I have previously written about my criticism to Antifa and its anti-free speech agenda, including academics legitimizing efforts to violently curtail free speech on our campuses. It is tragically ironic therefore that the University of British Columbia has cancelled an event by a critic of Antifa, a decision that carries out precisely the goals of this vehemently anti-free speech organization. Portland journalist Andy Ngo was scheduled to speak on campus when the school, reportedly without notice, canceled the event due to an unspecified “concern about the safety and security of our campus community.”
The reference to security is an all-too-familiar excuse of universities to shutdown speakers, particularly conservative speakers, while insisting that the move is not content-based discrimination. Berkeley and other schools like DePaul University have used the mob to justify cancelling speakers. That institutionalizes the “Heckler’s Veto” so that a mob need only threaten violence and the school then cancels the speech . . . which is what the mob was demanding.
Even an event with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was disrupted by the protesters. The cancellation of the Sessions event was another disgrace for Northwestern which has yielded to such tactics by students. It was a triumph for those who want to deny free speech to those with whom they disagree. Censoring speech has become a badge of honor for some. It has not stopped at simply stopping speeches and classes. We have been discussing the rising intolerance and violence on college campuses, particularly against conservative speakers. (here and here and here and here). Berkeley has been the focus of much concern over mob rule on our campuses as violent protesters have succeeded in silencing speakers, even including a few speakers like an ACLU official. Both students and some faculty have maintained the position that they have a right to silence those with whom they disagree and even student newspapers have declared opposing speech to be outside of the protections of free speech. At another University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. In the meantime, academics and deans have said that there is no free speech protection for offensive or “disingenuous” speech. CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,” Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech.
Ngo was invited to speak at a January 29th event on “Understanding ANTIFA violence.” Ngo was assaulted while covering a protest in Portland.
I remain highly skeptical of these claims of security concerns that seem to consistently be applied to critics of Antifa or conservative speakers. Universities cannot fulfill our core mission if we are going to yield to such mob threats and harassment. This is doing the work of the mob — a triumph of the heckler’s veto.
I remain highly skeptical of these claims of security concerns that seem to consistently be applied to critics of Antifa
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It makes sense to me.
If somebody was going to make a speech against the Hells Angels and there was a concern that the bikers might show up to respond would anybody complain if the University told them to find some place else to have a rumble?
There is no reason for the University to invite Antifa or Anti-Antifa to their campus and the simple fact is this: inviting one of them is as good as inviting both of them.
There is no reason for the University to invite Antifa or Anti-Antifa to their campus and the simple fact is this: inviting one of them is as good as inviting both of them.
You can’t think of one reason? Just one, that is flashing neon bright, with alarms going off?
If you accept that free speech should be denied anywhere if there is a risk of violence, then you are 100% guaranteed the threat of violence will accompany every request or invite to speak. Eventually, the protected free expression of ideas will cease to exist altogether.
If you accept that free speech should be denied anywhere if there is a risk of violence,
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Where there is violence, there won’t be free speech.
There is no reason for the University to encourage violence. There are plenty of morons out in the world advocating violence. Its not as if there is some kind of shortage of that type of discourse that anybody can’t get their fill of it if that is what they want.
Where there is violence, there won’t be free speech.
The natural right to speak freely does not go away as a result of the threat of violence or actual acts of violence. It does not go away based on those acts being carried out by one individual, by a majority, or by the will of 7 billion people.
There is no reason for the University to encourage violence.
There is every reason for the University to encourage the free expression of ideas. We are no longer living in the state of nature. When rights are threatened, we are required by our nature to defend them, even at the risk of our own lives. Our governments fundamental purpose is to secure these rights. Anyone willing to give up their natural rights is deserving of none.
The natural right to speak freely does not go away as a result of the threat of violence
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Even if that were true (its not) this is not about stopping anybody from speaking freely.
The university has no obligation to provide a hall with nice seating for anybody to make speeches. Its not part of the curriculum. They do it because it costs very little to allow it. But when that no longer holds then they don’t have to allow it.
Think of it like people who go to Trump rallies to express opposing views. They are not tolerated. Explain why?
Even if that were true (its not) this is not about stopping anybody from speaking freely.
So you’re saying the natural right to speak freely does go away with the threat of violence?
This is exactly about using the threat of violence to prevent someone from having the equal opportunity to speak freely at a venue that provides the opportunity for such an event. The university does not have to host these events, but if they do, they should not be complicit in infringing the rights of speakers because the venue has been threatened with violence.
So you’re saying the natural right to speak freely does go away with the threat of violence?
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The violence curtails free speech.
Is English not your primary language? Try reading the question you supposedly are replying to and try to answer it.
Try reading the question you supposedly are replying to and try to answer it.
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I prefer to address the question that confronts the University.
apples and oranges. A more correct analogy would be if protesters went to Trump rallies such that Trump couldn’t speak. An invited speaker is not simply providing a soap box.
somsai, then you agree that the so-called natural right to speak freely does at times go away
It can be silenced, like when one’s tongue is cut out, just as one’s right to life can be restricted if someone kills you. Speech and life and assembly etc though are considered natural rights, and we should go to great lengths to support them, even Nazis marching, even anti Hells Angels lectures. It’s up to us as a society to support people’s right to speech because it’s just as easy to silence those I agree with as those with whom I have differences.
The BOR is a list of rights we don’t want our government infringing upon, it’s not a list of rights given to us by the govt.
jinn,
Yours is a common misunderstanding of natural, unalienable rights. What you are describing is how a right may be infringed. Infringement doesn’t eliminate the right, it disables it. The right is always 100% ours. The security (free exercise) of that right is typically something less than the 100%.
I may for instance be able to gag you and lock you in a cage. You still retain 100% natural right to speak freely and to be at liberty to go where you please. What I have done however is to disable those rights.
It’s at this point many people will argue this is just wordplay. If your right is disabled, then you don’t have the right. This is how tyranny happens. Convince the people they have no rights other than what is provided by others (government). If you have no natural rights, then when the government does not allow you to speak, then you have no justification to be able to speak. If they want to take your property, then you have no justification to stop them. When they take your ability to defend yourself, then you have lost the ability to get back what you ignorantly gave away.
Well, you have convinced me. The university did not take away any persons natural rights.
Problem solved. Case closed.
Well, you have convinced me.
Good for you. That’s an important first step.
The university did not take away any persons natural rights.
No, they merely enabled the infringement of that right by allowing the threat of violence to shut down the opportunity to speak. If you believe that solves the problem, then you are ignorantly part of the problem.
ANTIFA IS NO ONE IN PARTICULAR
Every now and then, when Professor Turley feels the need to balance his columns with a piece critical of the left, he names Antifa as the culprit in some act of tyranny by overzealous radicals.
What concerns me about these columns is they tend to suggest that Antifa is a real organization allied with mainstream liberals. Antifa is no such thing.
Antifa is simply an umbrella label referring to any number of radical groups that operate independent of each other. The following passage is from Wikipedia’s article on ‘Antifa’.
…………………………………………………..
Antifa is not an interconnected or unified organization, but rather a movement without a hierarchical leadership structure, comprising multiple autonomous groups and individuals.[13][23][35] Activists typically organize protests via social media and through websites.[41] Some activists have built peer-to-peer networks, or use encrypted-texting services like Signal.[42] According to Chauncey Devega at Salon, antifa is an organizing strategy, not a group of people.[43] The antifa movement has grown since the 2016 presidential election and, as of August 2017, approximately 200 groups existed, of varying sizes and levels of activity.[30] The activists involved subscribe to a range of ideologies, typically on the left and they include anarchists, socialists and communists along with some liberals and social democrats.
Edited from Wikipedia: ‘Antifa’.
Antifa is not an interconnected or unified organization,
I’ll remember that inanity the next time you’re babbling about ‘right-wing’ this and ‘right-wing’ that.
Tabby, the term ‘Antifa’ probably pops up in right-wing media about 20 times more often than mainstream media. Right-wing media feels the need to spook its consumers with revoving groups of boogeymen.
Well, of course. Mainstream media is an arm of the Democratic Party.
Tabby, tell Obama that. For his entire first term our national discussion was dominated by so-called ‘Fiscal Hawks’. And even mainstream media was deferential to Fiscal Hawks. But those same Hawks are oddly silent about the debt and deficit under Trump. Never have we piled so much debt during so long of an expansion. The Trump tax cut was merely a kickback to billionaire donors.
Tabby, tell Obama that.
they seem to think they are active. you can go and find out in person and let us know, perhaps?
https://itsgoingdown.org/upcomingevents/
https://babylonbee.com/news/authorities-investigating-dangerous-breach-in-hollywood-bubble/
Absurd x XV,
I believe his mantra is “right wing media bubble”.
Anonymous, why do you need to be Anonymous to ‘contribute’ that inconsequential point?
Good question, Seth.
It’s one of the regular posters…
Seth/Phillip/Peter/ Burgoyne/ Acland/ etc.
Why do you need to keep changing your name?
Why in the world would you care?
(Said by one of those who lives on this blog.)
If “Seth” asks why I “need to be anonymous”, then asking why he needs to post under a half dozen or so different names is a fair question.
Because he can? And what difference does it make? Get a life.
Anonymous, it s not my choice to keep changing names.
Hunter eventually stopped using cocaine so there is hope for you
antifa is as real as the mafia. well, they’re not state chartered corporations or anything, but, they’re something alright, and something similar in all the places where they pop up like so many mushrooms poking up from the dirt and slime
lets take a snap shot of the antifa from a former member or whatever, activist? dunno. let him – her speak for itself.
https://www.wweek.com/news/2017/12/26/what-its-like-to-betray-antifa-to-the-cops-and-get-caught/
Kurtz, what the hell is Williamette Week?? I thought it was ‘Wilmette’ at first. Do you need obscure neighborhood blogs to buttress your arguments?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willamette_Valley
A region that includes Portland Oregon
if you studied your own sources then you would know that antifa is specifically represented by themselves as a locally focused phenomenon so that’s hardly invalid to quote a local story
but guys like you — they call you “neoliberals” by the way– guys like you think only the NYT and WaPoo matter.
and by the way, this is perhaps the ONLY charming aspect of antifa, that they have a focus on the local community. which probably comes from the salad days of anarchism in Catalonia. You can read Orwell’s diary for more on that.
black-clad son of Democrat Senator Tim Kaine “Woody” Kaine was arrested for throwing a smoke bomb at cops at an antifa-lead demonstration
https://www.twincities.com/2017/03/07/son-of-sen-tim-kaine-one-of-six-arrested-during-trump-rally-at-state-capitol-last-weekend/
just casual connections to the prog left, or clandestine shock troops?
who is Yvette Felarca?
Why, just a public school employee? ”
Just by day– riot organizer and intimidator, by avocation!
https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/yvette-felarca/
Born in 1970, UC Berkeley graduate Yvette Felarca is a social studies teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California, which is part of the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) where she has been employed since 2006. Felarca has also served on the Berkeley Federation of Teachers’ executive board. She is best known as a national organizer for By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a self-described “militant anti-facist group.” Moreover, Felarca has been an activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement and a participant in Black Lives Matter-connected protests in California.[1]
Felarca is a passionate opponent of charter schools. In 2009, for instance, she repeatedly recruited students to participate in protests against the establishment of one particular charter school that BUSD was considering – even after the union had formally directed her not to involve students in her political activities, and not to pursue those activities during work hours. In a 2012 speech to fellow union members, Felarca claimed that “public education is under an insidious and full-scale attack” from people wishing to implement “a free-market, privatized model” of education. “We are at war” with “charter school promoters,” she declared.[2]
antifa says it’s “war” that means they want and intend to kill people and break things. that’s war.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/antifa-and-the-alt-left-everything-you-need-to-know-195533/
only a matter of time before RICO laws are used to seize the assets of people involved in financing them.
or if that doesn’t happen, who knows, maybe they will eventually get their chance to live up to their big talk
Seth if you read Democratic websites such as Daily Kos you will note sympathy for antifa and support for it’s violence. Antifa support is certainly tolerated by the left. Antifa also seems to have evolved from and incorporate some of the anarchists and black block but they really are a thing. I’d think the population of antifa sympathetic support is much larger than 200, maybe by a factor of 40 or more. Antifa also isn’t just a reaction to R wing extremism, antifa are extremists in their own right.
Someone should explain to Antifa that they are acting like a bunch of Fascists.
Canada has a right to put itself under a bunch of left wing fascist Trotskyites if the so wish.
It appears that the 2,000 plus universities and colleges have abdicated education to get an early start of being Canadians. Did they finally figure out when they signed up for college loan money thay had ‘volunteered’ for military service under the revised Conscription Laws>
Canada is more impressed with Chinese communism if you count the money, than Trotskyism. And the Canadian educational system trips over itself to accommodate PRC well to-dos who send money and legions of students their way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
Vancouver is awash in Chinese money. Who knows how much it’s truly “money laundering” versus legit investment. And indeed perhaps some people are jealous. But that doesn’t stop some of the Canadians from whining about it, even as they take the soup!
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3014224/money-laundering-crackdown-just-way-blame-chinese-cash-vancouvers
As Canada becomes more sinicized, I expect that all forms of censorship will proceed apace. Call me crazy and a racist for saying it, but, I believe that in the long haul, we can’t maintain Anglo-Saxon cultural traditions, without enough Anglo-Saxons.
I find myself torn. As a person of partly English ancestry, I rue the decline of our common culture, shared to some degree in both the US and Canada.
on the other hand, as a person who admires ethnocentrism, as a normal human tendency, and something which provides social stability, I find the Chinese using the lawful opportunities which the West provides, smart, completely natural, and not something which I can hold against them!
Rather, seems to me it’s our people who are the foolish ones!
Chicken Canucks! They’re like our Chicken Shias in Iran. We kill their terrorist general and they respond by killing scorpions in the desert. I’ll take that deal every single time. As for the Canucks, well oye eh?
30 some years ago Canada ejected “infamous American racist” Tom Metzger from going to Canada for a speech.
Now they’ve degenerated into this.
You see foolish conservatives, if you don’t stand up for a wider spectrum of political allies, where it will get you.
Metzger was never an ally, just a canary in the coal mine.
Well, in the sense that when he ran for office as a gadfly, he most often ran as a Democrat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Metzger#Mainstream_party_politics
but in the sense that he consistently spoke up for the interests of working class white Americans, however offensive it may have seemed. And in that sense he must have been a trailblazer, because that’s the backbone of support for Trump. and for my part i Have no problem with that.
No, he didn’t. The interests of ordinary wage-earners are not advanced by larding a discussion of them with a mess of sh!t.
I’m sure you don’t like him. but he did actually and consistently pointed out in his writings and speeches that massive third world immigration would tend to lower the prevailing wages for native workers with whom they had to compete. which is certainly correct. this goes back to the 1980 and he continued the theme up until recently when he went into a quiet retirement from his racist speech. And furthermore, he recommended Jack London who wrote about precisely the same thing, back when people thought he had only written movies about wild dogs.
perhaps he did lard up his commentary with a mess of dung. nonetheless.
If you mix vanilla ice cream with sh!t, it’s going to taste more like one than the other.
funny i seem to recall metzger using that metaphor himself but in a different context
maybe you guys have more in common than you would like to believe
And even in The Call of the Wild London got his racist licks in. Manuel, the Mexican assistant gardener of Buck’s first owner, steals him and sells him off to pay Chinese lottery debts and the only really good master he had, Thornton, is murdered by “first nation” criminals.
Jack London
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/jack-london-not-just-the-voice-of-the-wild-2059275.html
certainly he was a white supremacist, however, he admired different peoples in their own right. his Pacific island story about the lepers of Molokai comes to mind.
“Iron Heel” was a book I liked, too
excuse me, they ejected Tom AFTER his “hate speech” … back in 1992
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-06-30-me-1437-story.html
Metzger Seized by Canadian Authorities After Speech : Racists: He and his son are arrested after addressing a white supremacist group in Toronto. They face deportation. Travel to Canada violated terms of Metzger’s probation.
By LEE ROMNEY
JUNE 30, 1992 12 AM
TIMES STAFF WRITER
White supremacist Tom Metzger and his son, John, have been arrested and jailed in Canada on suspicion of violating an immigration law that bars anyone likely to incite racial hatred from entering the country, Canadian officials said.
When he returns to California, Tom Metzger, 54, may also face a jail sentence for leaving the country without permission–flouting probation terms set after a 1991 hate-crime conviction in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
A hearing will be held today to determine if the Metzgers broke Canadian law and should be deported. They could return to the United States as early as tonight, said Milton Best, a spokesman for Immigration Canada in Toronto, where the arrest took place early Sunday morning.
The Metzgers went to Toronto to address several hundred members of the white supremacist group Heritage Front on Saturday night and were arrested after they left the event, Tom Metzger’s daughter, Lynn, said.
British Columbia:. You’re a Brit. You’re a Brit!
You’re a Twit all the way.
From your first cigarette to your last dying day!
You can call it Columbia and think like a hog.
Go back to England and crawl under the log!
I can’t speak for Canada, but here in the United States, it’s at least possible for the state and federal governments to provide what campus police apparently cannot – protection of free speech against organized violence. Secuirty in urban terrain is part of US infantry traning now and has been for decades.
Antifa and their local equivalents in local colleges are the exact equivalents of the KKK in terms of legitimacy. KKK would be shut down rapidly if they threatened violence at an American campus. It’s time for antifa to discover that suppressing other Americans’ freedom of speech is against the law, and will bring a response they don’t want.
Every state’s National Guard should rotate some units through the US Army’s MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) school. That is, if the state governments are serious about their Constitutional role in preserving domestic tranquility.
One way to ameliorate problems (though not one which would help in places like Berkeley or Charlottesville): invest county sheriffs with the authority to take command of campus security forces at state schools, much as the president can take command of a state’s National Guard. Another is to permit students to sue both institutions and negligent officials for breach of contract at campuses public and private. Some dean loses their house over conniving with antifa, a lot of this stops.
yes that’s theoretically possible but very unlikely.
you probably know most campus cops are organized as petty municipality police forces. sheriffs generally can’t take charge of municipal police forces and over-ride them. the jurisdictional compacts vary quite a bit from place to place however.
don’t expect much when it comes to popular legislative initiatives to fix municipal police problems. the cities are stronger and stronger vis a vis the rural and unincorporated areas for obvious reasons of money finance and tax bases.
you probably know most campus cops are organized as petty municipality police forces.
They aren’t. New York allows police departments to deputize campus security who have been through special training programs. You do see campus forces that consist of actual police officers, but that’s at places like Penn State which are castles in the desert.
sheriffs generally can’t take charge of municipal police forces and over-ride them. the jurisdictional compacts vary quite a bit from place to place however.
You mean current statutory law doesn’t provide for this, so it can never provide for this. You’re making great sense this afternoon.
OK you go ahead and write your state legislate and see where it goes. I wont hold my breath
as for my statement. I am in the midwest. I inform you that my statement was correct. Maybe not in Pennsylvania or New York, i would not know. So i will restrict the scope of my comment in response to your nitpick. But in the midwest yes the statement was accurate. you’re free to disbelieve it and look into it on your own.
the Virginia state national guard probably has done some MOUT training. and they’re scratching their heads asking themselves if they will help the Democrats confiscate weapons. the pro gun crowd in VA sure is talking about it.
The problem with National Guards is that in peacetime they’re the governor’s muscle. Even the state legislature has no short-term remedy for abuse of authority by a governor using his state’s National Guard. Over the long term, if they’re disposed to, they could defind their state’s Military Department, and the Pentagon’s National Guard Bureau would have to address that problem with them.
The voters in a given state have to elect a governor and state house which will protect its rights, and not violate them – or exist in slavery they have made themselves.
The American Founders described constitutional rights and freedoms as natural and God-given.
Nature and God are ubiquitous; everywhere.
Ergo, rights and freedoms enumerated by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are provided to all nations and all people.
There is no justification and no case wherein denial of free speech, etc., is appropriately state specific.
Either citizens are free or citizens are enslaved.
Some countries did not get the memo…yet.
Sprec Frei in campus und heil Hitler.
There is a direct correlation between the violence of the Left/AlwaysFa and conservative events. The Left created and supported violence at candidate Trump’s rallies and has continued with their violence for the last 3 years. Meanwhile, no violent protesters at Democrat events because conservatives don’t support violence. I’d like to say this is not true of your average Democrat but I am starting to doubt that as average Democrats, at the state, local and national level, as well as at universities have supported the violence for the last 3 years. And have used the Left’s violence to suppress conservative speakers and the right to free speech.
well at some point conservatives may just wake up and realize that all law is organized violence and in democracy mobs are very potent persuaders. they are the implicit threat of organized violence to come.
conservatives have been hoping for new leadership since the French king got his head chopped off. they’ll be waiting until they no longer exist if they don’t switch gears and begin to draw lessons from those who have been more successful in the meantime.
You refuse to acknowledge what’s staring you in the face: the relationship between the administration and antifa is dialectical and co-operative. The people who don’t want free speech are your colleagues, professor.
Did you actually read today’s column?
Just reinforces the need for all of us to speak up and fight the censors.
“All of us” also means “through our elected governments”. Systematic denial of free speech, even when approved by local college officials, endangers domestic tranquility by surrendering control over speech in the public square to the side with the most violent mobs.
At that point, Hobbes’ “Leviathan”, the legal government, must step in and protect the people from those who profit from lawlessness.by force, if need be, Sone college officials seem have no qualms about creating a tacit dictatorship of the Left at their schools. Title IX ought to, logically, prevent this, since conservatives are effectively a persecuted minority in some campuses. Just throwing that out there…
title IX compliance uses the same kind of “group rights” designations that other “civil rights” enforcement does.
that means, mostly the “historically disadvantaged and oppressed,” ie, blacks, women, foreigners, etc. It’s never based on belief, unless the beliefs are some non-Christian sect.
I am sure you realize this of course but “conservatives” do not seem to get that in social conflict, groups are what wins, not isolated individuals.
A group which defines itself by individualism, over the long haul, is going to be at a perpetual disadvantage, to those who place group loyalty over individual tastes and preferences.
This is perhaps the basic cultural problem of “the West” in a nutshell– not just conservatives.,
Yep. I threw that out there specifically because the Left never tires of crowing that white people are either a minority in America now or will soon be one. Title IX will then enforce racism against a minority, because it tramples on the Equal Protection Clause in the name of enforcing it. And your take is correct.
My family includes native Americans, immigrant Germans, immigrant French-Canadians (“Cajuns”, some of whom can claim collateral ancestry with Ste. Therese de Lisieux), Scots-Irish backwoodsmen, Irish and Italian immigrants and distant descendants from Conquistadors. Considering that I’m mostly Cajun, the idea that I enjoy white privilege is laughable. Most of my ancestors didn’t have enforceable rights to the land they farmed because the Spanish took the written records of their colonial land grants with them when they ceded Orleans Territory to the US, and the US and British took Florida away from them.
But, as you point out, Title IX knows nothing of actual history. Its protections are arbitrary and not based on facts as most of them recognize that concept.
Loup as I read this I and think of our other mentions today about state militia, i can’t help but remember a movie with Powers Booth as a National Guardsman beset by the stupidity of his fellows, trying to make it out of the bayou alive… the song at the end.. had great lyrics… i can hear the accordion now…
“parlez nous a boire, et pas de marriage!”