Unless I've missed a similar example -- which is entirely possible, frankly, given the sheer number of cartoonish and deranged campus disruptions across the country -- this episode from UC Santa Cruz breaks new ground. In this case, leftist agitators aren't shouting down a speaker, assaulting dissenters, rioting in advance of a controversial guest, derailing a free speech-themed discussion, or 'occupying' an event or building while shrieking demands at administrators. No, they're laying siege to a College Republicans meeting, claiming the mere existence of any Republican gathering on campus is "violence," because a room full of "white supremacists" and "Nazis" makes the school's library an 'unsafe' space. The absurdist details, via Campus Reform:
Shortly after the CR meeting convened, one student entered the ground floor room of McHenry Library to ask attendees which group was assembling. After being informed that the meeting was a gathering of College Republicans, the student returned about 15-20 minutes later with company. One of the ringleaders of the protest was student activist Haik Adamian, who posted an announcement in the official UCSC Student Facebook group calling on students to deny the CR group its First Amendment rights. “White Supremacist, fascist sympathizing College Republicans are having a meeting at McHenry library, room 0332. Everybody be aware of this violent racist activity happening everyday on this campus!” he wrote, adding that “We need a movement of people on this campus that rejects the ‘right of assembly,’ or ‘right of free speech’ for white supremacists and fascists.” Heeding Adamian’s call, student activists disrupted the meeting by banging open the door to the meeting space and shouting accusations that the members were “fascists,” “racists,” and “white supremacists.” According to the UCSC College Republicans, their offers to discuss the concerns of the protesters were met with exclamations that “dialogue is violence,” after which the protesters called the club’s presence a “threat to the library” and demanded that the CR members vacate the space immediately.
Fact check one: Republicans are not even remotely comparable to Nazis. This is a disgusting smear promulgated by historically-illiterate morons. Fact check two: Even actual Nazis have a right to free speech and assembly at a public university. Fact check three: Speech is not violence, and hate speech is protected speech. In any case, library staffers at first declined to kick the CR's out of their meeting location, but eventually quietly asked that they vacate the premises in order to de-escalate the situation. To their credit, the CR's refused to leave, asserting their right to be there. The police were eventually summoned, and several arrests were made. Here is a video mash-up of some of the "violence" "dialogue" that played out between lingering disruptors and the assembled right-leaning students.
Behold, the unthinking, hysterical, toddler-style "arguments" from the leftists who were enraged that CR's weren't interested in caving to their ridiculous demand that the meeting be immediately disbanded. The star of this clip is the self-identified Democrat who passionately defends his Republican schoolmates, repeatedly slamming and ridiculing the mini-mob's inane and insane tantrums. Content warning: There's some profanity in here, plus the anti-speech demagogues' so-called "arguments" may cause headaches among critical thinkers:
One of the protesters conflates Republicans with "Nazis" and "white supremacists" over and over again. When he's challenged to present a single shred of evidence to back up this slander, he cites College Republicans' support for...building a border wall. Nice. At one point, one of the young women becomes exasperated with the non-Republican free speech defender: "You're protecting the College Republicans more than the College Republicans are protecting themselves -- so to me, you are a Republican." Burn! Burn the witch! "They're good people, you know nothing about them," he replies, prompting an indignant interruption: "They're good people? That's great. I'm glad that you think white supremacists are good people." She goes on to say that the mere knowledge that College Republicans "have been meeting in here...doesn't feel safe to us, so that's why we're here." The pro-speech, pro-assembly Democrat again intervened with logic. "I stand for their right to speak, and I speak to them," he says, prompting another baffled female protester to ask, "then how are you different? I don't understand." That line truly takes the cake. The heartening punchline to all of this is that the neutral observers to this mess were not impressed with the hardcore lefties' performance. In which the End of Discussion mob actively alienates normal people, as is so often the case:
The commotion culminated in one of the student activists running out into the main library area screaming that there were “Nazis downstairs,” but while the gimmick drew several spectators, many of them expressed indignation at the actions of the protestors. "As a Democrat, I am embarrassed that some people on the left act this way,” remarked Phil Leonard Vogel, creator of the moderate campus news publication City on a Phil. “They give all of us a terrible name."...[CR's president Brandon] Lang isn’t terribly bothered by the incident, though, noting that “all of the people who came down to see what was going on...ended up siding with us because it was immediately obvious that what they heard was inaccurate” and speculating that the incident may even “result in the club receiving a lot of new members in the coming week, as I've seen an uptick in the number of people requesting to join the FB page.”
Congratulations, lunatics. Your intolerant, ignorant ravings have helped recruit more people whom you smear as "Nazis." By all means, please keep fighting for 'social justice,' or whatever it is you think you're doing.
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