Those protests at UC-Berkeley were an abomination even before they turned violent: a mob demanding that an invited guest be denied the chance to speak.
Yes, the guest was Milo Yiannopoulos — a performance artist who specializes in shocking the liberal academic bourgeoisie. And he planned to provoke — to denounce the school’s “sanctuary” policies and call for the prosecution of school officials who supposedly endanger other students with those policies. But if the only “threat” was a speech, no one had to attend.
The city’s mayor, Jesse Arreguin, promoted the censorship drive, tweeting that afternoon: “Using speech to silence marginalized communities and promote bigotry is unacceptable. Hate speech isn’t welcome in our community.” That all but invited the area’s notorious “black bloc” radicals to join in and make it a riot — complete with assaults on suspected Trump or Milo supporters.
Which left Arreguin pleading, “Destruction and violence are contrary to progressive values and have no place in our community.”
Got it? It’s “progressive” to silence anyone you disagree with, but not to beat them up.
No: 1,500 people chanting “no safe space for racists” and “this is war” about a speech expressing a minority view (at Berkeley, anyway) isn’t standing up to power, it’s wielding power to crush dissent.
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