This article is written by Penn State students who attended the Stand Up, Fight Back! protest against Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes on October 24, 2022. This protest succeeded in shutting down McInnes’s event, and we believe that decisions organizers made before and during the protest contributed to this. This article contains some important points for the consideration of student organizers around the country, especially as the far-right continues to use “free speech” fronts as a rhetorical cover for organizing a far-right movement aimed at attacking the Black Lives Matter movement, the LGBTQ community, and progressive and revolutionary organizing. In short, far-right individuals and organizations are using universities to recruit young people into their reactionary movement which must be combatted through mass direct action and revolutionary struggle.
By Anonymous Penn State Students
Stand Up, Fight Back! was called for by the Student Committee for Defense and Solidarity (SCDS) to shut down McInnes’s event. It was attended by hundreds of students and community members and drew local, state, and federal police. An hour of organized, militant direct action forced Penn State Administrators to shut down the event despite previously claiming for weeks that nothing could be done. This article holds that two main ingredients are necessary for shutting down far-right campus speakers: revolutionary organization and mass mobilization.
One of the main points for student organizers is to understand that university Administrators are enemies, and not friends or allies. Penn State’s slogan is “We Are,” which is designed to conceal the fundamentally opposing positions between super-rich Trustees on one hand and working and oppressed students on the other. Administrators carry out the will of the Board of Trustees, whose mission is to manage the subsidization of professional training costs for corporations, not to provide the people with a meaningful education. This reality is reflected in how organizers have handled Administrators: organizers did not ask permission to hold this protest, refused to cooperate or collaborate with police, and highlighted how Administrators seek to maintain Penn State and “Happy Valley” as a base for neofascist organizing.
Administrators have two types of tactics for quelling student rebellion: direct repression and indirect counter-insurgency. With regard to direct repression, student activists conceal their identity at events to prevent identification from Administrators and reactionaries. More powerful at this point, however, are Administrators’ efforts to liquidate student struggle through soft power and propaganda. In the face of far-right “free speech” peddlers, Administrators claim that their hands are tied because of the university’s state-related status. This is a lie. Administrators also attempt to distract students with “counter-programming.” In essence, the University holds an event (or multiple!) at the same time as the “controversial speaker” and encourages in every possible way people to attend, actively as well as indirectly discouraging confrontation and protest. They claim that “controversial speakers” only want attention and that students should just ignore them, when in reality they are going to universities to legitimize their anti-people politics and recruit members into white supremacist organizations. Their events are designed around concrete political and organizational objectives, not simply “viewpoints” or “speech.” Because Administrators have the means to spread their propaganda through their own platforms as well as local and national news media, activists must counter it by revealing the truth to the people through social media, flyers, pamphlets, and so on.
The point of the McInnes protest, then, was not to express disagreement with his speech. Instead, the protest had the objective of preventing McInnes from speaking, thereby taking away his ability to organize a neofascist movement in our community. On-the-ground tactics reflected this objective: students came with banners, signs, and megaphones to project their message; brought food, water, and medical supplies to sustain themselves; coordinated legal support and carpools; and so on. Other participants also selflessly brought their own materials and expertise. Keeping in mind that Administrators and police are enemies — and an enemy is to be defeated by any means necessary — organizers employed a variety of tactics, including mobility, agitation, and deception. McInnes was shut down because of this combination of political organization and popular mobilization.
The particular context of Penn State shaped much about the McInnes protest. Rural central Pennsylvania has been targeted by far-right and fascist groups as a location ripe for recruitment. Progressive people must actively organize against white supremacist groups that are seeking to get their foot in the door. It is the duty of working and oppressed people to defend our communities themselves because those in power, such as Penn State Administrators, benefit from far-right, reactionary organizing. Such is the ongoing history of Penn State as a land-grab university rife with white supremacy and sexual violence.
Finally, while students were able to fend off this invasion of our campus, ultimately we believe that more must be done to develop organizing infrastructure to more permanently prevent these incidents from repeating. It is a tremendous victory that the people of Penn State organized to force the Proud Boys into a retreat in the face of hundreds of police and a dozen or so uniformed fascists, but those far-right forces are still active and causing trouble in our communities. At the same time, constant problems like rising tuition, unchecked landlord power, and rampant racism, sexism, and transphobia plague our campus and community. Organizers must take these lessons and more learned from the Stand Up, Fight Back! protest to win greater battles against stronger enemies.
