Free Speech and the Antifa

I'm no fan of Ann Coulter.  I don't disagree with what she says so much as I don't like her delivery. Same with Milo Yiannopoulos.  Both are conservatives who use shock and awe to get their messages across.  I prefer those who are more understated, like the late conservative George Will.

Still, the so-called Antifa (which, I finally figured out, is the cool way to shorten Anti-Fascism...) has summarily prevented both Ms. Coulter and Mr. Yiannopoulos from giving a speech which they were invited to do by campus conservative groups at the University of California at Berkeley.  The irony is that the free speech movement, at least insofar as modern times is concerned, traces its roots back to UC Berkeley.  For free speech to be quashed there is not only sad, it's dangerous.

The liberal zealots who prevented the two from speaking claim that they are against hatred and threats, which they also claim aren't protected speech.  That's interesting,  First, hateful speech is protected so long as it's not inciting violence.  They only have to look so far as the Nazis' right to march through Skokie, Illinois, a largely Jewish community, to see how protected hate speech is.  The same would go for the Westboro Baptist protesters who picket veteran funerals.   If they're claiming that it's constitutional to prevent hate speech, they need a refresher course.  And while they're at it, if they're going to go after hate speech, where are they when Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and just about any Islamic imam speaks?

As could be expected, the MSM stands by without leveling any criticism.  If we were to play what Sharyl Attkisson calls The Replacement Game, and substitute Republican/conservative actors for what the Democratic/liberal actors are doing, there would be such an outcry that it would dominate the news for months.  What's more, it would finally justify the sobriquet that these vandals have given themselves, because were they really set upon by conservative groups preventing their right to speak, they would be engaged in anti-fascist behavior that anyone with functioning grey matter would applaud.  Yet because it's liberal nabobs silencing conservative speakers, the MSM yawns and moves on to the next non-newsworthy story that warms the cockles of one's heart while distracting them from the real news that's fit to print.

If even a liberal firebrand such as Bill Maher gets it, why doesn't the liberal establishment...one might ask?

The answer is simple:  By having the unhinged liberal fringe elements taking on the conservative ruling party, the liberal establishment can sit back and wait for the conservatives to overreact, commit some huge error publicly that the MSM can then pounce on and justify the claims that these provocateurs have been making about fighting fascism.  Enough clueless moderates then switch their votes in disgust at the mid-term elections, the Congress goes back to being split or totally democratic, and then Hollywood gins up for the 2020 elections to get its candidate elected.  It's all quite Machiavellian.

But what about free speech?

Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes famously wrote that one cannot yell Fire in a crowded theater, leading to time, place and manner restrictions on the First Amendment.  Yet, hatred alone is insufficient to invoke censorship.  What these vandals are doing is using extra-judicial means to shut down conservative speakers.  The MSM is aiding and abetting them by not reporting this as a criminal news story and selling it instead as political protest.

Somewhere, Voltaire must be spinning in his grave.

(c) 2017 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles