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No-Platforming Neofascists

What is the matter with California? Has the whole state gone Berserkeley?
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What’s the matter with California? I was shocked last week to see the Latino mob riot outside a Donald Trump rally in Orange County, destroying a police car.  Excerpt from the LA Times:

“I’m protesting because I want equal rights for everybody, and I want peaceful protest,” said 19-year-old Daniel Lujan, one of hundreds in a crowd that appeared to be mostly Latinos in their late teens and 20s.

“I knew this was going to happen,” Lujan added. “It was going to be a riot. He deserves what he gets.”

And another anti-Trump mob attacked the hotel where the state GOP convention was located, hurling eggs, shouting filth, and holding up signs with messages so disgusting the CNN reporter covering it live had to apologize to viewers. From the San Francisco Examiner account:

“We’re here today because we feel like Donald Trump has misused his media and political platform to spread hate and violence and we won’t stand for that here in the Bay,” said Deidre Smith of the Blackout Collective. “Communities of color need our vote to be respected and we need our basic humanity to be honored.”

Cat Brooks with the Oakland-based Anti Police-Terror Project said that while she deplored Trump’s views, she appreciated that he had helped demonstrate that the United States is not, in fact, a post-racial society, as was sometimes claimed after President Barack Obama’s election.

“He has exposed what we have always known is alive and here in America, and that is a deeply anti-black sentiment,” Brooks said.

Wait … what? I can understand why Muslims and Latinos have a big problem with Trump, but what has he said to antagonize blacks? Anyway, peaceful protest is all-American, but this coalition of Social Justice Warriors from the Bay Area set out to deny Trump the right to speak at the GOP event.

Left-wing, anti-speech activism is apparently a thing in the Bay Area. Last month, when the mayor of Jerusalem arrived at San Francisco State University to give a planned speech, a mob of pro-Palestinian activists shut him down (video here).

Aaron Parker was there to hear the mayor speak. He writes, in part:

Today I witnessed something I’m still shaking from. The Mayor of Jerusalem came to San Francisco, and I attended his planned speech at San Francisco State University, where he was prevented from speaking in a high profile public humiliation of Israel and the Jewish community.  The media are reporting he was shouted down by protestors, which makes for a nice headline, but it isn’t the real story.  The real story is the university’s decision to let it happen.

Mayor Barkat’s visit was planned.  University administrators expected both him and the disruptors, who reliably attend all Israeli speaking events here.  The university police were sent in.  But, in a decision that should deeply disturb all who value a civil society, and one that I as a Jew find profoundly demoralizing, the police were instructed not to remove the disruptors and instead to stand by and watch the event be completely shut down.

Please let that sink in. Public university administrators and police stood and watched as the Mayor of Jerusalem, the Jewish student organization that sponsored him, and all of us in attendance, were permanently bullied off the stage.  Officers with guns, and the power that comes from the barrels of those guns, were instructed to stand, watch, and do nothing, as freedom of speech was replaced with a policy of whoever shouts the loudest wins, at least when it comes to shouting down a visiting Israeli dignitary. Those whom we thought were there to protect us and restore order, stood, watched, and did nothing.

Last month, California’s Loyola Marymount University suspended a 15-year employee over accusations that she advocated Catholic doctrine to SJW students. According to the College Fix:

It’s uncommon at Jesuit universities these days for someone to openly share a traditional Catholic viewpoint.

When it happened at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, the school was so spooked it called the Los Angeles Police Department.

Both the police and the university’s Bias Incident Response Team are investigating the stated belief that only two genders exist, male and female, as a hate crime.

A Loyola alumni office employee discussed her views on sexual orientation, which align with the Roman Catholic Church, with three students who were hanging up posters on the subject on April 14.

Cosette Carleo, one of the students involved, told The College Fix in a phone interview that the hate crime under investigation is “denying transgenderism.”

Carleo’s account agrees in part with an email by the husband of the employee with whom she tangled.

The employee told Carleo, who identifies as gender-neutral, that only two genders exist, male and female, according to the student. Carleo told The Fix that statement was the hate crime.

Carleo responded that “you can have your opinion” as long as it doesn’t “deny my existence.”

 

According to an e-mail sent to California Catholic Daily by the employee’s husband:

Yesterday (Thursday) my wife came home from work very excited and happy about a conversation she had with a couple of students at work. She has worked at Loyola Marymount for the last 15 years in the Alumni department. The students were placing signs along the walkway of the University promoting among other things, “PanSexuality”, meaning any and all sexual preferences. These girls were member of the LGBTQ group at LMU. LMU still calls itself a Jesuit Catholic University.

At the time my wife was talking to alum, who thankfully heard the entire exchange. After determining they had permission to post the signs, the group engaged in a what my wife thought was a very good dialogue of ideas and opinions. The girls were posting signs promoting the various sexual activities and orientations of the LGBTQ. My wife is Catholic and a strong supporter of the Church, marriage and family, and Catholic morality. Of particular focus was the girls promotion of what they label “PanSexual” i.e. someone who participates (or prefers) every kind of sexual encounter. One of the girls identified herself as lesbian and accused my wife of not loving women. My wife pointed out she was called to love everyone, including the girls. She said she found the whole sexual labeling thing was causing confusion especially in the youth whose sexuality is still malleable. The girls agreed with my wife that they too disagreed with the ideas behind Pan-sexuality, claiming they wanted monogamy, but wanted to give it a label so people could identify themselves. My wife pointed out that this was promotion of these lifestyles not just labeling and this was offensive to her heart. It was lovingly expression of disagreement, and a legitimate exchange of ideas and reasons, with my wife defending the Truths of the Church, and listening with love to these girls ideas.

The next day, the campus newspaper published a story about a “hate crime” committed on campus: this conversation. Excerpts:

The Bias Incident Response Team (BIRT) met and released a statement on April 15, notifying the LMU community that BIRT, along with Public Safety and the Los Angeles Police Department, is looking into the events of April 14 as reported by the three students. BIRT also clarified that the investigation will continue as two separate incidents, the first being the removal of the LGBT signs and the second being the employee and students’ confrontation. 

“The University stands behind its statement of non-discrimination, which prohibits unwelcome, harassing conduct on the basis of several classifications, including gender identity and sexual orientation.” said John Kiralla, the executive director of marketing and communications and BIRT member, on April 14, before BIRT had met. 

The campus newspaper editorialized against the employee, even though it has not yet been determined what was actually said in the exchange. Excerpt:

According to senior management major Cosette Carleo, the students engaged the employee in a conversation and said employee replied hatefully. Carleo added that the employee denied the existence of transgender and gender neutral people, and insisted that heterosexuality is the only truth. “She did not respect the equal dignity that all humans should receive, especially those who are already marginalized,” Carleo explained in an email to the Loyolan.

This is not the first hate crime directed at the LGBTQ+ community at LMU. In February, a professor in the theology department was described to have made derogatory comments about transsexuals, causing a trans student to feel unsafe. This professor is still employed at LMU, while the student was placed in independent study.

In a press release, the LGBTQ+ students of LMU explained that they feel isolated, afraid to come out and unsafe. No student should have to feel unsafe on their own campus because of their gender or sexuality.

This is pathetic. For one thing, the editorialist accepts what the students claim without question, even though the students are activists. Second, even if the conversation was exactly as the activists say, the editorialists accepts that this difference of opinion is a “hate crime.” And third, what counts as “derogatory” comments? The fact that a trans student feels “unsafe” — that’s enough to call something “derogatory”? I searched the newspaper’s website for a report of this incident, but found nothing. We are not told what the comment is. It’s simply assumed that because a student felt “unsafe,” that the bias allegation is valid.

What an insane place that Jesuit university must be for actual Catholics, or actual non-leftists.

The insanity is not confined to California, obviously. A professor at a Catholic college in another state tells me that he would not feel safe presenting official Catholic teaching about human sexuality, including homosexuality, in his classroom because he would almost certainly be accused of making derogatory and bigoted remarks about LGBT students — this, even if he gave a neutral description of what the Church teaches. All it takes is for a gay student to say that he or she “feels unsafe,” and the faculty member is considered a thought criminal until proven innocent.

Still, seeing what happened last week at the two Trump events in California makes me wonder if there’s something particularly extreme about the state’s political culture. I am far from a fan of Donald Trump, and I fully support the right to protest him. But riots and violent protests? Imagine if white Trump supporters rioted in an attempt to shut down a Hillary Clinton rally, and tore down police barricades in an attempt to get into a hotel where she was speaking, to shut down her speech? The news media would be in crisis mode, and I wouldn’t blame them, actually: a country in which a candidate running for president has to fear for his and his supporters’ safety at a political rally is a country that is in trouble.

But hey, no big deal as far as our media are concerned. Just like the radically illiberal culture on many American campuses, where SJWs no-platform speakers they don’t like all the time, has not bothered the media overmuch. They don’t seem to mind mobs and thugs running roughshod over basic civil liberties, as long as those mobs and thugs are on the political and cultural left.

 

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