As is common across the left, Dan Arel is full of contradiction, hate, half truths and conflation. The image Dan uses to head up his latest article illustrates that.
First, and least significant there’s the American flag, that we see burning so often.
Then there’s “Trump will not change me”, which is a half truth, because of course Trump has changed many people, not least those on the left, who hate him when they only used to laugh at him: Trump Will Never Win. (To be fair, we all did, we are all changed)
And a hidden truth “Hate will lose” – does it apply to the hate from the left too?
And, “By Any Means Necessary” – I think we can take them at their word on that one. See Yvette Felarca – By Any Means Fascistic
The banners in this very image illustrate the contradiction, hate, half truths and conflation in the movement that Dan identifies as the left.
What we’re missing here is the actual violence of the BAMN group, and the explicit approval of violence that Dan has engaged in, in this article and other sources.
Dan isn’t a classical liberal. He’s a classic Social Justice Warrior. He even says so in one of his blog posts. And he hates you.
Who is this ‘you’ that Dan hates? Anyone that gets in his way when it comes to pushing his agenda. He’s the model caring modern man, except when he isn’t.
The conflation Dan engages in is so up front it looks rediculous when you see it in his tweets and his Facebook posts. But more of those another time – hint. For now we’ll stick to this article.
Dan on Classical Liberals
He’s sort of right on classical liberals, but often wrong – conflates issues here:
many liberals tend to lean more toward the political center
True.
agreeing more with the right than they do the left
Conflation and half truth. On which ideas do we agree? How far right and how far left is he talking about? Is having a discussion on common ground agreeing ‘more’, or is discussion merely putting some differences aside when we are all challenged by extremes of left and right?
One place this is most obvious is over the use of radical protests to silence hate speech on college campuses. Liberals often defend such speakers as alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos or Nazi organizer Richard Spencer. They adhere to the principle that all speech should be protected, no matter how heinous, and often say things like, “I don’t like what you have to say, but I’ll die to protect your right to say it.”
Right here is where we start to see the problem with Dan’s view. He’s the one that has the self-determined authority to decide who is a Nazi. He’s being characteristically slippery here. More uncharitabley I’d say he’s deceiving you for the purpose of popular appeal, or perhaps he doesn’t hink he can get away with explicit false Nazi labelling in this article.
Dan has had no trouble whatsoever calling Milo Yiannopoulos a fascist. Which of course is rediculous. If you ask Dan or others to define Nazism or fascism, and then show what particularly it is about Milo that fits the bill, they ignore you. If you ask for an example of Milo being fascistic, they ignore you. Or call you names.
Richard Spencer isn’t a Nazi. He’s sure not into the socialism bit of national socialism. Socialism and facism have some common ground that the left don’t like to talk about. Mussolini, for example, was a leading member of an Italian socialist party, before becoming his version of a fascist. The other common ground between fascists and socialists is at their not-to-extreme ends they also seem to rely on illegal street thuggery. They are collectivist authoritarian ideologies.
Spencer calls himself an Identitarian, but accepts the label White Nationalist. He’s also a racist. His ideology, as he has expressed it, is that he wants to separate people based on ethnicity. Of course the original Nazis were nationalists, and they were racists – the Aryan purity nonsense is explicit on that score.
Now I get that it’s convenient for Dan to conflate these under the simple label of Nazi, but the problem is that more and more people are pushed into the Nazi bag so that even classical liberals and the not-violent-enough left become Nazis to some people. But those behaving like Nazis are Dan’s violent Nazi-Hating-Nazis (see how easy labelling is): AntiFa and BAMN.
Another problem with this sort of labelling is that it doesn’t leave you much room for manouvre, or for distinguishing degrees of good and bad. You can be flipped from ally to Nazi enemy in no time at all. As many have found to their cost. The wrong tweet and you’re doomed.
This view of speech, and freedom, however, often comes at a cost to marginalized communities.
It doesn’t necessarily, but of course it can. In fact Dan and the AntiFa left that he has been an advocate for have no problem targetting minorities. Some of the protests that AntiFa have attended have resulted in isolated groups of Trump supporters being the physical minority, and they have been assaulted. The freedom to advocate for violence suits Dan well.
But the restriction of free speech harms minorities even more so. That’s why atheists are classed as terrorists in Saudi, bloggers hacked to death in Bangladesh, and for millennia people have been killed for voicing their opinions. And, taking a phrase from Maajid Nawaz, ‘minorities in minorities’ are the most voiceless victims of all.
When Yiannopoulos took the stage late last year at the University of Wisconsin, he put the name and photo of a transgender student on the screen. He attacked her looks, accused her of being a confused man trying to sneak into women’s locker rooms.
I have no problem with the criticism of how Milo went about this, but Dan neglects to tell significant aspects of the story. The student is a transgender activist that has used the law to gain access to womens locker rooms. This is a complex issue that in truth could only be solved by having a varity of locker rooms. Bear in mind that some of Milo’s other enemies, feminists, do not all agree on this issue of bathroom and locker room use.
Anyway, Bill Maher had Milo on and joked about ‘weirdos’. Not funny to Dan, even though Maher made it clear he was joking.
My point here is not to address that issue, but to point out Dan’s neglect of significant detail. Milo did not ‘doxx’ this activist. The person had a public profile anyway. What Milo did do was be mean in his references to that person – not a problem Dan has when it suits, you “piece of shit”.
They [Liberals] even continued to defend Yiannopoulos’s right to spread hate speech after a protester was shot and nearly killed by a Yiannopoulos fan in Seattle.
Again, ommission is one of Dan’s tactics. If you want to read about the preparation for violence that goes on at events like this, where Trump supporters or Milo supporters have been the victims of violence, check this report: How the shooting at the UW protest of Milo Yiannopoulos unfolded. Liberals are generally opposed to the NRA. If this shooter, who claims he was defending himself, which given recent conduct at these events is quite likely, then that needs to be addressed. If the image in that piece does indeed show the victim of the shooting then it looks like he’s part of the Black Bloc AntiFa or BANM group.
None of this detail matters to Dan. Neither liberals, or Milo, would condone shooting so it’s clear Dan’s purpose here is to tar liberals as defenders of gun toting Milo/Trump supporters, when that’s so far from the truth, and ironic since it’s Dan that advocates the violence that might have persuaded the shooter to use a gun for self-defence.
More than 1,000 protesters showed up [at Berkeley], including Black Bloc, an arm of Anti-Fascist Action (Antifa), with one mission: to stop the event from taking place. They tore down barricades, threatened police safety (the far left sees the police force as defending fascists), set off fireworks and set a flood light on fire.
Their mission was a success. Before Yiannopoulos was able to take the stage, the event had been canceled.
Yes. Dan is happy enough that violence stopped a talk. Classical liberals do not oppose or aim to suppress the protests that are mounted. We do criticise them and question the motives behind them. But both those sides of the coin are the parts of our free speech support that Dan would have you ignore.
What we are objecting to mostly is the violence. And recently many have been objecting to Dan’s advocacy of violence. We’re not even ‘defending Milo’ as such, because classical liberals, particularly atheists, disagree with Milo on many issues.
Predictably, liberals were once again upset. Free speech is absolute, and no matter the threat to these minority students, Yiannopoulos had the right to speak.
Many classical liberals do not think free speech is absolute, though some might. We certainly tend to think it foremost in our rights, because it provides the ability to demand our other rights and speak out when they are being infringed – like the right not to be the victim of corporal street punishment.
The problem with Dan’s idea of mob limitation of speech is that you can’t decide on the value or danger of what someone says until they say it. But there are clear dangers of not letting people speak. Again: Saudi, Iran, … you know damned well Dan knows this, so it’s pathetic that this has to be pointed out to him.
Another favourite is “free speech has consequences”, and this is quite right. Dan uses his free speech to advocate violence. If he ever makes a specific incitement to violence he could well be prosecuted for doing so. If he libels anyone he leaves himself open to being sued. But we can’t punch Dan because his history of advocating violence MIGHT lead him to actually incite it specifically, that it MIGHT persuade him to become violent.
Unfortuanely minorites are often oppressed so that they fear speaking out in case violence erupts around them. It happens in the Islamic world all too often. I’m pretty sure Dan does not advocate the way in which Islamic groups will incite violence against Christians in Pakistan, for example, and falsely claim they have insulted the prophet Mohammed.
Dan misses completely the parallel in his world, when he advocates the punching of people he or other leftish thugs decide are Nazis. Remember, Dan and others claim that Hilary should have won the election by the popular vote. That makes Trump supporters a minority. And they usually are the minority at these campus events, where the greater body of students and faculty are of a leftish persuasion. Dan applies his rules to his favoured minorities? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to (except for Nazis, of course), but that’s the effect.
This is an odd neglect of reflection on the variety ways in which one can be in a minority. He knows that though Christianity is the biggest religion, Christians are minorities in Islamic states. There were punches thrown at Trump rallies when protesters managed to infiltrate. It was inexcusable. But for the most part, the students and others that organise and attend Milo events or Trump support events, the conservatives, have been a peaceful minority.
The left even physically abuse reporters – there are many examples of this, including the Melissa Click. There’s no hate like leftish hate.
Thankfully for those students whose lives would have been upended, Antifa was there. They did the work American liberals are consistently unwilling to do: They defended the lives of others.
This is an astonishing defence of actual violence. There is no evidence that they were defending anyone.
It might be worth pointing out here that there are multiple interests involved at these events. The Berkeley protest was heavily influenced by the efforts of those that have created a safe haven, a ‘Sanctuary’, for undocumented and possibly illegal students. The AntiFa and BAMN movements are not explicitly aligned with many of those that protest Milo events, but that only means that the decent protesters have been suckered into creating a bigger crowd within which the thugs can operate.
The left is fighting, not for their lives but for the lives of the marginalized communities that liberal America has forgotten, or more specifically, white liberal America.
Like the ‘racism’ overtones? It’s the white left that’s involved in most of this potesting. And when that’s not the case, there are often tensions between allies – as there often is with ideologies. BLM are often present, but they can respond unfavourably to white allies, and they have their own problem controlling violence that has attached itself to their movement. And the Islamists are very keen to make race a means of slipping their agenda in with any BLM or womens movement, as we say on #WomensMarch (and Linda Sarsour did her bit in NYC recently).
The underlying implication from Dan is that the classical liberals are not doing their bit. Well, if that ‘bit’ is violence, yes, not that. But it’s more than that. Not wanting to turn up to protests where there are multiple agendas on show that we don’t agree with? Yes. not that. Protests rarely are about what they claim to be about.
It’s laughable that these Milo protests are protesting a provocateur, when the protests themselves are full of them
Dan objects to giving Nazis a platform. What the heck does he think is happeneing at these campus protests? Extremists of various sorts regularly turn up. You’ll often hear peaceful protest organisers denouncing the violence that attaches itself to their naive protests, because that violence tends to do little more than expose their own political causes to criticism. But you’ll also find that there are organisers of ‘peaceful’ protests that the other foot in some dubious camp.
And, there is extreme hypocrisy here, because you will not see the ‘peaceful’ protests, much less AntiFa, demostrating outside a mosque that has a hate preacher calling fo the death of apostates.
Had Antifa stayed home and allowed liberals to protect speech, no matter how hateful or damaging, immigrants attending UC Berkeley could likely be facing raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or other federal agents trying to crack down on immigration under President Trump.
Dan isn’t clear on this, but again it does pertain to motives of the protesters. Undocumented students are school-aged immigrants who entered the United States without inspection, or overstayed their visas. There are legal uncertainties surrounding their continued stay in the USA. What Dan fails to point out is that many liberals are in support of programs like the one at UC Berkely – which you’ll note from its history started in 2010 under, and opposing, the Obama administration and it’s attempts to deal with illegals. Where were AntiFa then?
The point here is that if they really had evidence of Milo’s intent to cause undocumented students to be ‘outed’ it wouldn’t matter, as he doesn’t need to be on campus to do it. And if they thought the conservative body that organised the Milo visit were intent on doing it, they didn’t need a visit from Milo to do it.
The comment on this particular issue at Berkely in Dan’s article is entirely bogus and is a cover to attack Milo.
This protection, provided by Antifa and other radical leftist groups, instead of being thanked, is called authoritarian.
Protection? Why didn’t they employ the Mafia? And, yes, it is called ‘athoritarian’ when you use violence to shut down speech that doesn’t agree with yours. The only difference is that there currently isn’t an authoritarian government on their side.
The resistance to Trump, a plan co-opted by liberals, must include the protection of all marginalized individuals, that issues that affect lives every day — not simply the issues that are assured of electing more Democrats.
And you want to see what happens to a marginalised group outnumbered at UC Berkeley? Here you go.
The left is fighting to save America.
No it isn’t. It’s fighting, literally, to have its own way. Collectively the left has done everything it can, but didn’t mean to, to ensure a Trump victory, when one would otherwise have been a remote possibility. They have continued to alienate people that disagree with them, rather than debate with them, persuade them.
This isn’t the simplistic world that the left seem to think they can live in. If only we do this, if only we do that, if only we stop these people talking, we can make the world a lovely place. Their idealism runs away with them until they become the monsters they have been opposing. They totally miss the dangers of incting violence, because if an armed far right chooses to join in, the left will lose many lives before, if, it wins. Endorsing violence is a mistake.
There’s a video clip in youtube (search for ‘Muslim Patrols’, it’s in there somewhere) in which an American reporter is interviewing some of the small group of London Muslims that really did think they were creating a ‘Londonistan’ (the comical pejorative used by the right to describe what they see as an Islamification of areas of London). In that interview, by the female reporter, one particular Muslim intervee asked, “If you believe in freedom, why am I not free to make you cover up?”
That Islamist doesn’t get it in the same way Dan doesn’t. The same but different, because of course, with Islam, it not being Dan’s particular ideology, he’ll spot the flaw at once. But Dan won’t when it comes to his own aggressive oppressive ideology.
Ramblings 