I am a Liberal, and I Want Even More Protests Against Milo Yiannopoulos
Last week, Matt Tietelbaum wrote a blog post for the Huffington Post in reaction to the protests at UC Berkeley, proclaiming that even though he was “liberal”, he supports some of Milo Yiannopoulos’s ideas and believes that he should be allowed to speak at his university. As someone whose family has also suffered from the holocaust and other historic repression against Jewish people, it is insulting that someone will just use the “freedom of speech” defense while glossing over the actual content of Milo’s speech.
The argument for Yiannopoulos speaking at college campuses is based on one of our most cherished rights, protected by the first amendment. However, Tietelbaum’s line of thinking ignores that this right must be upheld by the state, not other members of society. If the alt-right speaker was arrested at his speeches or if the state imposed violence on him for his speech, such as the police tactics used in Ferguson, MO or at Occupy Wall Street, then this argument might make sense. However, college campuses do already grant Milo access to lecture halls throughout the country, and the people who oppose him ALSO do have a right to respond to his speeches with massive protests. Freedom of speech doesn’t only apply to those with microphones.
On another note, freedom of speech is not granted to everyone regardless of intent. You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, just like you can’t stand in a public square and yell that you want to murder Jews and Muslims. Just because freedom of speech exists, doesn’t mean you can say anything you want.
Tietelbaum plays into Milo’s messaging that the left are snowflakes who protest him because they are afraid of his crusade against political correctness and don’t have a valid argument. Those who support this framework act as if he is going up on stage at universities to make conservative political arguments, or to speak about other topics which aren’t based on hate. However, the UC Berkeley office of Student Affairs put out a statement one day before the event which confirmed the true intent of the seminar:
“Milo’s event may be used to target individuals, either in the audience or by using their personal information in a way that causes them to become human targets to serve a political agenda.”
This speech was part of Yiannopoulos’ campaign against sanctuary campuses, and there are indications that he was planning to reveal the identities of undocumented students at Berkeley, opening them up to abuse, harassment, and possible deportation. When the “true liberal” Matt Teitelbaum writes that he wants Milo to speak at his university, he is saying that he thinks that the freeflow of ideas and debate should include harassment against non-white people. He might hate being calling racist, sexist, or islamophobic, but if he is willing to remain silent and even worse, defend the speech of those who promote these ideologies, then clearly the shoe fits.
This isn’t the first time Yiannopoulos had planned to openly target marginalized students. Late last year at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he outed a non-binary conforming trans student, showing their picture on the screen and mocking them for an extended period of time for “getting into the women’s locker room”, among other obscenities.
Milo might be gay and half-jewish, and might make the claim that he isn’t a white nationalist, but he regularly promotes hate speech and and also encourages his followers to multiply the harassment, such as when he harassed Leslie Jones on Twitter for months for being a black cast member in Ghostbusters, while his followers spammed her with messages calling her coon, n**** and other racial slurs.
As someone who was raised Jewish, and had family lost in the holocaust, I take the phrase “never again” very seriously. We must never give a voice to fascism, even if that voice is half-jewish, gay, and trying to masquerade as a respectable person despite being an iconic member of the Alt-right, a movement calling for the “separation between people” and led by neo-nazi Richard Spencer.
I have a question for Mr. Teitelbaum. If Milo went to your college campus and put your picture on the screen, called you racial slurs and mocked you in front of a whole audience of people, maybe even saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to attend your university, would you sit there and say “I disagree but you have a right to target me.” I’ll save you some time and answer for you, you wouldn’t. The acceptance of Milo Yiannopoulos as an intellectual who should be debated rather than protested is in itself a form of white male privilege, as those who hold this viewpoint can’t imagine a situation where they will themselves will be the person directly targeted.
We must remember that during the holocaust, those “good people” who turned their heads as Jews, homosexuals, the disabled, and other marginalized people were dragged out of their homes, were just as guilty as those who were actually committing the atrocities.
In summary, Milo Yiannapoulos has his right to speak anywhere he wants, and we also have the right to come together and shut him down. That is the premise of freedom of speech.
As for the controversial tactics used by the Berkeley protesters last Wednesday, and the general mis-characterizing and underestimation of fascism from “liberals” like Matt Teitelbaum, remember this quote by Hitler himself, who spoke about the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany:
Only one danger could have jeopardised this development — if our adversaries had understood its principle, established a clear understanding of our ideas, and not offered any resistance. Or, alternatively, if they had from the first day annihilated with the utmost brutality the nucleus of our new movement. — Adolph Hitler, 1933
