You should protest the Hell out of right wing yahoos who want to speak...

[DemocratSinceBirth]

You should protest the Hell out of right wing yahoos who want to speak, but to prevent them from speaking at all is just wrong. If that racist and homophobic clown , Charles Murray, came to speak at my university I would have protested him, but I wouldn't have prevented him from speaking. As to the clown remark I know he wrote a several hundred page apologia for white superiority. That doesn't make him smart. It just makes him a clown who wrote a several hundred page apologia for white superiority.

As Louis Brandies said "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

[X_Digger]

1. The term is 'Heckler's Veto' (in the non-legal sense). Good reading on the subject. n/t

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. I remember when the American NAZIS wanted to march through Skokie.

I would have let those clowns march and protested the Hell out of them.

[X_Digger]

3. And the ACLU rightly supported their ability to do so. (Though some here despise them for it.)

Popular speech needs no protection. Free Speech means nothing if it doesn't apply to unpopular speech.

That said, the answer to bad speech is good speech, not suppression.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. Exactly.

In the end the American NAZIS wimped out and decided not to march.

That's the most extreme case, but preventing generic right wing yahoos from speaking is just wrong.

[Igel]

5. What was, was. What is, is.

You'd be protesting the person for what he did a decade ago.

Most of the Middlebury crowd were protesting history, not what he was saying at the time. Many seemed proud to be ignorant of what the topic was.

It's like a story I heard on NPR. (It was that, a story. Not news.)

A guy said he'd built a fence. Did everybody call him "John the fencebuilder"? No.

He fixed a car. Did they call him "John the mechanic"?

He'd done a bunch of of things once or twice. But they didn't call him that, as though those things defined him.

"But fuck a goat just once, and they call me 'John the goat-fucker'."

A lot of people do that. They get your number. Once. It makes them proud to really know the real, inner, unchanging you. And that's you for life. Some left-groups do that--do something once at age 16, and it defines you in a way that the next 40 years of you life can't. We all do it with murderers. Other right-groups do that. Some do it with liars--there's no room for change. Or mistakes.

In this case, what Murray had to say wasn't just a racist screed, but a hypothesis that in typical social-science fashion he got evidence. And in typical social science fashion, he didn't bother looking too hard for counter-evidence. Others did that for him. Which is, I guess, sort of how that kind of non-science works. Humanities are worse, to be honest.

But he's gotten to a new topic, and got there years ago. The new topic bears merit, regardless of how much we protest what he said. (A lot of people have trouble distinguishing between acts and the person, and loves them that old fundamental attribution error. It simplifies thinking, and we all love fast, simplistic thinking. Saves us all that, well, thinking. It's not measured, reasoned, or critical--except in the sense of saying bad things about people, certainly not in the sense of critique.)

Of greater note was the nonsense written after the fact by those supporting the protesters or participating. How they felt so threatened when, as part of a large chanting group, they blocked access to those just trying to leave. How they felt intimidated by the occupants of the car they were blocking and beating on. They have a right to intimidate and feel secure and comfortable while doing so. Perhaps if the speaker and faculty member with them had been tied up, hooded, and strung up so the protesters could have a "safe space" next time?