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February 2nd 2017
God, don’t you hate being right? I know I do.
Yesterday I put out this video that a storm is coming. Well, it appears to have broken in blood and fire. Over UC Berkeley, in California, tonight. I was doing a call-in show, was interrupted, and had to switch gears quickly because violent protests have broken out in the California campus over plans for the Breitbart news editor Milo Yiannopoulos to do what? Yes. Give a speech that people on the left don’t like. This is at the University of California at Berkeley, the home of the original Free Speech Movement. This was the last stop on Milo’s college speaking tour, and I thank him again for coming on this show.
Now the Berkeley Chancellor, Chancellor, that seems familiar… The Berkeley Chancellor and Intergalactic spineless crap weasel Nicholas Dirks said that, well, y’know, he was expecting protests to be substantial but don’t worry, we’ve got really tight security, so everything should be totally fine. He said, “In our view, Mr. Yiannopoulos is a troll and provocateur who uses odious behavior in part to entertain, but also to deflect any serious engagement with ideas.” This is what this guy wrote last week to Berkeley’s staff and 37,500 students. Didn’t really know there were that many smart people in California to begin with… But that’s what he wrote. So clearly Dirks really really doesn’t like anyone who deflects serious engagement with ideas. Let’s find out more of what he had to say. He said, “He,” Milo, “has been widely and rightly condemned for engaging in hate speech.” Ah. See there, there it is. Mr. Dirks, if you don’t like it when people avoid engaging with ideas, I don’t think you solve the problem by just labeling something hate speech. It’s not really engaging with the ideas – not an argument. Now, the person who’s not engaging with ideas that you’re looking for might be in the mirror, if indeed you in fact cast any kind of reflection at all, or have the spine to rouse yourself up to the adult mirror. So he kinda went on to say, well, as a public university, Berkeley’s administrators are legally bound by the First Amendment to protect free speech, meaning even offensive and hate speech cannot be banned or censored, Dirks said, sounds to me somewhat regretfully. Oooh, that damn First Amendment that many thousands shed their blood in order to enshrine and achieve, boy, I wish we could find some way to bypass it, but I don’t think we can. That’s my read on it.
So what happened? Well, the protest turned feral around 6 pm. A group of demonstrators dressed in the usual stylish head-to-toe black, like others in the world, started storming the barricades. They were wearing those kerchiefs, those masks, soaked in milk. Why? Because they missed their mommies? Probably. But also, it protects them, you see, against tear gas. So they emerge from the crowd and began tearing down the security defenses. They were knocking down barriers, slashing through the zip ties and so on. As events escalated, trees were set on fire, people beaten up, fireworks launched at buildings, and so on. The event ended up being canceled. And Milo Yiannopoulos has since been evacuated by his security team. And apparently there are also reports of people throwing rocks at the university. Ah, just like John Milton suggested in Areopagitica – throwing rocks at the university. If that’s not the before and after shot of the ape and the spaceship in 2001, I don’t know what it is. But at least they weren’t throwing their own shit at the university, which probably will happen next time, I know bags of urine have been used to launch at people lining up to see right-wing speakers that the left disagrees with. Throwing rocks at the university. Ahh.
So. Police reportedly responded by opening fire with – mmm – nonlethal bullets. The campus has been placed on complete lockdown, students ordered to take shelter. Not active shooters, just leftists who don’t like what’s being said. As Milo was waiting in the student union to give his speech, the protesters tore down the barricades and began throwing entire fences at the student union, smashing the glass. Other rioters and politically violently motivated assholes toppled a generator and a light pole. They scrawled ‘MILO’ across the light pole with spray paint, and then set it on fire. Fireworks were lit and shot at college buildings. There’s video – and this is all in flux, this is just the information I have at the moment – there’s video you can see on Twitter of rioters smashing ATMs with hammers and bats. It’s good, liberating all of that proletariat money to be used to buy more, what? Rocks, hammers, and bats! I’m assuming.
You can see video of a young blonde woman being pepper sprayed simply for wearing a MAGA hat, and a woman trying to give an interview and being attacked. Other Trump supporters you can see being pepper sprayed, punched, and beaten. The violent leftists have chased and beaten a man unconscious at these riots. One driver has run down the Milo rioters near UC Berkeley. And spray painted on the buildings you can see “Kill fascists”, “Kill Trump”. Berkeley PD recently announced that rioters are surrounding a car, they dragged the driver out and are beating him. And one of the unnamed protesters said, “We’re anarchists! This is WAR!” And I think people are really getting that message.
What happens next might not be to your pleasure. Now, Milo, in a powerful speech he recorded and posted to Facebook, said that he did not feel that the police were particularly assertive. Mike Cernovich has reported that they may have received a stand down order, or let the feral jackals tear at the brains of thinking people. Milo wrote this statement, he said, “I have been evacuated from the UC Berkeley campus after violent left-wing protesters tore down barricades, lit fires, threw rocks and Roman candles at the windows, and breached the ground floor of the building. My team and I are safe, but the event has been canceled. I’ll let you know more when the facts become clear. One thing we do know for sure, the left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.” Yeah, you know, it’s never a great speech when the word “breached” is being used.
Now of course, as the old saying goes, the fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists, and they say everyone that they dislike is a Nazi, and must be shut down and punched and beaten. Ironically and tragically, Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay Jew, well, Nazis had problems with many people, two of the groups they had problems with were gays and Jews. So if you’re attacking a gay Jew while calling other people Nazis… Well, the only thing blacker than their hearts and their uniforms is the irony they cloak themselves in. I think that the Nazi you’re looking for might be coming from inside the balaclava.
Now, why are they doing it? Well, they’re doing this because they’re hateful bigots who don’t have any arguments. But there’s a real purpose behind this, to act as a political violence motive behind this, which is to prevent talks in the future from being held at campuses. Let’s say you’re the next dean or you’re the next chancellor or provost, and someone comes along and says, oh yeah, we really want this right-wing speaker or Milo or whoever it is to come and speak at your campus. You’d be like, hmm, I don’t really know about that so much. That’s the purpose, that’s the purpose, is to keep people away from these events. I mean, there was a 500-seat theater that Milo was going to speak at, it was sold out very very quickly, so people who want to come hear these ideas will probably think twice. I mean, who wants to go and risk having their skull caved in by some lunatic or trapped inside some violent melee or maelstrom just to hear some ideas. Oh, I’ll watch it on YouTube later. Well, of course, this is the whole point. Keep people away from these ideas and keep people from wanting to host events that have these ideas.
And I don’t know why I need to say this, but it does seem to be something, because y’know, they’re still being called protesters by some of the mainstream media outlets. y’know, if you’re at the point where you’re setting fires, lighting off fireworks, attacking ATMs, beating people half to death, dragging them out of their cars, pepper spraying them, y’know, you can see tweets of people hiding in bathrooms having been pepper sprayed or maced, if you’re at that point, you know what it is? It is not an argument. I’ve been saying this for ten years, if we give up the argument, we give up civilization. If we lose the words, we get the extra S and the words turn into swords. That’s how it goes! We speak or we beat. We reason with each other, or we dash rocks against buildings and people. We either stay human, or devolve to simian savagery. For ten years, I’ve been out here in the public square, taking the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and I have been saying what is an argument, the necessity of argument, I’m working on a book about how to make an argument and what an argument is. I know that the argument is civilization, the argument is life. The argument is civility, the argument is humanity. The argument is peace. We lose the argument, we lose the debate, we lose the ideas, we lose the free speech, we lose everything. Everything vanishes. Free speech underlies everything else that we hold dear. We lose that, there’s nothing left to defend. And people have been… people have been telling me this for a long time. Not everyone, but some of you, and I, I’ve noticed, I’ve been listening, and maybe you’re right. I hesitate, because I so much don’t want this to be true. But perhaps tonight has brought it home to me, the possibility.
And I need you to let me know, let me know in the comments below, let me know what you think. I’m appalled but… I always said I was going to condition my ideas according to the evidence, according to the facts, according to what is. Maybe tonight is the sign. Maybe it’s happened. Maybe the time… God, I don’t even want to say it…
Maybe the time for arguments is past. Maybe this battle has moved beyond words, maybe other people need to finish it. Perhaps my job… is over. Perhaps I have failed, or the world has failed, perhaps I am done. For ten years, I’ve been saying, not an argument. Tonight perhaps it has been made clear there are no more arguments to be made. Let me know what you think, hmm?
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