetoric and the use of actual physical force in pursuit of political goals has become blurred. Antifa is responding to this situation, very imperfectly, even stupidly in some cases (as in this one), but nonetheless. However, Professor Turley’s failure to point out the threat to freedom of speech in this respect on the political right with the same commitment as he has unleashed against the left is an obvious double-standard.
wartberg, here’s the difference
antifa is a set of local groups who use organized violence and apparently have impunity from prosecution
your socalled white hater type violent criminals are almost always acting as lone wolves
the nature of the lone wolf is such that it’s nearly impossible to prevent
antifa uses group violence however which is possible for law enforcement to infiltrate detect and prevent
and guess what.
that explains why they’re apparenlty immune to prosecution
because like the kkk of the 50s and 60s —-the antifa is probably TOTALLY PENETRATED BY SNITCHES, INFORMANTS, AND UNDERCOVERS. who often DO operate and commit crimes with immunity. lookup “roy frankhauser”
the question is, is LE using these toolls properly–
or is LE actually directing and provoking the antifa intimidation?
That’s the real free speech question “civil liberties advocates” should consider
we may see before long, if indictments are handed down against antifa instead of just a bunch of petty misdemeanors
RICO is the tool to break them up, take their stuff, lock the key people up. wait and see, wait and see folks.