The following lonely cry for solidarity and advice comes from a British student posting on a libertarian Facebook group, and gives a snapshot of the current climate of hostility facing conservative and libertarian students who refuse to buy in to the Identity Politics orthodoxy reigning on university campuses.
The student asks:
Any libertarians or even Tories here struggle with being shut down at uni? I’ve just handed in the most left wing essay I’ve ever written in order to get a good mark, I lost marks in a presentation for stating that the EU arrest warrant is unjust (because we signed up to it, so it’s voluntary according to the lecturer), a girl was literally shaking with rage when I said I will be voting to leave the EU and she had a lot of back up…but it gets to a point where it’s having a negative effect on my education and not sure how to tackle it. Should I just keep my views to myself and write left wing essays? Advice needed. I am treated like a fascist.
Such students increasingly face genuine hostility when they insist on being true to themselves and refuse to hide or disown their sincerely held political opinions, both from peers and even their own professors.
And particularly where students’ academic results are at stake, this real-world hostility stands in stark contrast to the largely imaginary hostility (microaggressions) dreamed up by the Identity Politics brigade as a pretext for demanding ever more restrictions on liberty, and ever more transfers of power to themselves from fawning, deferential university authorities.
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In Britain, the Identity Politics revolution is starting to devour its children. But the same climate of open “competitive grievance” warfare is less pronounced in the United States
One aspect of the Identity Politics / Safe Space culture which genuinely seems to differ between the United States and Britain (following close behind) is the different dynamic which exists between all of the various arrayed grievance groups.
But in Britain, Identity Politics seems to be a bit more competitive, and you are more likely to see the various victim groups (or generations) acrimoniously competing with one another for the limelight and striving to portray themselves as the most oppressed and victimised (thereby, conversely, granting themselves the most power and authority in the New Order).
Barely a week goes by without similar student-eat-student lunacy. Campuses are becoming ‘intersectional’ war zones, where identity zealots compete to see who can appear the most offended and victimised and so silence the rest.
In British universities, a rising ride of intolerance sweeps away anything that might make students feel uncomfortable. A leading anti-fascist campaigner has been ‘no-platformed’ by the NUS black students’ group, who branded him ‘Islamophobic’. The NUS lesbian, gay, bi- and transsexual officer refused to share a platform with Peter Tatchell, doyen of LGBT lobbyists, because he had opposed bans on Terfs (‘trans-exclusionary radical feminists’). After standing up for free speech, it seems, the likes of Tatchell must be denied the right to speak on -campus.
[..] The campus censorship crusade is not craziness so much as a logical extension of the ‘no platform’ policy so beloved of the left. This dates back to the ‘no platform for racists and fascists’ policy adopted by the National Union of Students in 1974. Today it seems more like ‘no platform for racists, fascists, Islamists, Islamophobes, homophobes, Nietzsche, rugger-buggers, pin-ups, rude pop songs, sombreros, sexist comedians, transphobic feminists, Cecil Rhodes or anything at all that might make anybody feel uncomfortable’.
[..] The irony is that many throwing up hands in horror at today’s promiscuous ‘no platform’ antics have themselves tried to ban speech of which they disapproved. It will come as little surprise to those with a sense of history that among the latest ‘victims’ of ‘no platform’ are those who demanded campus censorship in the past, up to and including St Peter of Tatchell. Those who live by the ban can perish by it, too.
That’s the rotten core of today’s student identity politics movement. A constant, bitchy, backbiting game of snakes and ladders, with one insufferable petty tyrant rising to the top of the Moral Virtue Pyramid only to be brought down by their jealous rivals, either for no reason at all, or for having unknowingly violated one of the many red lines that they themselves helped to draw across our political discourse.
This phenomenon of competitive grievance within the Identity Politics movement does not currently seem to be as common in the United States, at least to the same degree. The same Hierarchy of Privilege exists in the minds of American devotees of Identity Politics – that much is the inevitable consequence of intersectionality. But at present it does not seem to be leading to the same degree of internal warfare as we now see in Britain, which is odd when one considers that America is traditionally more individualistic and Britain slightly more collectivist. Surely, by this logic, America should be leading the way with a ruthless rat-race between the different groups for the coveted title of “most oppressed”.
It is curious that the United States – typically in the vanguard of this movement – does not yet seem to be witnessing the same furious self-cannibalisation of Identity Politics preachers as we are currently witnessing on this side of the Atlantic. Perhaps this can be Britain’s contribution to the cure.
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For those who insist that all of this concern over the resurgent authoritarianism and intolerance for free speech on our university campuses is a gross right-wing overreaction to harmless student activism, I present Donald Trump’s aborted rallies in Chicago and St. Louis yesterday.
A Donald Trump rally in Chicago had to be called off on Friday evening amid scenes of violence and chaos unparalleled in the recent history of American political campaigning.
The scrapping of the Republican frontrunner’s appearance due to what his campaign cited as “safety concerns” led to uproar and fights inside the University of Illinois Chicago Pavilion and in the streets outside.
Scuffles broke out between Trump supporters, protesters and police, and a number of arrests were made, including of at least one reporter. As the mayhem took hold, Trump was reduced to complaining about the situation on the air, telling MSNBC: “It’s sad when you can’t have a rally. Whatever happened to freedom of speech?”
Having successfully forced the closure of the rally, the protesters were quick to gloat about how they had successfully halted the campaign rally of a man who (no matter how ignorant and odious some of his policies may be) is still a major presidential candidate whose ideas and pronouncements need to be heard and debated.
Not caring in the slightest that their actions served to suppress (and therefore fuel) bad ideas, the protesters celebrated their success:
Then it was announced that Trump wasn’t coming – and the arena erupted into chaos.
College students shouted “We shut it down” while loyal supporters of the Republican frontrunner shouted “We want Trump”.
Fights and scuffles broke out as protesters swapped blows with Trump supporters and activists eager to celebrate their apparent victory shouted “Bernie, Bernie” and “Si se puede” (“Yes we can”), while waving signs supporting the Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders.
To be clear, when all of the overwrought wailing about Donald Trump bringing Nazism back to America is set aside: what we witnessed yesterday was the first time in recent history when the campaign rally of a major presidential candidate had to be called off because of the threat of violence from protesters – people who believed that their fundamental disagreement with the candidate on policy and rhetoric gave them the right to prevent those ideas being expressed in public.
These left-wing demonstrators tried to shut down an American presidential candidate’s speech during the campaign — and they succeeded, through an implicit threat of violence. People who support Trump drove hours to hear him talk, and they were denied their constitutional rights by left-wing hotheads who believe that they are so righteous that they don’t have to observe basic civility. You come to a Trump rally and you start flipping people off? You should not be surprised if you get a sock in the face.
What happened tonight in Chicago is why we need Trump, as obnoxious as he is, to keep going. I am not a Trump supporter, and I reject much of his rhetoric. But he has a right to give a speech, even an obnoxious speech, without it being interrupted by demonstrators. All of us do. Trump is revealing how impossible it is to have a normal democracy with the activist left, who think their crying need for “safe spaces” gives them the right to silence their opponents.
No. This political correctness needs to be opposed, and it needs to be opposed with force. I don’t know why the police couldn’t handle this situation, but they had better be on it in the future, because many Americans will not stand for this. What those protesters have done tonight is create a lot more Trump voters out of people who are sick and tired of privileged leftists using thug tactics to silence their opponents.
Like Dreher, I do not agree with Donald Trump on most issues and have no wish to see him and his half-baked, reactionary political ideas catapulted to the White House. But also like Dreher, when I see the virtue-signalling More Moral Than Thou anti-Trump protesters gloating about how they shut down an exercise in democracy, it gets my hackles up and I inch ever closer to empathising with Trump supporters.
Dreher rightly goes on to insist that he would feel just the same were it right-wing protesters trying to shut down a Clinton or Sanders rally:
Protest all you want, but do it outside the venue, or silently inside. Do not silence the speaker, because if you do that, you legitimize your opponents trying to silence the speakers from your side. Thuggish, illiberal tactics like this from the left call forth the same kind of thing from the right. When right-wing white nationalist types show up and make trouble at Democratic rallies, or BLM rallies, and get them cancelled, on what grounds will you on the left have to complain?
For me, it’s all about the mob. I despise the mob. Any mob, which I define as a crowd that acts in force to silence people by intimidation or actual violence. We have seen over the past few months how left-wing mobs on college campuses have gotten away with outrageous things, because men and women in authority on those campuses lacked the guts to stand up for the liberal civic order.
[..] This has gone too far. When an American presidential candidate has to cancel his rally in a major city because protesters have made it too dangerous, we have a serious problem in this country. It’s infuriating. This is not America. Those disruptive protesters need to be made to understand that this is not how America works.
Is all of this enough to push Donald Trump over the finishing line in a presidential contest against Hillary Clinton or (less likely) Bernie Sanders? It remains unlikely – although in a political climate where Sanders is even competitive and Jeremy Corbyn leads the Labour Party in Britain, nobody can make cast-iron political predictions.
But at the same time, Dreher is right – those scenes from Chicago and St. Louis last night, beamed into millions American homes on the nightly news, will have created thousands more Trump supporters. Many existing Trump fans will be hardened in their resolve to vote for him, if only to give the preening liberal “fascists” a good kicking, while other wavering conservatives will be moved to take the plunge and come out as Trump supporters.
And this is why what is happening today in our schools and universities really does matter, and is not some fringe right-wing obsession.
Because these violent protests at Donald Trump rallies are what happens when a generation of young people – and looking at the protesters, the ones causing the most violence and disruption on the anti-Trump side are overwhelmingly young – are raised to believe that they have the right never to have to hear a contrary idea or an offensive opinion. This is what happens when young and impressionable minds are taught that if they do not like something, or it it hurts their feelings, that they are a “victim” and have the right to suppress the speech or behaviour to which they object by any means necessary.
Inside the sterilised bubble of campus life, these protesters would make loud and angry appeals to a higher authority (the university administration) to come crashing down on the person or people saying things that upset them. But in real life there is no Student Welfare Office or malleable university hierarchy to bend into submission. There are only other adults, to be intimidated with the threat of force.
Again: this blog has no time at all for Donald Trump. But you don’t need to support the man’s presidential bid to recognise that if the pre-emptive shutting down of his campaign rallies by political opponents continues, American democracy will suffer. Either it will feed into a persecution complex narrative which fires up Trump’s supporters and carries him to victory, or (far more likely) it will hobble his candidacy at the expense of creating massive resentment from his supporters, and merely burying his ideas rather than properly debating and discrediting them.
The inability of the Social Justice Warrior to think in public – to use their words rather than their fists, to debate using their minds rather than vandalise with their hands – means that the threat of violence is one of their only remaining weapons.
And now, together with the American Right – whose inability to neutralise Trump with a compelling mainstream conservative message is equally at fault – the virtue-signalling Left must shoulder their portion of the blame for actively fuelling the Donald Trump juggernaut.
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Safe space culture stunts young minds and prevents activist students from learning how to debate. Whatever happened to “use your words”?
If one video could perfectly encapsulate the deleterious effect of having students marinate 24/7 in Identity Politics culture, protected by safe spaces, trigger warnings and campus speech codes, it would be this brief video of a scene from a pro-life protest and pro-choice counter-protest at the University of California, Davis.
During the “three days of demonstrations,” Students for Life at UC Davis set up shop in a common area on campus where members distributed pro-life materials and polled students on whether or not later terms abortions should remain legal in California.
But counter-protesters were quick to disrupt the demonstration, throwing pro-life materials to the ground and even harassing some participants for taking pictures of the protest.
In a video obtained by Campus Reform, members of UC Davis Students for Life appear to be talking to a counter-protester who in turn pushes a stack of pro-life flyers to the ground and proceeds to walk away.
“I’m not sorry, I’m not sorry!” she said to cheers from her fellow protesters.
Although a campus police officer was monitoring the protests, no action was taken against the student.
Now, this has nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of the protest and counter-protest. Whether you personally believe in completely unrestricted abortion or are vehemently pro-life is irrelevant here. What matters is the behaviour of the protester who chose to vandalise the pro-life students’ materials, throwing their literature to the floor and walking away without even seeking to engage them in discussion.
Note the exchange which takes place when the student speaks with the campus security officer who witnessed the event:
Officer: Did you touch their stuff? Yes?
Student: Yes.
Officer: Why?
Student: Well, cause, like… [gestures limply at the pro-life stand, smirks and rolls eyes]
This student, accosted by a campus security officer for vandalising the pro-life students’ display, is utterly unable to account for her actions. She clearly believes she is completely in the right – as evidenced by her supporters’ chants of “she did nothing wrong!”. But when pressed as to the reason for her behaviour, the student is utterly incapable of accounting for herself with even the simplest of intellectual arguments.
But while the student was capable of nothing more than dumb aggression, we can easily paraphrase the argument which went through her mind as she picked up a bunch of leaflets with contrarian views and threw them to the floor. She thought: “I don’t like this. I disagree with this, and therefore I should not have to put up with its presence. Because I am offended and am unambiguously in the right, I have the right to lash out in any way I please at those who contradict me”.
This is what the Politics of Identity does to young minds. Not all protesters are so sulkily monosyllabic, of course. Many are able to speak quite eloquently, and in so doing give the outward appearance of being reasonable, happy and willing to debate their beliefs and hear from those who disagree. But even those students who are able to do more than shrug and smirk betray themselves with their calls for safe spaces, campus speech codes and mandatory re-education or social probation for those whose hold opinions which are deemed “offensive”.
Because these students have been raised to treat encountering a contrary opinion from someone the same way as being physically or mentally “assaulted”, they can never be content, never rest, until they impose their ideological homogeneity on their entire campus environment, using either the carrot or the stick as suits their purposes.
And yet in many ways, these student crybullies are more sinned against than sinning. They did not make themselves this way. They are the product of a society which has increasingly promoted authoritarian restrictions on freedom of speech on the spurious grounds of public “safety”, as well as a therapeutic culture which constantly told them as they were growing up that “sticks and stones may break their bones, but words can kill them stone dead”. They did not grow up in a vacuum, and those responsible for educating them and governing during their formative years have much to answer for.
But the fact that the snowflake student generation are not entirely to blame for the way that they turned out does not absolve us of our responsibility to criticise what we see, and call it what it is – a real and present danger to academic freedom on university campuses, and freedom of speech and thought in our wider societies.
A more intellectually and emotionally developed student would have been able to walk past the pro-life student display and either ignore it or engage in a robust exchange of views with the organisers. But modern campus Identity Politics does not teach or encourage this skill. Rather, it affirms the existing world view of the student and tells them that they have the right not to ever have to see or hear a dissenting opinion. And so rather than debate, we have toddler-style lashing out and defacing of opposing literature.
Identity Politics and safe space culture do not merely coddle the American mind. They actively stunt and inhibit young minds on college campuses everywhere they are present. And the damage they inflict on certain individuals may not be reversible.
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The entire panel discussion is worth watching or listening to in full, but here is the money quote from Dr. Everett Piper, responding to a question asking why the problem of student attacks on free speech has exploded in recent years:
I personally believe it’s the result and the consequence of several decades of teaching lousy ideas. I addressed it last night in my speech to the Reagan Gala. Richard Weaver told us in 1948 that ideas have consequences. That was the title of his seminal work – “Ideas Have Consequences“. What was his point, what was his premise? Ideas have consequences. Ideas always lead somewhere. Bad ideas lead to bad culture, bad community, bad college. Good ideas lead to the opposite. So I think we’re reaping the results, to quote Barack Obama’s pastor, “the chickens are coming home to roost”.
What we’ve done is taught this ideological narcissism, we’ve taught ideological fascism and that’s really what we have today, we have an ideological fascism that’s prevailing on the college campus rather than the academic freedom that we hold dear.
The liberal arts academy was established – let’s go back to Oxford, some one thousand years ago – to educate a free man and a free woman, to liberate us, to give us an understanding of liberty and liberation and freedom and justice, and to give us the context for embracing those truths. And when we get rid of those ideas and embrace the narcissism of our time we’re gonna suffer the consequences accordingly, and it will result in a fascist attitude of “you shall submit, you shall agree, and if you don’t you shall be silenced and you shall be expelled”. That is what is prevailing on the campus today.
But the unreasoning, free speech-hating crybully students only win when spineless, obsequious university administrators roll over and submit to their demands for fear of being labelled as cavalier about student “mental safety” rather than pushing back robustly at their attempts to self-infantilise.
If this trend is to be reversed, it will only be when more university leaders like Dr. Everett Piper in the United States, and Oxford chancellor Chris Patten in Britain, are prepared to poke their heads above the parapets in defence of academic enquiry and freedom of thought and speech.
Semi-Partisan Politics 