Making the repulsive sympathetic

by | Sep 13, 2017 | Editor's Blog, Politics | 9 comments

It takes a special kind of stupid to make Ann Coulter and Steve Bannon sympathetic characters, but that’s what protesters at the University of California at Berkeley are about to do. Coulter and Bannon are planning to join right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannapolous at “Free Speech Week” the last week in September. Left-wing groups, who shut down an event featuring Yiannapolous with destructive protests in February, plan to protest the event. They also plan to protest conservative commentator Ben Shapiro tomorrow evening.

“I’m expecting a riot,” said one College Republican. He means he’s hoping for a riot. And so are Bannon and Coulter. They get to become champions of free speech while the protesters play into the hands of conservatives who brand them as authoritarian and anti-democratic. Democrats and progressive organizations should get in front of the debate and welcome the right-wingers to Berkeley. Shutting down speakers never works in the long run. It just makes people even as vile as Yiannapolous victims of extremism.

The right is baiting the left and the left is taking it, hook, line and sinker. The protesters are sure that they’re stopping fascism. They’re not. They’re empowering it.

When middle America sees violent protests stopping speakers in public forums, they’re going to side with the speakers, regardless of their point of view. People with sticks wearing black ski masks evoke memories of rioters, not freedom fighters. Instead of speaking to a few dozen conservative students at the university, Bannon and Coulter will gain a national stage when TV reporters ask for their take on the rioters. It’s a huge win for the right-wing extremists who appear civil and mainstream compared to the destructive protesters

Instead of organizing and putting people in the polls, the left is quickly becoming a protest movement where protest is an end in itself and property destruction and violence are often by-products. Marching is a lot easier than door-knocking and phone banking. If they really want to become an effective movement, they should take a page out of the TEA Party and put their efforts into electoral politics. Many of the complaints they have come from GOP victories in local, state and federal elections since 2010. Shutting down public events isn’t going to slow right-wing momentum. Shutting them down at the ballot box will.

9 Comments

  1. THEODORE ZIOLKOWSKI

    It takes a special kind of stupid to make Ann Coulter and Steve Bannon sympathetic characters, but that’s what protesters at the University of California at Berkley are about to do. Coulter and Bannon are planning to join right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannapolous at “Free Speech Week” the last week in September. Left-wing groups, who shut down an event featuring Yiannapolous with destructive protests in February, plan to protest the event. They also plan to protest conservative commentator Ben Shapiro tomorrow evening.

    IT WOULD TAKE A SPECIAL KIND OF STUPID TO NOT DO ANYTHING AND LET THEM APPEAR AND HOLD THEIR LIARS CONVENTION OR EVENT AND SPREAD ALL OF THEIR HATRED AND LIES UNCHALLENGED. THAT ALONE WOULD PROVIDE THEM WITH CREDIBILITY AND MAKE PEOPLE WHO READ ANY ARTICLES THAT ARE WRITTEN, ANY VIDEOS THAT ARE MADE OF THE EVENT BELIEVE THEM.

    IF MORE PEOPLE SHOW UP IN OPPOSITION THAN IN SUPPORT, IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THEY DO NOT HAVE THE SUPPORT OF A MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE.

    THESE PEOPLE WILL HAVE PAID ACTORS ACT AS LEFT-WING ACTIVISTSAND HAVE THEM MISBEHAVE SO THEY CAN SPREAD THOSE LIES.

  2. Christopher Lizak

    People should be protesting Nazis like Bannon and Coulter.

    But violence is just lazy. It’s a very, very blunt instrument and almost always counter-productive, because the narrative is so easily coopted,

    Which is why the cops like to use Agent Provocateurs to discredit mass movements. I’ve eye-witnessed those black blockers smashing windows, and when the rest of the demonstrators turned on them, they ran away, unimpeded, into and through the police lines. I’ve seen it happen twice in DC now, and I’m sure they’ve received the same memos in Berkeley.

    The Puppetistas are ten times more effective than the Black Bloc. “Because when puppets are outlawed, only outlaws will have puppets.”

    • Avram Friedman

      Yes, I agree. The provocateurs are a different story altogether. But, the media has been criticizing those who are trying to block the right-wing events on campus, without giving the full story about the unprovoked right-wing violence that has been occurring before, during and after these events.

    • Christopher Lizak

      My understanding is that the AP’s are not cops, but unpaid contractors – often attendees of the local police academy. Other times it’s guys on the Informers list – that need to do favors to stay in the good graces of their paymasters.

      But that’s all hearsay.

      I have some video footage of one of the black blockers crossing police lines. But is that really “solid proof that will stand up in court”? Hell, you could show the other cops laughing and joking with the guy, and the guy graduating from the police academy six months later (assuming he wasn’t, you know, MASKED) – but is THAT really “solid proof that will stand up in court”? He wasn’t a cop at the time. He can say he became a cop because of his experience at the demonstration. The burden of proof when it comes to law enforcement is friggin’ mountainous – there is a never-ending supply of get-off-the-hook procedures and sympathetic union and oversight officials.

      And it’s been going on for centuries, not just years.

      • Christopher Lizak

        I guess Conintelpro doesn’t count, since that was the FBI. Or are they a “misguided political group”?

        Yes, I am familiar with how the Informant System and Plea Deals are supposed to work. I am also familiar with how they work in practice when you start down that slippery slope – like with Whitey Bulger and the Boston FBI. I guess we can say the system worked there, eventually. Not that that is much solace to the families of the people he murdered while he was working with law enforcement.

        You seem to be saying: “Keep your mouth shut and nobody will get hurt.”

        Which sounds more like Organized Crime than Representative Democracy.

        My actual point was that “left-wing violence” can be generated by groups with a very different agenda than the organizers (such as they are) at Berkeley. We’ve seen how it works in the past, and there is no reason to believe it ended in the Nixon years.

        What Coulter and Bannon are doing is far more sophisticated and coordinated than meets the eye. “Liberal-baiting” is so easy when the reaction you want is already part of the script.

  3. annamaria

    Sometimes the hardest thing is doing NOTHING! Let them come to the premise and say what they want to say. My only restriction would be that only presently enrolled students can attend. Let’s see how many right wingers are in Berkley! Take a picture of them and move on with your life. Sometimes just not giving a platform of them feeling the victim is the best path you can pick!

  4. Avram friedman

    Not so black and white. The right-wing thugs in Berkeley have been exercising violent methods of intimidation against their opponents.
    The issue is not that their First Amendment rights are being threatened as has been portrayed in the corporate news media. If Thomas Mills had bothered to do a little more investigation before issuing this condemnation of the victims, he would have discovered that the Nazi’s and White Supremacists who are leading this campaign have been targeting members of the opposition for physical threats of violence, physically following and harassing in the days leading up to their scheduled events. These are not just “free speech” events. They are events meant to terrorize the local landscape wherever they go. These are not activities protected under the First Amendment. These are the same tactics used by Hitler and his Brown Shirts and a prescription for taking political control through intimidation and violence. They have their leader in power and he’s allowing them to run rampant without legal consequence. And now, you’re playing right into their hands. Wake up and stop blaming those who have the courage to stand up to the brutal thugs while you sit comfortably in your living room.

  5. Jay Ligon

    A First Amendment- respecting society cannot be too thin-skinned, and the Supreme Court has ruled again and again in favor of protections for offensive speech – finding that pornography, subject to local mores, is protected, and that vulgar speech is protected, especially when comments are political.

    The Nazi right wing pushes that tolerance to its limits, hoping to be in a position to point out hypocrisy from the left. All offensive speech is not protected, however. There are “fighting words” and statements which incite people to commit violence. Those statements are not protected. The famous shouting of “fire” in a crowded theater could cause injury or death and does not enjoy Constitutional protection. Some speech is criminal such as agreeing to commit a crime. But, in a society like ours, we have to adjust to obnoxious things that some people say or write.

    When a speaker stands before an audience embracing hatred, Nazi sympathies, racist ideas, sexual slurs and other antisocial beliefs, what are the free speech rights for the members of the audience? Is there a free speech right to disagree? Is it wise for a speaker to say such outrageous things, like advocating sexual abuse of children, such that the speaker is in danger of being beaten up by some members of the audience.

    Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Ann Coulter are kindred spirits. They not only say outrageous things which are not even in the same zip code as the truth or fact, they each seem to be desperate for attention. They delight in creating anger and rage, and they will say literally anything to gin up the rage and become the center of controversy. Each of them appears to be full of self importance and arrogance, entitled to the spotlight where they play their hits – hatred of liberals, a finger in the eye of democracy and much much worse.

    The problem with banning outrageous speakers like these is that they gain more notoriety and attention. If we would let them talk their trash preferably to empty seats in large auditoriums. Anger and hatred to not discourage them, only indifference saps their power.

    Here are some samples of the wit and wisdom of the right wing intelligencia and why we should let them speak their peace and forget about them:

    Ann Coulter on Jews: “We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.” –arguing that it would be better if we were all Christian.

    Ann Coulter on Women’s Sufferage: “And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women… I mean, you do see it’s the party of women and ‘We’ll pay for health care and tuition and day care — and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?'”

    Ann Coulter on the 9/11 Widows: “I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s deaths so much.” -on 9/11 widows who have been critical of the Bush administration. “These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies.”

    Ann Coulter on Justice John Paul Stevens: “We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee.”

    Ann Coulter on the Middle East: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.”

    Ann Coulter on whatever: “I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.”

    Former Breitbart Editor Milo Yiannapolous:

    Told an audience in Boulder, CO, that all liberals are ugly, fat people should be deported, feminism is cancer, and being a Muslim is a “lifestyle choice.”

    Said: “Muslims are allowed to get away with almost anything.”

    Yiannopoulos defended the idea of “13-year-olds” having sex with “older men,” referencing his own story that he benefited from a priest molesting him when he was a teenager.

    He was banned on Twitter after he launched a racist, sexist harassment campaign against black actress Leslie Jones, whom he described as “barely literate” and “a man.”

    Steve Bannon, owner of Breitbart:

    Bannon called Paul Ryan a “limp-dick motherfucker who was born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation”

    Megyn Kelly: “She’s pure evil… I’m gonna unchain the dogs.”

    Hillary Clinton: “Our backup strategy is to fuck [Hillary Clinton] up so bad that she can’t govern. If she gets 43 percent of the vote, she can’t claim a mandate.”

    Birth Control: “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy,”

    On Jews: ” …the biggest problem he had with Archer (a private school) is the number of Jews that attend. He said that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiney brats’ and that he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews, his ex-wife said.

    Not the brightest bulbs in the world. They fill the air with vile, blue language for the purpose of gaining our attention. They die and wither away when we turn our attention to someone who matters, someone with something to say.

  6. Mooser

    I agree with you on this. The reason that people such as the Coultergeist choose Berkeley and other supposedly “liberal” places is because they want to provoke exactly this kind of reaction, and we liberals always fall for it with great outrage and puffery. We should welcome the Coulters of the world onto the stage and then show how ridiculous they really are, instead of trying to shut them up by protesting, We play right into their hands when we react like this.

Related Posts

GET UPDATES

Get the latest posts from PoliticsNC delivered right to your inbox!

You have Successfully Subscribed!