Antifa, Chamu and the First Amendment
In a recent speech at the “Summer of Conservatism” event, the president of Berkeley College Republicans, Troy Worden, challenged Antifa to “participate in a debate” with him and added that they could pick any “communist or socialist professor” of their choice as a moderator. Personally, I would relish the idea of a long discussion between an Antifa member and Mr. Worden, even if we had to raise Saul Alinsky from the dead to moderate the interaction. I believe that even if Mr. Worden was forbidden from uttering a single word at such a debate, the mere exposition of the beliefs that Antifa members hold would discredit their group to such an extent that it would make the debate an unprofitable exercise for them. Unfortunately, it’s highly unlikely that such a debate would ever occur because it would contradict the core philosophy that far-left groups such as Antifa cling to: the rejection of peaceful methods of discourse in an attempt to engender radical societal change.
Challenges such as the one issued by President Worden would appear perfectly reasonable to most Americans, as we are used to debating our political disagreements in order to arrive at a consensus as a society. For instance, every four years, we have a brutal presidential campaign in which the country decides on a man/woman to elect the leader of the free world. For months, political speech flies in all directions, surrogates of campaigns argue, people argue, the country argues, the candidates themselves argue at three debates towards the end of the campaign, and on Election Day, the people get their way at the ballot box. Even though news anchors are used to moaning on every Election Night about how “brutal” the concluding campaign became, they never take a moment to be thankful for the fact that the only brutality we have to confront is the brutality of a different viewpoint rather than the brutality of the bullet, which is a customary practice in certain other nations that hold elections. Americans are used to debating because it is a distinctly American attempt at persuasion.
The far-left rejects this practice as predatory on certain victim groups they claim are endangered by the tyranny of debate. For example, UC Berkeley senator-elect, Juniperangelica Xiomara Cordova-Goff, published an op-ed in the student newspaper, The Daily Californian, titled “Campus must prioritize safety of marginalized over free speech”. The implication of the title is that free speech itself endangers the safety of the “marginalized” and must hence, be of lesser importance to campus authorities.
The article goes on to provide the most coherent articulation of far-left opinion on free speech. It reads:
“ The concept that America is great because of our ability to share perspectives and differing opinions, that UC Berkeley is beautiful because we can discuss and organize with opposite sides of the political spectrum … are bullshit. This has done nothing more than maintain the white supremacist, capitalistic and patriarchal nature that allowed colonizers to protect their power centuries ago and that has allowed their descendants to elect an openly racist, queerphobic, Islamophobic/xenophobic and anti-poverty administration.”
Encapsulated within that extract is the core principle that drives the far-left to violence. They have considered the benefits and pitfalls of open debate and dialogue, characteristic of a truly free society, and reached the conclusion that that practice must be rejected. Hence, it is meaningless for members of College Republican clubs across the country, victimized by the actions of these groups, to even attempt to engage these groups in civil debate or to criticize their actions as assaults on freedom or as un-American acts. They believe the culture that currently pervades through most of the country, one that is strongly adherent to the First Amendment, is predatory to the societal victim groups they patronize. They believe that the censorious instincts of man must be harnessed if bigotry of all kinds must be extinguished. They are fundamentally anti-American, and they like it.
These governing principles manifest themselves in numerous unfortunate ways. Recently, campus students Ismael Chamu and Peter Estrada, were arrested on charges of vandalism by the Berkeley Police Department. You may know Mr. Chamu from the tear-jerking allegations of racial profiling he made against the Berkeley PD after he was initially released in a Facebook post that has now been deleted. He claimed that the police officers who arrested him did not read him his rights and shed no light on the charges that led to his arrest. The sheriff, he alleged, mocked him while he was being detained using a joke Mr. Chamu thought was “the most personal”.
The incoming ASUC senate class, save for Pirate Party senator-elect Sunny Aggarwal, released a statement that resembled an extract from a Black Lives Matter manifesto.
“The violent detainment and arrest of Ismael Chamu, on the morning of June 27 by Berkeley City police officers, is a result of racial profiling and state violence that should not be tolerated by the City of Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, or any community,” read the statement.
Like a pack of trained left-wing seals, the incoming senators, with one notable exception, signed onto a hideously degrading statement that accepted Mr. Chamu’s allegations as fact in the absence of any evidence to that effect. The one senator-elect, Sunny Aggarwal, who has not signed onto that letter yet, expressed the need for due process to take its course, an idea that may seem heretical to some of his colleagues.
But I don’t wish to lay too much blame on our future student senators. They have just triumphed in a campus-wide virtue signalling contest and cannot be expected to adhere to reasonable standards of sanity. What is especially astounding is that Berkeley mayor, Jesse Arreguin, the man in charge of Berkeley law enforcement took to Facebook to call the actions of his officers “unacceptable” without any knowledge of what actually happened.
When it was revealed that Mr. Chamu and Estrada had been charged with felony vandalism and that Chamu’s account of the incident may well have been grossly exaggerated if not totally fabricated and that he may have been wielding an unauthorized weapon, the mayor changed his tune. When approached by Berkeleyside, he said:
“Without having specific facts from BPD, which I requested, but had not received at that time, I posted that comment. I probably should have phrased it differently maybe stating ‘if the allegations were true.’ I can see how people would perceive my comment to mean that I had jumped to conclusions.”
As reported on Berkeleyside:
“Arreguín said he later received information from BPD Chief Andrew Greenwood about the Chamu arrest, “including the investigation into vandalism and hate crimes, and BPD’s belief that he may have been responsible but that they were looking further into it. Those facts contradicted Mr. Chamu’s story.”
Personally, I would not trust a word out of Mr. Chamu’s mouth, but I will also choose to reserve judgement about the veracity of his accusations when the truth is fully clear. Our public officials should show similar restraint even when the accusations made by an individual advance a political narrative they support. There is enough information publicly available about Mr. Chamu that demonstrates that he is part of the same political cult that I described earlier in the piece. He has often taken to social media to disseminate his pearls of wisdom that include sophisticated musings like “Let’s say this together fuck the police”, “Wanna do something productive this Finals Week? Send all the white kids to wrong room on Finals day.” and my personal favorite, “There are more serious issues in [sic] this campus than dehydrated white fuckboys and white fuckgirls at their shitty parties,”.
To add icing to the cake, Mr. Chamu worked as a substitute teacher in the West Contra Costa Unified School District about which he said, “Time to radicalize our Black and Brown youth.” Parents, if you ever wonder why your children are turning into BAMN activists by the age of 18, look no further than the indoctrination they receive in their schools.
Whether it be Senator-elect Cordova-Goff or Mr. Chamu, there is a growing movement within the modern left to discard open debate for “tolerant” censorship. While these self-proclaimed radicals might claim that this shift is due to the supposedly harmful effects free speech has on minorities, there is another causal element at play here. Contrary to what they claim, every single advancement that minority groups have made throughout American history owes to their expression of ideas that eventually won broader societal debates. If a bigoted majority had been able to tyrannically censor more liberal voices in the past, as the far-left attempts to today, we may never have seen a black President (whom I detested, but not as much as I loathe John McCain). And therein, I believe, lies a fear central to the far-left’s violence. They fear that if they ever had to defend their views in the open marketplace of ideas, they would lose. They know that even at UC Berkeley, they cannot convince enough people to win the debate and hence, they must smear the institution of debate itself. They can’t argue and so, they must riot. They can’t be Lincoln and thus, they must be Alinsky.