The Indecency of Michelle Malkin

Conservatives should have ditched her a long time ago

Credit: Gage Skidmore

A good thing happened this month. Young America’s Foundation, the almost 60-year-old group for young conservative activists that sponsors campus events around the country, dropped columnist and author Michelle Malkin from its speakers’ bureau after she defended alt-right figure Nick Fuentes, an outspoken racist and anti-Semite. YAF issued a blunt statement saying that “mainstream conservatism” has no room for bigots or “street brawlers” (presumably a reference to the Proud Boys, the brawl-loving group Malkin has also defended).

(Disclosure: I have spoken at two chapters of Young Americans for Freedom, a Young America’s Foundation affiliate. Also, I had lunch with Malkin on a trip to Seattle in 1999, when she was a seemingly sane libertarian/conservative.)

Am I advocating “deplatforming” and reneging on my oft-stated commitment to freedom of speech? Not at all. If Malkin is invited to speak on a college campus or anywhere else, her event should not be “shut down” with violent or even…