I’m Sensing Tension In The Room
There’s a nasty institutionalised habit of letting leftwing activists get away with the worst of offences. After all, despite forking out nearly a grand in security costs, they wouldn’t even stop the activists from storming the stage.
While visiting DePaul University, Chicago, Milo Yiannopoulos has been having a spot of bother with some of the natives.
The gentleman muttering threats of violence is Edward Ward, a political science alumnus, and apparently the protest’s ringleader. The agitated young lady, the one screeching hysterically and jabbing her fists in Milo’s face, claims to have been silenced “for 200 years.”
Full video of the event can be viewed here.
Can we just build a wall around DePaul University?
So DePaul is the new Mizzou.
Mr Ward is, it seems, tumescent with his own righteousness.
“Can we just build a wall around DePaul University?”
Or a two-foot thick concrete ceiling .01 inches above ground level.
“I don’t apologise for refusing to allow a racist, bigot to spew his hatred on DePaul’s campus.”
The SJWs are racist bigots spewing their hatred. Imagine what would happen if anybody tried to shut them down the way this guy tried to shut Milo down.
The agitated young lady, the one screeching hysterically and jabbing her fists in Milo’s face, claims to have been silenced “for 200 years.”
That’s no lady.
Just one of the many things that aggravates me about this is how easy it is to find people willing to argue that by calling his series of talks The Dangerous Faggot Tour, Yiannopoulos is somehow the real author of all these provocations – ‘What else does he expect?’ they ask, somewhat disingenuously, ‘He’s brought it on himself. He should expect push back.’
In a moment of strategic amnesia, this quite forgets the fact that – rightly as it turns out – Yiannopoulos evidently realised he would have been treated this way regardless of what he’d called his tour and whatever its contents.
Have Janice Fiamengo, Christina Hoff-Sommers or Ben Shapiro, to name just a few, acted in a similarly deliberately provocative way? Or have they simply expressed opinions different from those of the protestors?
No, they haven’t.
And has there been any difference in the way Fiamengo, Hoff-Sommers and Shapiro have been treated despite the fact that they include no obvious provocations such as saying “Feminism is cancer” and so on?
No, there hasn’t. They have all been accused of ‘violence’.
After all, if even Bernie Sanders can get exactly the same kind of treatment as Yiannopoulos received, what does that say about the sincerity of these odious and repulsive little jackbooters?
Imagine what would happen if anybody tried to shut them down the way this guy tried to shut Milo down.
It’s hard to avoid the suspicion of a pronounced (and tacitly understood) double standard based on politics and race. The protestors were warned beforehand that any disruption would result in their removal from the venue… and yet, despite the disruption, threats and physical intimidation, all caught on camera… nothing was done.
We’ve seen this double standard before, of course, at Dartmouth College. As you say, imagine the same behaviour, the same thuggery, but with the melanin levels reversed.
Compare and contrast.
Someone writes ‘TRUMP 2016’ in chalk on the pavement. Cue hysterical outrage. Tears. Panic. University authorities leap into action. CCTV. Extra security patrols. Safe spaces. Twitter warnings. Hunts for the culprits who committed this heinous crime.
Gay man speaks publicly in favour of reality v feelings. He is physically intimidated. Threatened. Abused. All like on-stage, on-camera, public record. Guilty parties identifiable. University authorities do absolutely nothing.
Welcome to the future. You can have any opinions you like – as long as they are the same as ours.
The agitated young lady, the one screeching hysterically and jabbing her fists in Milo’s face, claims to have been silenced “for 200 years.”
Every time they do this they prove his point.
Every time they do this they prove his point.
Which I suppose would only matter to these budding intellectuals if one assumes that they’re unwittingly undermining a legitimate claim of victimhood, a position that would otherwise withstand frank and vigorous debate. I.e., if one assumes good faith. It seems to me more likely that the grievance theatre is its own reward and is essentially an excuse to strut, intimidate and behave obnoxiously.
A necessary condition for this sort of nonsense is the general civility of those being subjected to the assaults and disruption. Mr. Ward and company rely upon the audience not responding in kind, as well as the collusion of authorities who are willing to ignore laws which nominally protect everyone in order to punish certain groups. N.B., those lessons are being learned, albeit slowly. The Wards of the world will not be able to engage in this sort of behavior forever and ultimately will pay a price for their “tumescent righteousness.”
Every time they do this they prove his point.
I’ve literally had discussions with people like this where I’ve said “you never respond to arguments, you only attempt to discredit the speaker” only to have them respond with the usual list of ‘evil’ things I am and ‘evil’ groups I’m apparently associated with, unbeknown to me. These are often people and groups that aren’t even bad but have previously been discredited by “SJW’s”, or whatever you want to call them.
They have absolutely no self-awareness, and don’t realise how easy it would be to make people like Milo go away if they really wanted to. He repeatedly states, clearly and unambiguously, that he says the things he says in the way he says them to demonstrate how they shut down opinions they don’t like. Yet their only response is to try and shut him down anyway, proving his point.
Somewhat related.
DePaul University has a well established reputation for intolerance. I’m not sure how long ago the leftists took over that old Catholic institution, but the decay is quite advanced.
@David:
The agitated young lady, the one screeching hysterically and jabbing her fists in Milo’s face, claims to have been silenced “for 200 years.”
Goodness, she must be awfully old.
@Nickw211:
Just one of the many things that aggravates me about this is how easy it is to find people willing to argue that by calling his series of talks The Dangerous Faggot Tour, Yiannopoulos is somehow the real author of all these provocations – ‘What else does he expect?’ they ask, somewhat disingenuously, ‘He’s brought it on himself. He should expect push back.’
I wonder how many of them would be willing to accept the same reasoning about a woman who goes out on her own wearing a miniskirt, gets drunk, starts flirting with strangers and ends up being sexually assaulted?
Previously, at the University of Minnesota.
And previous to that at Rutgers University.
Somewhat related.
Will the trauma and oppression never end?
Katherine Timpf and Robby Soave have more.
I remember when fomenting a riot was against the law. *sigh* I miss the old days…
A black student, Kati Danforth, a maths major, asks the BLM protestors to be civil and grown-up – and is immediately called a racist, a bigot and a “white supremacist.” This is a few seconds before the hysterical lady with the hot-pants-fanny-pack combo, the one who jabbed her fist in Milo’s face, resumes blowing a whistle into a microphone, for several minutes, thus ensuring that no-one else can be heard.
The fact that Angelina Jolie will be a prof at the London School of Economics hints at the demise of all these post-secondary institutions.
A black student, Kati Danforth, a maths major . . .
Well, there you go.
At my son’s STEM university, a professor remarked that their campus had been blissfully unaffected by the events occurring ninety miles north at Mizzou. In response, a black student stated, “We’re engineers; we don’t have time for that shit.”
A perfect symbol of the demise of American education: “We good”, and she does a dance.
she does a dance
Mea culpa, but I had the unbidden mental image of her wearing, instead of her culturally appropriated garb, those feathery anklets, beads and whatnot sported by Zulu ladies when inspired by Terpsichore.
Purge and Close. Purge and Close.
All leftist staff and Red Guard “students ” sacked /expelled. No compensation for staff and pensions confiscated. Students to have their debt surcharged 10x–so as to ruin the rest of their lives under a crushing burden of aggressively collected debt. All of the above legally blackballed (new laws–the left love those) from ever going into media/law/politics the rest of their lives.
Let them sling their poison in the marketplace and see who buys.
More guidance from our progressive betters:
It’s hard to escape the feeling that if this sort of nonsense keeps up, some faces are going to get punched. Hard.
“It’s hard to escape the feeling that if this sort of nonsense keeps up, some faces are going to get punched. Hard.”
Increasingly it appears that not only is the hard left determined to silence and destroy all who oppose it, the so-called “liberal” Americans will happily go along with that. As more and more Americans come to realize this, they will lose interest in respecting the civil rights of those who obviously want to take away their rights.
Funny thing: Quite a few Catholic universities have become hotbeds of political correctness and leftist thuggery. One wonders how Catholicism could go so far astray.
Isn’t that exactly what the Left wants, though? To provoke a violent response? That gives them their Kent State moment. Look at the aggressively thuggish young….lady is an entirely inappropriate term, shaking her fists in Milo’s face. She’s clearly trying to get him to respond first. That’s an old feminist tactic – fake a head punch, then shriek and take a dive when your target defends himself. Absent eyewitnesses and clear video, the other guy threw the first punch, your honour.
This is Alinskyite tactics playing out on a grand scale, and I fear that Purge and Close isn’t going to do it; it’s going to take some Pinochet-level oppression to retake the cultural battlefield, and I don’t much care for suppressing liberty in order to defend it.
According to Mr Ward, Milo’s presence on campus could cause shootings, massacres, possibly thunderstorms.
“We’re engineers; we don’t have time for that shit.”
The whole SJW spectacle thing is a form of La Revenge des Incompetents!
According to Mr Ward, Milo’s presence on campus could cause shootings, massacres, possibly thunderstorms.
Racist idiot jumps onstage and threatens to punch Milo.
Racist idiot’s friend waves her fist in Milo’s face.
Next day racist idiot says Milo is “a threat to my safety”.
As our host says, lefties project.
As our host says, lefties project.
Certainly, the ‘protestors’ don’t seem amenable to any rational argument, which they actively and zealously suppress wherever possible. To the extent of screaming abuse at a black student and denouncing her as a “white supremacist” – on grounds that she dared to ask for civility.
As so often, it’s about intimidation and provocation, power and display. For instance, if you watch the fist-jabbing woman throughout the video, watch her face closely, she’s obviously enjoying her repeated efforts to intimidate, regardless of the target. The physical intimidation isn’t a secondary effect, an incidental result of momentarily losing her temper. The intimidation, the thrill of it, is the sweetest cherry. It’s why she’s there.
I think there’s some truth to that. In large organizations, HR departments tend to attract women with very little in the way of hard skills, and it’s a well-known phenomenon that they become jealous of the other departments that actually do meaningful things for the company. Hence the slow creeping arrogation of powers to HR all out of proportion to their value, via various forms of harassment and policy compliance legislation.
I think something very similar is going on with many of these arts and humanities students.
it’s going to take some Pinochet-level oppression to retake the cultural battlefield
Indeed, and somewhat unfortunately, this is the usual course of events. When lawlessness reaches epidemic proportions (and what we see on campuses across the nation as well as in cities such as Baltimore and anywhere Trump holds a rally is lawlessness, pure and simple), the population eventually longs for a strong man to make it stop. Pinochet is actually somewhat of a best case scenario, since after all he allowed for a referendum to take place on the continuation of his presidency, he stepped down after he lost, and he transferred power to a political opponent. Not usually what happens once a totalitarian regime has taken hold.
Milo Yiannopoulos, an out-and-PROUD gay man with a loudly stated preference for black men, is a bigot.
Sweet Meteor of Death, delay no more your coming.
The physical intimidation isn’t a secondary effect, an incidental result of momentarily losing her temper. The intimidation, the thrill of it, is the sweetest cherry. It’s why she’s there.
That.
That.
The wildly flailing arms, suddenly deployed to invade her victim’s space, are a bit of a giveaway.
And ditto Mr Ward, who stormed onstage to have his moment and fight the power… but didn’t have much to say either, apart from a muttered threat of violence. He did, however, do a lot of strutting back and forth across the stage, as if marking territory, and hoping to intimidate, and possibly waiting to be admired as a moral colossus.
Contrary to their imaginings, these are not good people.
Re: Pinochet.
I’ve read (though I have no citation to hand) that he killed fewer people during his decades in power than Castro did in his first year. Wouldn’t surprise me.
These protesters aren’t angry at Milo. They’re angry at their own future, which will mostly involve making mocha cappuccinos for people with careers.
These protesters aren’t angry at Milo.
The things that apparently anger them, or that result in them acting out as if they were angry, are numerous and often implausible. And there’s a hair-trigger rage threshold, one that shifts unpredictably, such that even a call for civility can result in screamed abuse and wildly flailing limbs. Which makes me suspect that they like being angry, or pretending to be angry, and like what that allows them to get away with.
The man blowing the whistle and pacing the stage in front of Milo gave every appearance of a man who had reached the limit of his intellectual ability. I expect he thinks he will get a job one day, though not I fear as a public speaker.
I hope Milo joins/leads “Gays for concealed carry” after this.
I’ve read (though I have no citation to hand) that [Pinochet] killed fewer people during his decades in power than Castro did in his first year. Wouldn’t surprise me.
Wouldn’t surprise me either. He certainly killed fewer than Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, or any other Communist worthy you can think of. But he was on the wrong side of history, i.e. not on the one favored by our purported betters. As you know, killing people in the service of leftist ideology is just an unfortunate occurrence – these people had it coming, after all; eggs, omelettes, etc. While killing people as you are trying to fix an economy that is moribund because of the depredations of the preceding Marxist government is, of course, inexcusable.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t condone the killings allegedly committed by the Pinochet regime. But certainly the double standard is amazing, and galling.
I’ve read (though I have no citation to hand) that he killed fewer people during his decades in power than Castro did in his first year. Wouldn’t surprise me.
Irrelevant and misleading both.
Firstly, there should be no calculus of evil. Pinochet was not a good man, and pointing to worse men does not fix that problem.
Secondly, the “best” repression is that which is so effective that which rarely needs to shed blood. By the time the Soviet Union fell it was rarely killing its people. That doesn’t make it even remotely a good institution. It had merely so crushed the spirit of its people that they no longer even tried to fight for good.
That the Cubans have continued to fight Castro says more about the Cubans than it does about Castro.
The agitated young lady, the one screeching hysterically and jabbing her fists in Milo’s face, claims to have been silenced “for 200 years.”
“Kayla Johnson is an African and Black Diaspora Studies major at DePaul University. Her mother, Juanita Johnson, serves as the Director of Administration II for the Chicago Police Department.”
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/05/25/meet-depaul-protester-waved-microphone-milos-face/
Looking closely at the video it’s apparent that no one was hit by the demonstrators. They were trying to provoke a violent response to their provocations thus giving them the opportunity to: 1)punch out Milo, 2)claim victimhood (two hundred years of oppression continues), 3)demand more concessions from the university. The DePaul administration and the MSM would certainly support them.
I hope Milo joins/leads “Gays for concealed carry” after this.
Well, there are the Pink Pistols, and have been for some years . . .
I used to come here to have a laugh. Now I just get angry. These people have it coming, but as everyone says we have to wait for them to ‘throw the first punch’. They’ve been overstepping the bounds of decency for ages now but we are still bound by our own restraint to not give them what they need.
I’m probably more socialist leaning than most here, in as far as I’m in favour of state funded health, education (at least for K-12), utilities etc and I’d prefer to see some restraint on the market rather than unfettered capitalism as the only law, but even I think these clowns need some severe reality checking.
Sure, they want their Kent State moment.
But that’s no reason to give it to them. When security failed to act, a couple gentleman from the audience could have, should have, gone on stage, grabbed both those self-propelled cloacas by the belt and scruff of the neck and tossed them off the stage before frog-marching them out the door.
That would be humiliation. Bullies can’t take humiliation.