Violent alt-right provocateurs got the rumble they wanted with a recent pro-Trump rally at Martin Luther King Park in Berkeley.
It turns out even Ann Coulter isn't irresponsible enough to risk inciting a riot by showing up Thursday in UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza to supposedly talk about "immigration policy." But that should never have been on the table.
Considering that the University of California at Berkeley is widely considered to be the finest public university in the world, it's surprising that so many in and around the university community don't get that they are being played for fools by far right trolls and provocateurs. By blocking or placing substantial roadblocks in their way, too many Berkeley folks who really should know better are handing a propaganda windfall to far right types who are, on their own, usually just part of the background noise.
Instead of getting played over and over again by the far right, folks in Berkeley should do three things: 1. Guarantee their appearances as part of the free speech tradition. 2. Guarantee their safety, which means securing both the "battle-ready" alt-right types increasingly rolling in from way out of town and the all too familiar masked so-called "anarchists" who habitually make trouble in Bay Area demonstrations. 3. Guarantee embarrassment for the far right speakers.
Folks like Coulter and Milo Hanrahan, excuse me, Yiannapoulos, are circus sideshow performers, obsessed with their own would-be celebrity. They go to great lengths to get noticed, having discovered that if they mouth offensive gabble there is a good chance in this culture that someone will point a camera in their direction.
Now they've punked one of the world's great universities into giving them more attention than they've ever had.
Why? Because of the contradiction. Progressives historically stand for freedom of expression and Berkeley -- whose motto is "Let There Be Light" -- was cradle of the legendary Free Speech Movement in the 1960s.
Frankly, as an old Berkeley alum who was on the steering committee of Campuses United Against Apartheid, I find what's been going on pretty damn embarrassing. Not to mention irritating. I had to look up this Milo character -- I'd never heard of him -- that is so threatening to so many folks at my old alma mater. (What he is, it turns out, is an attention addict who's ginned up a whole complex "transgressive" persona to obscure the reality that he's just another English middle-class college dropout.)
Coulter isn't quite so non-serious as the Milo guy. She's no dummy. In fact, on occasion, she's downright smart. For example, she correctly predicted, with impressive specificity, how Donald Trump would win the presidential election, months in advance. But ordinarily, I assume because she wants to be a celebrity and this is an easy way to do it in this media culture, she spends her time generating offensive and frequently stupid remarks. She's a smart opportunist who plays a jerk on TV.
Denouncing what Coulter, the Milo character, and others of their clown show ilk do as "hate speech" misses the point. Because the point is that that is precisely what they want.
Doing precisely what your adversary wants was never in any strategy I recall studying. (Unless your opponent is simply stupid.)
Do these characters really care about "free speech?" Gee, let me think ...
But we do. Dissent is at the heart of any progressive ideology. Or really any ideology which means to ensure debate in society.
If the concept of free speech is laid low, so much the better for the authoritarians and neo-fascists that the clown show fronts for.
Look at how their fave rave Donald Trump -- who as longtime readers know I began warning about as the coming thing in American politics nearly two years ago -- has moved to debase and distract from the concept of fake news.
If the concept of free speech is discredited and reality is relative, then anything goes. And if anything goes, well ...
Trump is an ineffective president, but he would be a lot more effective in, say, a state of emergency.
Fortunately, free speech is actually rather easy for Berkeley to uphold. It really ain't rocket science.
Plan ahead and set up a safe venue for the prominent provocateur. Have a firm police presence to keep violent alt-right types from way out of town AND the masked so-called anarchists from closer to home who cause so much trouble well under control. If they they start vandalizing or engaging in violent activity, arrest them. That's not political protest, that's criminal behavior. Zero tolerance for obviously criminal behavior.
And how to treat the speakers themselves? Not with anger, but with derision.
Fortunately, these are folks who've said and done plenty of stupid things. So make their time in Berkeley an embarrassing one.
They want theater. Give them theater they will not enjoy.
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