The College Fix

UPDATED

WEST LAFAYETTE – “Trans hate kills” a crowd of over 100 protesters chanted outside of a speech by conservative commentator Michael Knowles on Thursday evening at Purdue University.

The protesters came out to oppose Knowles, a Catholic conservative who has been critical of gender ideology. Flyers posted ahead of his speech accused Knowles of wanting a “genocide” of “trans people.”

The Purdue University College Republicans hosted him along with the national Young America’s Foundation.

The comments are apparently in reference to a speech the Daily Wire host gave several weeks ago at the Conservative Political Action Conference where he said he wanted to see an end to gender ideology.

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The campus Young Democratic Socialists for America organized the protest. The group did not respond to a Wednesday request for comment from The College Fix via Instagram on what it wanted the university to do about Purdue and what the socialist group’s specific objections were.

Other favored chants were “F**k you fascist” and “When trans rights are under attack, what do we do, stand up, fight back.” Some activists later entered the student union where Knowles spoke and stood outside the ballroom repeatedly yelling “F**k you fascist” for most of the 45 minute long speech and Q & A.

“The presence of Michael Knowles on a university campus should cause embarrassment to anyone who values intellectual honesty and free inquiry,” YDSA Purdue wrote prior to the event, encouraging people to attend its protest.

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“[F]or the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely—the whole preposterous ideology—at every level,” Knowles said at CPAC in early March.

Knowles told The Fix in a phone interview prior to his speech that he would “encourage [the protesters] to read any text on the meaning of fascism” and then to read “any book whatsoever” which would help “cure them” of their “demonstrated ignorance.”

“The protesters, the transgender advocates get all wrapped up in these high-flying questions of rights and affirmation, and entitlement, but the first question one has to ask about any matter of the human condition ‘is it true,’” he told The Fix.

“Transgenderism is not true, transgenderism puts forth a false anthropology that denies the reality of biological sex and the unity of body and soul,” Knowles told The Fix.

The actual speech went off without any disruptions, as a heavy police presence and tight security ensured no problems.

The president of the campus Republicans told The Fix during an in-person interview after the event that there was a “great turnout” with all 400 seats being filled and another 100 watching from an overflow room. He said the rumors of a walkout from the speech never materialized.

Spencer Johnson said he was “overall really happy” with the event. He said he hopes everyone “had a great time” and was glad the event went “smoothly.”

Prior to the event, LGBT activists circulated flyers that claimed Knowles wanted “the wholesale elimination of all trans people.”

“Knowles stands for the wholesale elimination of all trans people, saying that ‘Transgenderism must be eradicated’ and describing hormone therapy as ‘weird occult sexual rituals,’” an explainer document from the unidentified activists stated. “Knowles is not some harmless idiot, he has a youtube channel with over one million subscribers and has a show on Ben Shapiro’s news outlet ‘The Daily Wire.’”

“For the sake of the trans students on campus, and for all of us, we must oppose his genocidal rhetoric by containing its spread,” the explainer document stated. “If ideas such as these continue to gain support, it will not just be trans people, but all minoritized people that will be targeted as the source of a problem to be eliminated.”

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The document encouraged readers to oppose Knowles on Thursday. “BE LOUD! STOP MICHAEL KNOWLES! DO NOT LET HIS FASCIST RHETORIC ON CAMPUS! PROTECT TRANS STUDENTS! PROTECT OURSELVES.”

Knowles began his speech by holding up some of the flyers and at several times turned to where the protesters were outside of the doors to make his points.

Editor’s note: The article has been updated to put the attribution of the claims about Knowles at the front of the headline.

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