Three Suggestions For Campus Protesters
Not feeding the trolls doesn’t have to mean completely ignoring the problem either
“What are you afraid of — her ideas? Ask her the hard questions. Confront her intellectually. Booing people down, or intimidating people, or shutting down events, I don’t think that that works in any way.” — Bernie Sanders
Not long ago, I caught a segment on NPR’s On Point about the free speech debate in higher ed. The focus was on Ann Coulter’s scheduled talk at UC-Berkeley, which had been hovering in limbo as the university weighed the security risks posed by protesters. (The event was eventually canceled). Other recent protested — and shut-down — lectures included Milo Yiannopolous at Claremont McKenna and Berkeley, Charles Murray at Middlebury, and Richard Spencer at Auburn (which was canceled by the university out of fears of violence, only to have a federal judge grant him an injunction to speak).
The broadcast played audio of Murray’s talk, where a huge contingent of Middlebury students stood up, turned their backs, and started shouting so loudly that Murray couldn’t be heard. Later, in moving the event to a safer location, protesters got violent and a professor (a liberal professor, they specified) had her hair pulled so hard she wound up in a neck brace.
Listeners then heard the voice of Jose Diaz, president of the UC-Berkeley College Republicans, sponsors of Yiannopolous’s February talk, which had to be cancelled after protests turned violent: “This underscores what we know to already be here at UC-Berkeley — that this is a very intolerant, progressive, left-wing culture . . .”
And here’s the part where I’m going to get in trouble, because as obnoxious as Diaz’s comment is, when I hear these stories, I get his point.
To be clear: I’m not advocating the fake fairness of television news (e.g. bringing in a flat-earth lunatic to balance out a panel of scientists); there’s nothing sacrosanct about “fair and balanced” and not every opinion is valid. A world with fewer Ann Coulter speeches is a better world. But shouting down a dissenting voice treads a little too close to Bill O’Reilly demanding, “Cut his mic!” when a guest disagrees with his opinion, while threats and mob violence are the language of a Trump rally. Bill Maher recently called this trend “the liberal version of a book-burning,” and it’s hard to argue that he’s wrong. This kind of behavior cedes the moral high ground. And isn’t that the point of opposing these assholes in the first place?
Now, I get the protests. By and large, the speakers being protested are terrible people and they’re invading a space these students with good reason believe is theirs. It’s also satisfying to experience Schadenfreude as cowardly bigots run scared when their verbal violence is met with actual violence. After all, it’s perfectly natural to say “We’re going to show them their kind of hate isn’t welcome here.” But don’t forget that Jose Diaz’s smug comment: “This underscores what we know to already be here.”
When these alt-right types are brought onto a liberal college campus, the event is not about exchange of ideas; it’s about eliciting a response — specifically, goading liberal students into making a scene. These speakers aren’t just political dissenters; they’re schoolyard bullies, doing everything they can think of to get a rise out of people and demonize them. As self-described “media manipulator” Ryan Holiday recently wrote, liberals are being by the alt-right. “When protesters try to revoke someone’s right to speak . . . you’re not intimidating anyone — you’re emboldening them.”
That’s not a recipe for success. And as the 2018 elections loom and American culture seems at stake, it ultimately has to be about winning.
In that light, here are three suggestions for better ways to handle these confrontations. If there are more that people can think of, please feel free to add to the conversation in the comments section.
1. Bring in speakers of your own to compete for bodies the same night.
None of these people — Coulter, Milo, Murray, Spencer, et al — are coming to Berkeley unannounced. They’re getting paid, scheduled, and advertised. Their whole point is to be heard, preferably by people who hate them. So instead of rallying the troops to put on a massive, 60’s-style protest at Milo’s site (just like he wants), rally the troops to bring in a counterweight across campus. Then advertise the hell out of it. Make it huge — Bernie Sanders-level crowds if possible — and let Milo speak to an empty house in a dead corner of campus.
Let that be the story in the morning: two events last night, one a huge success, the other a complete dud.
I’m not suggesting that you ignore the bully and he’ll go away. I understand not being able just to boycott events like these. Not only is it unsatisfying to stay home while you know a jerk like this is barking in your backyard, but it’s hard to pull off. Some people won’t be able to stop themselves and their vitriol will feed the troll anyway, even if you stay away.
But how different would the situation be if the College Republicans brought Milo to your campus, expecting 500 spectators and 5000 protesters, and instead, the little hate pageant played to 75 alt-right diehards, while, on the other side of campus, 6000 people packed in, standing room only, to see Jon Stewart do a live interview and Q&A? It could perhaps be paid for by several student groups pooling their money and roping in a local business or two.
John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon of the Sex Pistols (another reviled provocateur, though of very different politics) once supposedly said, “I think the most boring thing that could ever happen to me would be polite response.” I suspect Milo feels the same. He loves the vitriol. He feeds on the controversy. So instead of playing into his hands, underwhelm him, frustrate him. Bore him.
It’s hard to ignore someone so wretched, so don’t ignore him; reject him. Choose someone else, make it attractive, and leave the moral defective squealing into the void, “Hey, someone notice me!”
2. Buy the tickets up, then leave as soon as he starts talking.
This probably sounds similar to the Middlebury students who shouted down Charles Murray, but there’s an important difference. This wouldn’t be a loud, sign-waving, slogan-chanting protest. Instead, I’m suggesting that the left actually organize diligently and do this calmly, coolly, and completely. Not unlike the Notre Dame graduation walkout, only more.
Start by packing the house. Show up early, or if there are tickets to buy, make sure you get them. If there are 1000 seats, bring 1500 people. Make it an overflow crowd. Let the fire department declare that the hall is at capacity. Let them shut the doors and send the rest of the people home. Then, when Murray comes out, as soon as he starts talking, everyone calmly, quietly stand up and file out.
Importantly, there shouldn’t be a uniform — no anti-Nazi imagery, no placards, no hollering slogans as people walk. This should not look like a protest. Why? Because he’s come in the hopes of getting protested. Don’t give him what he wants. Don’t let him control the narrative by making a scene. Just vacate. Leave him talking to an empty house.
He’ll certainly try everything in the book to drag you back into the argument. He’ll yell hateful things at your backs; he’ll get smug and snide. He’ll try everything he can to provoke you. But that will be the sound of desperation. And you won’t look back.
As a side note, this suggestion may entail giving money to these assholes by purchasing tickets. But civil disobedience almost always entails a tradeoff: you accept something distasteful in service of accomplishing a bigger goal. Sometimes it’s jail or injury or worse. In this case, it’s just some money and you still manage to disrupt. And anyhow, these people are going to get paid anyway. None of them are coming to your campus uninvited, which means none of them are coming unpaid. As long as they’re getting paid anyway, the ticket sales are a small price for the frustration a controlled, orderly exit would cause.
Moreover, the embarrassing anti-climax of the empty auditorium would likely convince whoever paid the advance speaking fees to think twice before shelling out top dollar to bring in a vacuous loudmouth next time.
3. Challenge these people to moderated debates instead of talks
This might be the hardest to pull off, since people like Milo know they don’t stand for anything, so a debate (where ideas and issues are at stake) is meaningless to them. But with a figure like Coulter, who seems to fashion herself an intellectual somehow, it might be possible.
There are two stipulations, though:
- The debate ought to be moderated. That is, it needs time limits, an MC, and predetermined topics. Without these, the whole event could turn into a putdown competition against people with no moral (or real intellectual) center. Unless you’ve reanimated George Carlin to grind them to pieces, you would have set the thing up to be a wash, which Coulter et al would spin as validation. Don’t let that happen.
- More importantly, you need opponents that are smart enough, quick enough, fearless enough, and charming enough to handle this kind of fight. Smart or moral isn’t enough. You need someone who can argue about social politics at a high level, who has an intellectual framework that matters to them, and who, when pressed, can get super-nasty while still coming off as likeable. It’s not enough to be right; they need to expose the vacuity and backwardness of alt-right ideas while making the alt-right figures themselves look clumsy and uncool. I mentioned Jon Stewart above, but what I’m really picturing is the late Christopher Hitchens. Regardless of where he went ideologically on the Iraq War, he was a public intellectual with a killer instinct and an unflappable calm. (Hitchens highlights can be found all over YouTube, including here.)
Build a rolodex of charming pit-bulls that can be called up whenever you catch wind that the alt-right is coming to campus. Start challenging the Coulters of the world to put their ideas (and egos) on the line. Issue the challenge publically. Publicize the hell out of it. Be fearless. Either she’ll decline the challenge (exposing herself as the frightened bully we know she is), or she’ll accept it (exposing herself as the intellectual fraud and unlikeable jerk we also know her to be). In either case, that persona — the fearless trickster troublemaker, who drives the rigid, closed-minded, temper-tantrum left out of their minds — will be shattered. Nothing shuts up a loudmouth quite like being made to look foolish.
There are probably a dozen other ways to push back against the rising tide of hate making its way to campuses (and elsewhere) this year. Silencing it through brute force, though, is a dangerous option. As Keith Ellison recently pointed out, it normalizes a brick-wall response to disagreement: “The solution to bad speech is good speech; the solution to bad speech is more speech. Once you start saying, ‘You can’t talk,’ then whoever’s in power gets to impose that on whoever’s not in power and that’s not good.”
But force is also clunky and graceless. First off, it can backfire. See: the viral videos making the rounds on the right of Antifa militants getting beaten by right-wing thugs. But more to the point: if college teaches us anything, it’s that a vibrant intellectual community can bear dissent without collapsing, and that the answer to irresponsible use of power (such as bad acting from a bully pulpit) isn’t greater force but persuasion. It should teach us to be the types of leaders we want to have (i.e. smart, organized, brave, stylish, thoughtful, take-no-shit adults), not the types of leaders 2016 stuck us with (i.e. angry, simple-minded trolls).
Play these hands correctly, and the university will again be a locus for debate, intellectual diversity, and free thought, rather than a laboratory for the worst people on earth to manipulate the rising liberal generation into an illiberal mob.
Chuck Carlise is based in Santa Cruz, California.
