Well, you need to distinguish the legal limits of speech from the fundamental principles of free speech.
It might (depending on exactly how you go about it) be within your legal free speech rights to keep yelling at someone or protesting against them until they give up and decide not to speak at all, but it violates the basic free speech principles that the legal protections are designed to uphold.
The reason that we have laws protecting free expression is that we believe in the principle that people have a right to speak, that more speech is a good thing, and that the airing of different opinions contributes to the betterment of society. If a protest aims to explain why a particular person’s ideas are wrong or stupid or misguided or dangerous, or if it attempts to convince others not to listen to a particular person, then it’s in line with the principles of free speech; if its aim is simply to stop that person’s speech from happening, or to shout over the top of it when it does so that it can’t be heard, then it doesn’t, in any meaningful sense of the term, uphold the fundamental principle of free speech.
The Cheeto in Chief, demonstrating his solid grasp of the issues, and his well-known penchant for thoughtful consideration, tweeted in response to the protest:
Of course, there’s no evidence (so far, at least) that any of the violent protestors were even connected with the university, and a university spokesperson, as well as the UC Chancellor, have spoken out against the protest and called for the protection of free speech. Even among the protestors themselves, most were there holding signs and protesting peacefully; as usual, the violence was committed by a small minority of idiots.
Milo Yiannopoulos wasn’t even there. It was a protest against his presence on the campus. Milo Yiannopoulos can speak anywhere he wants as long as people aren’t throwing rocks at him. We’re not talking about the government stopping him from giving his speech because of his racist hate ideology. This is exactly the opposite; the people have spoken!
Beating people in the streets, spraying a woman with pepper spray, arson, rioting, and assault with deadly weapons are not speech my simple co-poster. These are felonies.
Dudes a fucking provocateur. He makes outrageous comments and waits for the inevitable explosion.
He thrives on conflict, trolling and attention. Ignore the arsewipe. He is probably creamed his pants in delight at the outcome in Berkeley. Its international News and everyone, including my office assistant half a world away have heard of him now. If they had ignored him, this would have been covered only on his YouTube channel and Brietbart.
Yeah, it should. Reflexive non-violence is a bad thing, and ignores history. We have a long, long history of the oppressed needing to use violence to fight their oppressors. It still pisses me off how the Civil Rights Movement had it history removed to make it all due to non-violence.
A liberal and opponent of bigotry needs to actually stop and take stock of what happened. They have to remember the cultural bias towards non-violence. They have to actually stop and think about why these people are being violent, and not just dismiss them because violence==bad.
I’m not saying you can’t decide this was just a bunch of hooligans fucking shit up. (Though, personally, I wonder if the protest would have worked otherwise–guess we’ll never know.) But it should definitely not be an easy decision.
We are privileged as fuck to be in a position where we can reflexively condemn all violence. We need to check our privilege. We need to show empathy even for those who are doing things that are horrible, and try to see things through their point of view.
And, frankly, given how things are going, we may need to revisit our assumptions. The oppressed will always have to break the rules that the oppressed try to use to keep us down. The oppressors always create rules to keep the oppressed from fighting back.
And, FYI (for people other than iiandyiiii), if you just want to call me stupid or other names, save it. Regardless of my intelligence, I at least know that these things do not in any way refute anything, and suggests you can’t refute what I have to say.
I’m not talking about every single instance of violence by oppressed or downtrodden people ever; I’m talking about this specific instance. It shouldn’t be hard to criticize this specific instance of violence, especially since it helps, rather than hurts, assholes like Milo Yiannopolous.
Yeah. The groups of apparently itinerant extreme agitators that seem to hitch rides with whatever protest is up (be it about trade, about race, about asshat guest speakers) just makes it harder for the legit protesters. Would not blame the latter for calling “false flag” on the violent factions.
As to Milo The Despicable, picketing and marching and calling him names online are free speech, if under that sort of pressure the event gets cancelled then big deal. He’s a big boy and must know the world’s not fair. Threats or acts of violence, OTOH, now there’s a problem.
And as to the T-man’s twittering, what does he want? For the school to contain the vandalism themselves? Give Milo an honorary doctorate?
Not in the sense that the conduct is protected under the First Amendment.
So beyond that, I’m not interested in dueling definitions. You call it CIB Free Speech, if it suits you. Speech plus arson equals Channing Idaho Banks Free Speech – all the words, plus property damage!