Berkeley: After Antifa rampage, Mayor wants Conservative Free Speech Week canceled
Free Speech is the ultimate provocation.
Two days ago black-clad Antifa thugs beat people in Berkeley as police mostly stood on the sidelines, as we documented in Journalist amid Antifa Berkeley Riots: “Police have completely disappeared … People getting beaten up”.
ABC News reported that police were ordered not to intervene:
Berkeley Police Chief Andrew Greenwood said officers were told not to actively confront the anarchists. He applauded officers’ restraint, saying it forestalled greater violence.
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Areguin, while criticizind the Antifa violence, approved of the police stepping back and effectively ceding the streets:
The Mayor now also wants UC-Berkeley to cancel a Free Speech Week for fear of more Antifa violence.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports, After melees, Berkeley mayor asks Cal to cancel right-wing Free Speech Week:
In the aftermath of a right-wing rally Sunday that ended with anarchists chasing attendees from a downtown park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley on Monday to cancel conservatives’ plans for a Free Speech Week next month to avoid making the city the center of more violent unrest.
“I don’t want Berkeley being used as a punching bag,” said Arreguin, whose city has been the site of several showdowns this year between, on the one hand, the left and its fringe anarchist wing, and on the other, supporters of President Trump who at times have included white nationalists.
“I am concerned about these groups using large protests to create mayhem,” Arreguin said. “It’s something we have seen in Oakland and in Berkeley.”
The perpetrators in this equation for the Mayor? The two speakers invited, Milo and Ann Coulter:
“I’m very concerned about Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter and some of these other right-wing speakers coming to the Berkeley campus, because it’s just a target for black bloc to come out and commit mayhem on the Berkeley campus and have that potentially spill out on the street,” Arreguin said, referring to militants who have also been called anti-fascists or antifa.
This is not an aberration.
An astounding Op-Ed a week ago in The Washington Post by a Skidmore College professor Jennifer Delton laid out the intellectual foundation for suppressing conservative (or rather, non-liberal) speech, When ‘free speech’ becomes a political weapon:
Here’s the dilemma college presidents face in the fall: Either uphold free speech on campus and risk violent counterprotests, or ban conservative provocateurs and confirm the “freedom of speech” crisis on campuses. Either way their institution’s legitimacy is undermined….
This impossible dilemma is no accident. It has been part of a strategy, deployed first by conservatives and perfected by the alt-right….
[W]e know about the alt-right is that its provocateurs seek to bait liberal institutions by weaponizing the concept of free speech, which is an issue that divides the liberal left. It is true that higher education has brought much of this on itself through the extreme policing of speech and tolerance of student protesters who shut down speakers with whom they disagree. But that doesn’t diminish the extent to which the alt-right and conservatives are using “free speech” to attack and destroy colleges and universities, which have long promoted different variations of the internationalist, secular, cosmopolitan, multicultural liberalism that marks the thinking of educated elites of both parties.
Silencing non-liberal voices is not a bug, its a feature.
[Featured Image: YouTube]
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But of course.
When that guy ran over people in Charlottesville the second thing they cried for was ‘gun control’
Better idea – cancel the election results that erected that mayor…..
I posted this on another thread earlier…
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/29/berkeley-mayor-school-doesnt-shut-right-wing-speakers-next-month-antifa-will-riot/
“I obviously believe in freedom of speech, but there is a line between freedom of speech and then posing a risk to public safety,” the mayor said. “That is where we have to really be very careful — that while protecting people’s free-speech rights, we are not putting our citizens in a potentially dangerous situation and costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing the windows of businesses.”
Wul, yah. It’s YOUR job to hold that line via the use of the rule of law, dummy.
No conservative speaker “poses a risk to public safety”. ONLY the thugs of the AntiFA do that, and you know…or better know…how to shut that down. No conservative speaking will, per force, break any law by appearing. But you know damn good and well that AntiFA WILL, because that is their mode of operation.
HERE is where the civil rights lawsuit is filed, and injunctive relief pled for. Obtain an ORDER from the courts that mandates that officials keep the peace, and that they provide protection to the speaker(s), audience, and the property.
This kind of law being not in my wheelhouse, I open it up for discussion…
Rags speaks of the rule of law. Enforce it, or do not. There are consequences to your choice. To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, the law is to protect the criminal – not the populace. It would be wise to not take the protection from the criminal, or the consequnce could be extreme.
Free speach is a base…the most repugnant is the most protected. To take from one is to burden the other. It can not be infringed.
Stating the law is there to protect the criminal is not accurate by any means.
The laws against criminal conduct exists to protect the citizenry at large.
The laws of criminal procedure and rights under the Constitution protect the accused – who might not always be guilty, and are thus might not be criminals (remember George Zimmerman and that psycho prosecutor Angela Corey; and that psycho prosecutor Mike Nifong?)
Perhaps the only laws that protect criminals are laws giving convicts certain rights in prisons.
Nope. Reynolds’s argument is that all laws exist to protect criminals. In a state of nature criminals don’t get away with anything. Where there are no laws there’s rough justice. Our ancestors invented laws because they wanted a better way, one that is fairer to accused and actual criminals.
If the left has Che on their shirts, I want Tank Man on mine from Tiananmen Square advocating free speech.
In fact, it ought to be worn by patriots at all the Antifa roits/attacks to remind the media and the local governments why it matters that free speech is important.
There is also a part of me that wants something like what Eisenhower did to insure the civil rights of black students. I think Antifa needs to be brought down hard by the police so they think twice about interfering with free speech.
Just my thoughts on the subject.
I am still confused about how Free Speech became exclusively a rightwing issue. But, clearly liberals just turned against the concept.
very simple the MSM IS LIB-RULE, so they ‘own’ the airwaves.
the exception is talk radio and FOX News (only – and they are ‘fair and balanced’).
so when the left. far left and antifa (what an ironic name for fascists) own tv and much of the internet /google, Facebook etc./ they have no need for ‘free speech’. for them to support free speech is to allow the other side any platform to get a point across.
SPOT E’FFIN ON Rags!
But this is the exact situation the Berkeley mayor and chief wanted.
The Assassination of Free Speech by the Coward Jesse Areguin.
A “free speech week” has no obvious purpose except to serve as bait for violent lefties. That is, it’s an open invitation to vigilantes, either self-styled or organized—and they don’t even have to get there on the right day if they’re looking for “anti-fa” to attack.
A vendetta society is right around the corner. This is pretty much inevitable when law enforcement fails. And “standing down” is failure, even though it sounds oh-so-official; it’s just a lazy form of “running away”.
Of course the press will go on and on about right-wing violence. But that’s what it’s doing even when there isn’t any. So from that angle the Right has little to lose by … what did Obama say? “If your opponents bring a knife to a fight, you should bring a gun.”
I don’t personally recommend shooting anybody, but I can hear the countdown clock ticking.
You do not understand the police mentality or hunting dangerous game.
Police officers are, by and large, in the business to maintain order and to keep the peace. And, though the pay scale is much better than it was, they still get paid squat for the skill set that they have to develop and maintain for the job and the crap they have to endure from the rest of society. So, the vast majority of LEOs very much want every single mask wearing, black shirted thug in jail, or the hospital, for Christmas. Why? Because these people are a threat to the loved ones of those officers. And, I know this might let some people down, that is who LEOs are in the job to protect and that is who is threatened by the actions of the thugs.
Now about hunting. When you have a dangerous animal that you need to eliminate, you can either track it or lure it to you. In the case of the black shirts, they go to great pains to keep their identities a secret. This makes it difficult to track them. But, if you lure them to a location, using some kind of bait, it makes it much easier to surround them, like Custer at the Little Big Horn, and capture them. This makes it easier to identify them. Which makes it easier to track them. Which makes it easier to identify unknown confederates. Which makes it easier to arrest them. And so on.
One final thing. The rank and file LE community is angry and frustrated over these incidents. So, should they be given free rein to enforce the law where the black shirts are concerned, it will likely go badly for anyone who resists arrest.
I know a little something about hunting dangerous game. Having hunted elephant in Zimbabwe. Zim dandy. The thing about dangerous game is the people who have to live with that blankety blank will betray it to you. It helped a lot when I tracked my elephant. The farmers looked out for me.
I know people in the You Ess of Aye will think I did an evil deed. But one elephant can destroy an entire crop that a subsistence farmer needs to rely on for a year. They got the meat. The other two escaped to what I hope is a better life in the Omay river valley.
I hunted Omay north.
I feel the need o back up everything I say. unless someone should doubt me.
http://www.martinpieterssafaris.com/hunting-areas-zimbabwe/
Note: I didn’t hunt with them.
Seattle PD rank and file stood there and watched while girls were assaulted and a young man, Kris Kimes, was brutally murdered for daring to try to protect the girls. No apologies, none cared. Just another dead citizen. SPD still got their paychecks and the chief went to D.C. to be an Obama apparatchik.
So pardon me if I view the notion that the rank and file give that much of a shit.
They were ordered to maintain the perimeter around the riot zone and not to enter. It must have been difficult for them to obey those orders, but it wasn’t their decision.
I am sorry if I was unclear but that was my point. The police follow the orders of the politicians–both elected and appointed–that lead them. In the nearly 20 year old case that I clumsily brought up the politician police chief ordered the officers to stand and watch in order to avoid the appearance of police ending a riot by black gangbangers.
In Berkeley, San Jose, Seattle (last January), Charlottesville, Evergreen State College, and elsewhere the leftist politicians have made it clear that they will ensure a ‘killing ground’ for alt-left rent-a-thugs. A corollary to that rule is that if their opponents begin to fight back the politicians will then release the police to restore order.
What the rank and file think and feel has nothing to do with it. While I highly doubt the officers will actually take part in the violence that is primarily because they, having been thoroughly trained in civil rights law, know that they will be personally liable. Not because of any notions of justice or honor.
I seem to recall that the “only following orders” defense was rather conclusively abolished at a little town called Nuremburg.
Perhaps you can cite where that was overturned.
You recall incorrectly.
(1) The Nuremberg trials were not a legal process, and explicitly set no precedent. They were an exercise in victor’s justice, but instead of shooting these criminals out of hand the victors chose to give them a form of trial at which they could try to make a case for clemency.
(2) Even at Nuremberg it was acknowledged that soldiers and inferior officers must obey orders; only the superior officers who gave the orders were tried, and they were not allowed to plead that they were merely implementing the general orders they had received from the civilian government.
(3) The generally accepted legal rule on orders is that only manifestly illegal orders may and must be refused.
I hunted with these guys.
http://dapuzim.com/support.html
I put my life in the hands of more black guys than your average Crip.
“Police officers are, by and large, in the business to maintain order and to keep the peace.”
Former Chicago mayor, Ricard J. Daley,, known for his many malapropisms, said of the Chicago police who engaged with violent protesters during the 1968 Grant Park riots outside the Democrat National Convention: My police are not there to create disorder, they are there to preserve disorder.
Correction: I meant to say that the MAYOR did not understand the police mentality or hunting. Trust me. Cops want to get their hands on these guys. Badly.
My post makes it seem as though I was speaking of Tom and that was not my intent.
Mac
I think I understand the police mentality. And not just because I’m Navy. I used to enforce the law. It was military law, sure. but my uncle was a battalion chief in a major west coast fire department. His kitchen table was a gathering space for fire fighters and police.
I know they want to get their hands on these guys.
http://articles.latimes.com/2001/sep/21/local/me-48116
“Berkeley’s Removal of U.S. Flags From Firetrucks Sparks Outrage”
Unless something has changed in the last twenty years.
“or ban conservative provocateurs”
Got that? When Conservatives speak, it’s provocation. It CAUSES left-wing rioting. It’s all so clear now.
Well, yes, it is provocation. And provocation is (with perhaps one extremely narrow exception) completely protected. It’s our right to provoke, and others’ duty to restrain themselves or be restrained.
The common rhetorical sleight-of-hand here is to conflate provocation with incitement, which is not protected.
I load my own rounds.
Be HAPPY to donate what’s needed to end these buffoons.
Jus’ sayin”…
To me, this is so basic. Free Speech, you either have it or you don’t. Free Speech for some of the people is no where near enough. These left wing thugs cannot be permitted a “censor’s veto”. It simply can’t happen!
We have come full circle. The free speech movement in Berkeley began in 1964. And here we are again.
And it appears to be dying there. Sort of like Lexington and Concord, where people stood against government seizure of arms is now in one of the more onerously restrictive gun control states.
“I don’t want Berkeley being used as a punching bag”
Well, your cowardly actions are precisely how you will turn Berkeley into a punching bag, you ninny.
What a effing idiot. He’s no leader, that’s for sure. A real leader wouldn’t put up with crap from fascist thugs.
This guy probably willingly handed over his milk money to the schoolyard bully when he was a kid, too.
Isn’t Mayor Arreguin affiliated with By Any Means Necessary?
Why yes, yes he is.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/04/21/berkeley-mayor-is-member-of-antifa-facebook-group-that-organized-riots/
So, nothing about the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and other related conservative press.
Oh, and nothing about evolution of human life from conception, which is sure to trigger a majority of a minority female chauvinists. Processing lives that are deemed unworthy, inconvenient, or profitable (e.g. Planned Parenthood) is protected under a quasi-legal privacy regime a la German National Socialism.
” But that doesn’t diminish the extent to which the alt-right and conservatives are using “free speech” to attack and destroy colleges and universities, which have long promoted different variations of the internationalist, secular, cosmopolitan, multicultural liberalism that marks the thinking of educated elites of both parties.”
A bit of self-importance in that profoundly self-serving statement.
Why haven’t the Alameda County District Attorney, Governor Brown or the California Attorney General taken action to stop the Antifa thugs? And, where are the FBI and Attorney General Sessions? If the City of Berkeley lacks the will or ability to protect people from Antifa violence, Governor Brown should dispatch the California National Guard or California Highway Patrol to Berkeley.
You presuppose that Governor Moonbeam wants to stop the rioting, property destruction, and violence the Antifa thugs bring. Where did you ever get such an idea?
“Why haven’t the…”
Cuz they are card carrying founders of the antifa violence.
IF the city of Berkeley were serious about wanting to protect the city, they would be preparing to meet the Antifa rioters with specific plans to discourage the less-motivated by removing looting opportunities, setting up to arrest the law breakers and ensure their rapid pace into a secure holding area where they can be identified and charged, and above all, stating their preparations quite plainly, in order to make the preparations unneeded.
Since they are doing almost the exact opposite of discouraging the violent thugs, one can only determine that they are encouraging them.
The city of Berkeley is one thing. Police and fire are another.
It’s like saying because I was in the Navy, I was just like some A-hole from the IRS.
And you know what? Not everyone from the IRS is an A-hole.
I would hate to be provocative or deliver a threat. So let me be the first to say I’d never commit a crime so I could end up in prison with any of these guys. Especially the tattooed wanker on the bottom left. I couldn’t afford the lawyers.
No. They’re safe from me.
In essence, their argument is “Because we are unable to control ourselves when we hear you speak and cannot stand to hear anything contrary to our belief system, we cannot allow you to speak. Should you speak, then our inability to control our emotions or behavior is such that we will be forced by our absence of self control to become violent and perform unspeakable acts of violence upon you for your opinion is so bad to our way of thinking. If you disagree with us on this, then we shall simple beat the crap out of you.”
It’s known as the Heckler’s Veto. Or if you prefer the Rioter’s or Terrorist’s Veto. I think I need to stop commenting before my hatred for third world “strongmen” becomes too obvious. It makes me nauseous that this crap has made it’s way here.
What’s next? Anarchy at voting stations? If you want to peaceably assemble must you come armed? Have police in Berkley turned into wussies?
As of right now the school says they will not cancel the speaker.
“Cal’s new chancellor, Carol Christ, has said the 2017-18 school year will be a “free speech” year and has committed to hosting speakers with divergent viewpoints on campus.”
If Milo Y. and Ann C. are the best conservatives can do, then conservatism has a serious problem.
Milo and Ann are “rightists”, not really conservatives at all.
But they do and will prod some thinking if people will listen to them. Plus, they’ll expose some dangers if people are not allowed to listen to them.
correct –
listen does NOT mean agree –
it just means that the speakers get an opportunity to try to persuade.
I thoroughly dislike Ann but she deserves a voice.
We are approaching our Selma moment. I don’t mean to suggest that Ann Coulter/Milo are comparable to MLK, but the PRINCIPLES involved are identical. For those who don’t remember the details of what happened in 1965:
MLK and his group wanted to march from Selma to Montgomery to support the Voting Rights Act. When people recall that history, they rarely remember that the Voting Rights Act was practically a fait accompli before the march. It had strong bi-partisan support. It was going to pass. Everybody knew it was going to pass. The march was largely symbolic.
On the first day of the march, Democratic Governor Wallace ordered the state police to physically stop the marchers. The country watched in horror on TV as state police beat protesters. This is when John Lewis was beaten. The marchers retreated. Republican judge Frank Johnson issued a TRO to stop the march from proceeding. MLK knew Johnson had a very strong civil rights record. He did not want to defy the order. So a day or so after the order was issued and the parties were preparing their court response to the TRO, MLK and his group marched up to the bridge. Once again, they were met by state police. Except this time they did not attempt to cross the bridge. Doing so would violate the TRO. They did not want to do that. They turned around. That night, one of the marchers was murdered. Tensions were high. Both sides argued in court the merits of lifting the TRO. Only after judge Johnson got assurances from LBJ that he would nationalize the National Guard to protect the liberty of the marchers did he lift the TRO and allow the march to continue. After they finally got to Montgomery a few days later and marchers were in the process of disbanding, another marcher was murdered.
You rarely hear it now, but MLK was criticized for organizing the largely symbolic march and LBJ was criticized for nationalizing the Guard. After all two people died. But it was absolutely the right thing to do to protect their constitutionally protected right to assemble, speak, march and air their grievances. If Jerry Brown has to call out the National Guard, or Trump has to nationalize it, to protect the liberty of Coulter and Milo (and I am personally not a fan of Milo), then so be it. It has to be done. We can never compromise free speech principles. Ever.
P.S. if you want to know what a civil rights hero Alabama judge Frank Johnson was, read his New York Times obituary. You will be hard pressed to find more glowing words for a Republican in the New York Times than the tribute they paid him after he died.
So the left are “triggered” by the words of anyone non-left and this “triggering event”; speech, poster or mere presence causes the leftist to react violently destroying property and assaulting the non-leftist.
Gee, it seems the leftist lack the internal controls needed to function in a civilized society. They are a threat to others and as such ought to be viewed as mentally and emotionally unstable. Possibly grounds for a civil commitment order? Remember it’s the left that says, “but for Conservatives, they wouldn’t act this way”.
Right-wing free speech is assault.
Left-wing assault is free speech.
Thus continues the narrative.
They can continue their b.s narratives all they want. No one ‘new’ is going for it. And, in fact, a lot of liberals are getting turned off by it.
Where is Sessions?? Did he recuse himself again?