The College Fix

Your speech doesn’t count because you threaten ‘our right to exist’

After violent “black bloc” protesters forced the University of California-Berkeley to cancel Milo Yiannopoulos’s event last month, Tennessee lawmakers introduced a so-called “Milo bill” to require its own public universities to punish students who try to squelch the speech of others.

That’s a bad idea, because such laws would effectively stop protesters from using violent tactics to squelch speech, anarchist Lacy MacAuley told The Chronicle of Higher Education.

A member of the D.C. Antifascist coalition who “has provided media representation for anarchist and leftist activists for about 12 years,” MacAuley admitted that the Berkeley rioters were a “blend of students and nonstudents.” (Media reports largely blamed outsiders, though the point of black-bloc tactics is preventing police from identifying rioters).

MacAuley not only defended the value of violence and property destruction, but justified it based on racism:

Colleges that really protect platforms for individuals who are already rich, white males — who already have their voices amplified and valued much more than other people’s voices — are going to see, probably, much more resistance.

We are not protesting because we don’t respect free speech. We’re protesting precisely because we have already heard these people. We have already listened, and we believe them, and we believe that they pose a threat to our right to exist.

In other words, publicly mocking left-wing activists (as Yiannopoulos does) is a “threat to our right to exist.”

Proud to have been a part of the #DisruptJ20 team. We set a tone of resistance to racism, misogyny, bigotry, Trump agenda. Let's keep going! pic.twitter.com/cPRktsdlMp

— Lacy MacAuley 🏴🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 (@lacymacauley) January 24, 2017

And today’s protesters can’t handle the thought of being punished for violating others’ rights, she makes clear:

[Bills like Tennessee’s] likely would have a chilling effect on protest at a time when we in our country absolutely need to be protesting. At a time that is so crucial to rising up, that would be the wrong action. It is valuable to consider that all of our systems, even in academia, absolutely privilege the speech of rich, white males and others who are somewhere on that ladder of privilege.

So there you go, state lawmakers.

Force your public institutions to protect the speech of everyone – including your conservative students and faculty and their invited guests – and the anarchists admit that their threats and riots (“protest”) will subside, because they are afraid of punishment.

Read the story.

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