0 comment Monday, September 8, 2014 | admin
Nick Griffin shouted down at MSU:
...Griffin was invited to Michigan State by the campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. He was supposed to give a one-hour talk about Islam and then answer questions for an hour, but audience members started shouting at him shortly after he started his talk and he shifted to Q & A format so he could answer what was being shouted at him.''
This account gives a more benign-sounding version of the event:
EAST LANSING - When British Nationalist Nick Griffin took the podium at a Friday night Michigan State University event, he tried to explain how Islam is a threat to Western civilization.
Protesters wouldn't have it.
Hurling obscenities and using chants to interrupt his address, rambunctious student organizations forced Griffin to abandon his speech and allow an informal question and answer session.
What followed was an unstructured banter between the speaker and a crowd of roughly 75 protesters. While many attempted to ask Griffin legitimate questions, others shouted obscenities.
"We have all come from different backgrounds," said Authra Khreis, 17, a pre-med student and a protester. "We should accept one another. I don't think he should be allowed to speak. You can use free speech until you hurt another person."
Griffin was invited to campus by a conservative student organization called Young Americans for Freedom, or YAF.''
According to members of YAF, they were chased from the building by those 'rambunctious student organizations' whose members were wielding canes and iron bars.
More from the article:
One student who engaged in a particularly long debate with Griffin was Junaid Mattu, a finance junior from India.
"I am a supporter of free speech, but at the same time there has to be a benchmark," he said. "Why does MSU time and time again show its insensitivity to minorities by inviting racists?"
Because several speakers invited to MSU by YAF have sparked controversy, MSU Trustee Faylene Owen is asking the Board of Trustees to take action.
"I realize that people like this have a right to speak on this campus, but we don't have to condone it," she said at a Friday meeting.
She called for a board resolution that "expresses our disapproval as a board of the message of hate expressed by this person."
"He's a hatemonger," she added in a later interview. "He says there's never been a Holocaust and Muslims are terrible people."
Please notice how a couple of the opponents of free speech who are quoted in the article are foreign students, such as Junaid Mattu from India and Authra Khreis, who comes from an unnamed foreign country. May I politely suggest to these 'guests' in our country that they have no standing to tell Americans what 'free speech' means, or to tell us that it must be limited according to their specifications? Does 'sensitivity to minorities' dictate what we can and cannot hear, or say? If so, free speech and freedom of thought are dead as a doornail in this country. This is one of the fruits of our foolish openness, and our willingness to bring so many foreign people who come from countries with no tradition of free speech and no ideas about our Constitution and Bill of Rights. They have no more right to come here and try to silence anyone than I would be afforded if I went to India and tried to silence people who 'offended' me, or if I went to Authra Khreis's unnamed country and told them how they are to conduct themselves. We in the West are the doormats of the world, allowing strangers to invade our countries and butt into our affairs, laying down the law to us. The whole world has our number now; they see that we are weak as water and that we allow others to manipulate us by guilt, and bully us with their demands.
What is going on in our world? The leftists and liberals are becoming increasingly unhinged, which is baffling, since they have everything their way; even our wimpified, politically correct country is 'right-wing and fascist' in their warped view.
The recent attack by some crazed leftist harpy on Condoleezza Rice, although I am not a fan of Rice, was a disgusting display, and it shows the increasingly unhinged behavior of the left. And then there was the heckler who angered Bill Clinton at a recent appearance, and the 'Truthers' who heckled leftist Bill Maher. So the left is attacking not only the right, but their own.
And of course in recent days we've been seeing the right (if you consider mainstream Republicans and neocons as the 'right') assaulting and accusing those they consider too right-wing and 'racist' or 'Islamophobic.' There was the Watson controversy, in which the 'right' were conspicuous by their absence when it came time to defend Watson for his 'racist' comments.
There are 'conservative' blogs which have been banning those who deviate from the party line, and then we have the neocon mouthpieces like Michael Medved recently using the old neo-nazi smear against Ron Paul.
This is actually not a new thing, this purging of those who are too far right: Free Republic, with its mass bannings of immigration restrictionists (although some have been allowed back, as the climate has changed) and certain other 'anti-illegal immigration' forums have had a longstanding practice of ejecting anybody, sometimes in a most humiliating fashion, for being too 'xenophobic' or 'racist'. You must always assert your eager support for LEGAL immigration or risk being blackballed for being a 'hater'.
So free speech is under assault from all quarters; it used to be that the right was somewhat more tolerant, despite popular stereotypes, than the hypocritical preachers of 'tolerance' on the Left, but now many on the right are just as intolerant. Do we not suppose that many on the neocon right were glad to see Nick Griffin silenced and shouted down?
The blogger who has been banning so many PC transgressors has also condemned Nick Griffin, and the YAF for sponsoring his speech at MSU. So the left and some of the 'right' are in agreement when it comes to politically incorrect speech; they favor silencing or shouting down or destroying the careers of those they deem beyond the pale.
I've been following the discussion on some of the mainstream 'counterjihad' blogs and forums and the dialogue often shows little sign of having improved or opened up; there is still a hierarchy of political correctness, in which many people ritually go through their denunciations of 'racists' and 'Islamophobes' and anti-Semites.There is still an obsessive concern with being 'moderate' or appearing so in order to attract more 'mainstream' people. This, I think, is a vain hope, and above all, I am at a loss to explain why people think we have all the time in the world to 'convert' the indifferent or the timid or the obtuse or the politically correct. Why do so many of these people, who obsess over Islam and jihad not see the urgency of our situation? As I see it, we are at a crossroads, and we have to take the shortest route to get to safety; we have no time for niceties and palaver and dialogue and trying to appear mild in order to attract the moderates.
Why is there so little sense of urgency among some on the so-called 'right'? Is it timidity, or wishful thinking, or denial, or is it just temporizing, hoping to buy time at the least expense?
With this unholy convergence between the PC right and the PC left, we are coming perilously close to outlawing 'hate' in general; we will not even be allowed to 'hate' those who are trying to kill us or conquer us. As I've written before, how can we outlaw emotions, especially when it is natural to feel antipathy and anger, and yes, sometimes hate?
We can and do outlaw certain behaviors that might be associated with 'hate'; we have laws against harassment, and inciting violence, and against assault and murder. We can and do outlaw behaviors, and I support harsh penalties for those who commit violence except in self-defense. But trying to forbid people to have an unfavorable opinion or a fear or yes, outright hatred for someone is wrong.
In a sense, we are all Nick Griffin, we who defy political correctness. Those who join in the braying mobs who shout him and all other dissenters down, whether they call themselves 'conservative' or right-wing, or left wing, they are the 'fascists' they profess to oppose.
I will quote, again, from J.R. Nyquist on Oriana Fallaci, who is an inspiration to me:
In the West, she says, our corrupt culture does not punish the body. It does not confiscate your assets or violate your political rights. It kills the soul by eliminating the possibility that anyone will acknowledge you. The thinker who steps out-of-bounds is quickly isolated, diagnosed, dismissed, being neither followed nor respected. The culture denounces what remains of a "wretch, a lunatic, a liar, a dissolute, a sinner." Today�s democracy condemns the lone voice, the voice in the wilderness, "to civic death." According to Fallaci, "Everything can be expressed, everything can be spread, except the freedom of revealing the truth. Because the truth leaves no way out, and inspires fear."
Fear is the determining factor in the decline of democracy, Fallaci claims. And therefore courage is the antidote.''
...Griffin was invited to Michigan State by the campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. He was supposed to give a one-hour talk about Islam and then answer questions for an hour, but audience members started shouting at him shortly after he started his talk and he shifted to Q & A format so he could answer what was being shouted at him.''
This account gives a more benign-sounding version of the event:
EAST LANSING - When British Nationalist Nick Griffin took the podium at a Friday night Michigan State University event, he tried to explain how Islam is a threat to Western civilization.
Protesters wouldn't have it.
Hurling obscenities and using chants to interrupt his address, rambunctious student organizations forced Griffin to abandon his speech and allow an informal question and answer session.
What followed was an unstructured banter between the speaker and a crowd of roughly 75 protesters. While many attempted to ask Griffin legitimate questions, others shouted obscenities.
"We have all come from different backgrounds," said Authra Khreis, 17, a pre-med student and a protester. "We should accept one another. I don't think he should be allowed to speak. You can use free speech until you hurt another person."
Griffin was invited to campus by a conservative student organization called Young Americans for Freedom, or YAF.''
According to members of YAF, they were chased from the building by those 'rambunctious student organizations' whose members were wielding canes and iron bars.
More from the article:
One student who engaged in a particularly long debate with Griffin was Junaid Mattu, a finance junior from India.
"I am a supporter of free speech, but at the same time there has to be a benchmark," he said. "Why does MSU time and time again show its insensitivity to minorities by inviting racists?"
Because several speakers invited to MSU by YAF have sparked controversy, MSU Trustee Faylene Owen is asking the Board of Trustees to take action.
"I realize that people like this have a right to speak on this campus, but we don't have to condone it," she said at a Friday meeting.
She called for a board resolution that "expresses our disapproval as a board of the message of hate expressed by this person."
"He's a hatemonger," she added in a later interview. "He says there's never been a Holocaust and Muslims are terrible people."
Please notice how a couple of the opponents of free speech who are quoted in the article are foreign students, such as Junaid Mattu from India and Authra Khreis, who comes from an unnamed foreign country. May I politely suggest to these 'guests' in our country that they have no standing to tell Americans what 'free speech' means, or to tell us that it must be limited according to their specifications? Does 'sensitivity to minorities' dictate what we can and cannot hear, or say? If so, free speech and freedom of thought are dead as a doornail in this country. This is one of the fruits of our foolish openness, and our willingness to bring so many foreign people who come from countries with no tradition of free speech and no ideas about our Constitution and Bill of Rights. They have no more right to come here and try to silence anyone than I would be afforded if I went to India and tried to silence people who 'offended' me, or if I went to Authra Khreis's unnamed country and told them how they are to conduct themselves. We in the West are the doormats of the world, allowing strangers to invade our countries and butt into our affairs, laying down the law to us. The whole world has our number now; they see that we are weak as water and that we allow others to manipulate us by guilt, and bully us with their demands.
What is going on in our world? The leftists and liberals are becoming increasingly unhinged, which is baffling, since they have everything their way; even our wimpified, politically correct country is 'right-wing and fascist' in their warped view.
The recent attack by some crazed leftist harpy on Condoleezza Rice, although I am not a fan of Rice, was a disgusting display, and it shows the increasingly unhinged behavior of the left. And then there was the heckler who angered Bill Clinton at a recent appearance, and the 'Truthers' who heckled leftist Bill Maher. So the left is attacking not only the right, but their own.
And of course in recent days we've been seeing the right (if you consider mainstream Republicans and neocons as the 'right') assaulting and accusing those they consider too right-wing and 'racist' or 'Islamophobic.' There was the Watson controversy, in which the 'right' were conspicuous by their absence when it came time to defend Watson for his 'racist' comments.
There are 'conservative' blogs which have been banning those who deviate from the party line, and then we have the neocon mouthpieces like Michael Medved recently using the old neo-nazi smear against Ron Paul.
This is actually not a new thing, this purging of those who are too far right: Free Republic, with its mass bannings of immigration restrictionists (although some have been allowed back, as the climate has changed) and certain other 'anti-illegal immigration' forums have had a longstanding practice of ejecting anybody, sometimes in a most humiliating fashion, for being too 'xenophobic' or 'racist'. You must always assert your eager support for LEGAL immigration or risk being blackballed for being a 'hater'.
So free speech is under assault from all quarters; it used to be that the right was somewhat more tolerant, despite popular stereotypes, than the hypocritical preachers of 'tolerance' on the Left, but now many on the right are just as intolerant. Do we not suppose that many on the neocon right were glad to see Nick Griffin silenced and shouted down?
The blogger who has been banning so many PC transgressors has also condemned Nick Griffin, and the YAF for sponsoring his speech at MSU. So the left and some of the 'right' are in agreement when it comes to politically incorrect speech; they favor silencing or shouting down or destroying the careers of those they deem beyond the pale.
I've been following the discussion on some of the mainstream 'counterjihad' blogs and forums and the dialogue often shows little sign of having improved or opened up; there is still a hierarchy of political correctness, in which many people ritually go through their denunciations of 'racists' and 'Islamophobes' and anti-Semites.There is still an obsessive concern with being 'moderate' or appearing so in order to attract more 'mainstream' people. This, I think, is a vain hope, and above all, I am at a loss to explain why people think we have all the time in the world to 'convert' the indifferent or the timid or the obtuse or the politically correct. Why do so many of these people, who obsess over Islam and jihad not see the urgency of our situation? As I see it, we are at a crossroads, and we have to take the shortest route to get to safety; we have no time for niceties and palaver and dialogue and trying to appear mild in order to attract the moderates.
Why is there so little sense of urgency among some on the so-called 'right'? Is it timidity, or wishful thinking, or denial, or is it just temporizing, hoping to buy time at the least expense?
With this unholy convergence between the PC right and the PC left, we are coming perilously close to outlawing 'hate' in general; we will not even be allowed to 'hate' those who are trying to kill us or conquer us. As I've written before, how can we outlaw emotions, especially when it is natural to feel antipathy and anger, and yes, sometimes hate?
We can and do outlaw certain behaviors that might be associated with 'hate'; we have laws against harassment, and inciting violence, and against assault and murder. We can and do outlaw behaviors, and I support harsh penalties for those who commit violence except in self-defense. But trying to forbid people to have an unfavorable opinion or a fear or yes, outright hatred for someone is wrong.
In a sense, we are all Nick Griffin, we who defy political correctness. Those who join in the braying mobs who shout him and all other dissenters down, whether they call themselves 'conservative' or right-wing, or left wing, they are the 'fascists' they profess to oppose.
I will quote, again, from J.R. Nyquist on Oriana Fallaci, who is an inspiration to me:
In the West, she says, our corrupt culture does not punish the body. It does not confiscate your assets or violate your political rights. It kills the soul by eliminating the possibility that anyone will acknowledge you. The thinker who steps out-of-bounds is quickly isolated, diagnosed, dismissed, being neither followed nor respected. The culture denounces what remains of a "wretch, a lunatic, a liar, a dissolute, a sinner." Today�s democracy condemns the lone voice, the voice in the wilderness, "to civic death." According to Fallaci, "Everything can be expressed, everything can be spread, except the freedom of revealing the truth. Because the truth leaves no way out, and inspires fear."
Fear is the determining factor in the decline of democracy, Fallaci claims. And therefore courage is the antidote.''