Note that conflation of opinions people disagree with and violence. Note the emphasis on responding to this man's op-ed piece in a student newspaper with calls to punish him, ostracize him, and repeatedly equating his opinion with violence. When your opinion is violence, using violence to make you shut up becomes self-defense. No, that's not a legitimate equation; it is, however, the inevitable end result of this type of response.
And that, I think, is deliberate.
It has intimidation value. Intimidation makes people shut up.
UPDATE: This is how it works. They call your speech violence and hate speech, and say it shouldn't be allowed, despite the fact that it is absolutely not either of those things. Then they insist you hire 30 police officers for "security" during the speech, because the leftists there will riot. And then the people holding the event are asked to pay the fees for several hours of overtime for each of those police officers. (For 30 of them, it adds up fast). Result? The ordinary, non-controversial right-leaning speaker has costs hugely higher than the corresponding left-wing speaker, is routed to a much smaller venue ("security concerns"), and has a much smaller audience.
This entry was published Sat Feb 10 09:24:39 CST 2018 by TriggerFinger
and last updated 2018-02-09 20:58:18.0.
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