If you’re unaware, Gab.ai was created as an alternative social media platform for those of a conservative mind or, more importantly, an actual free speech mind.
It was devised to be the alternative to Twitter and Facebook — mostly Twitter, as it has a Twitter-like feel to it and limits the number of characters per entry.
Initially it took, literally, a few months for me and others to register for Gab.ai due to its popularity. Once on, however, I was a bit chagrined by its klunky interface and what I considered to be its less-than-intuitive interface. Resultingly I wasn’t as active there as I was on Twitter. Gab needed then and now to update its interface and make it more intuitive. There. I said it.
Twitter Rival GAB Served Notice its Registrar Will Seize its Domain if Not Changed Due to GAB Promoting Free Speech
by Jim Hoft
Twitter rival GAB was served notice by its domain registrar that it has 5 days to transfer its domain or they will seize it.
At the same time GAB is suing Google for anti trust violations.
According to David Z. Morris at Fortune magazine, GAB supports Milo Yiannopoulous whom Morris slanders by calling him a white supremacist who was banned from Google for his racially offensive harassment of a black actress –
According to David Z. Morris at Fortune magazine, GAB supports Milo Yiannopoulous whom Morris slanders by calling him a white supremacist who was banned from Google for his racially offensive harassment of a black actress –
Gab, a social media platform that touts its openness to any and all forms of speech, has sued Google for refusing to list the Gab Android App on the Google Play store. Gab claims, according to Ars Technica, that Google denied its listing to protect a data-sharing agreement with Twitter, potentially violating antitrust rules. But the stakes here may be more about perception than the law.
Twitter used to think of itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” But the internet obviously took that as a challenge, breeding dozens of professional trolls like Milo Yiannopoulous, who was banned from Twitter after organizing a racially offensive harassment campaign against actor Leslie Jones.
Yiannopoulos, along with many white supremacists and other prominent figures of the so-called “alt-right,” have since migrated to Gab as their primary public platform. Antitrust lawyer Mark Patterson told Ars Technica that if Google could show that they chose not to allow Gab into the Play Store because of possible reputational damage from that strong association with hate groups, the antitrust claim would have little chance of success.
Even if it is summarily thrown out of court, Gab’s suit willhelp the nascent platform further establish itself as an alternative to Silicon Valley’s center-left cultural norms. Those have been on display recently in Google’s move to silence critics at think tanks and internally, and in a broader tech-world crackdown on formerly-tolerated hate speech.
Is this nothing more than the Left — AGAIN — doing its level best to remove free speech from the internet? Of course it is. From “complaints.”
Morris is not correct in his outrageous allegations about GAB and Milo and he should be ashamed. More likely Milo was kicked out of Twitter because he was a successful conservative gay man. Liberals hate successful conservative gay men.
Twitter over the past year terminated the accounts of numerous successful conservatives like Milo during the election and prevented tweets from conservative outlets like this one from being wide spread. Twitter decides which groups are hate groups through their own fascist interpretation of what is a hate group. Any successful conservative apparently fits their definition of a hate group.
The crux of the biscuit is this.
GAB capitalized on the left wing bias of social site Twitter and now is being attacked for allowing free speech on its site by Google and the alt left mainstream media (MSM).
We knew this day would come and now we have entered a crossroads with a very binary decision: remove one post or lose our domain and thus the entire website.
Our choice was very clear to me. The post needs to come down. If it does not, we lose our domain. To my knowledge there are no pro-free speech domain registrars and that is a massive problem. Our only other option now would be to play a cat and mouse game by transferring our domain to another registrar. Others who have attempted to play this game have failed and even had their domain seized completely from under them. We will not play these games. We have little choice, for now.
The free and open internet as we know it is under attack. It is centralized and controlled by no more than a handful of companies who provide these services:
Hosting
DDoS protection
Payment Processing
Domain Registrars
Mobile device hardware and software distribution
This is called a clue as far as I’m concerned. But read on.
Without any of these things an individual website can not possibly compete and operate at scale. If left unchecked, these centralized platforms will continue their dominance and control the means of all information, personal data, and communication on the internet.
It’s not too late to save the free and open internet. Decentralized platforms built on the blockchain (including Gab in the near future) will inevitably give the power and control to The People and make the internet censorship-proof.
Gab wants to lead the creation of the next level of the internet. If Web 2.0 was about centralized, social, and mobile networks: Web 3.0 will be a decentralized, blockchain-based, radically transparent, people-powered internet infrastructure.
We are actively looking for a new registrar. This post will hopefully inspire other teams to start building or attract talented engineers to Gab who want to help us protect the free and open web. Until then, we will continue to build and fight for the freedoms we cherish.
What is it, then, that Conservative speech truly needs? Easy answer: sufficient cash to own and wield its own domain registrar, its own hosting, its own DDoS protection, payment processing, and mobile device hardware and software distribution.
Because, as everyone knows, Ben Shapiro is such an overbearing individual and cuts such an oppressive, racist, sexist, -ist and -obe swath seldom seen before, and should never have been allowed to speak at UC Berkeley this past Thursday. Yet he was.
As opposed to prior events where Berkeley PD and the UC Berkeley polices forces chose to stand down as ordered, however, the riots failed to cook off this time because officers were out in force and were clearly a presence. This time they countenanced no one, for example, wearing masks. That predominantly eliminates Antifa. Hold that thought. I’m coming back to it.
But first, Ben Shapiro’s entire speech including a Q and A session with audience members.
Coverage of the arrests outside the speech in Berkeley, by FoxNews.com:
Ben Shapiro speech at UC Berkeley results in arrests at protests
At least nine people were arrested Thursday night related to protests at the University of California, Berkeley, over an appearance by former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro.
UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said the security measures could cost $600,000. Mogulof called the speech “a successful event” and said the university was committed to hosting speakers like Shapiro in the future.
Stop. Question: just who cost the university $600,000? That’s correct. Its Leftist students. Seems like freedom really isn’t free, is it UC Berkeley? Not when you have rioters for students.
The evening did have its share of hiccups. Police said three arrests were weapons-related. Among them:
— Hannah Benjamin, 20, was arrested for battery on a police officer and carrying a banned weapon.
— Sarah Roark, 44, was taken into custody for carrying a banned weapon.
The arrests were announced on the police Twitter account.
The demonstrators, however, were largely peaceful. Some chanted against fascism, white supremacists and President Donald Trump. Others were holed up inside a student building, waving signs protesting the university’s decision to allow Shapiro on campus.
Inside the hall, Shapiro addressed a friendly crowd. He encouraged people to hold civil discussions with people who have different opinions, saying that’s what America is all about. He condemned white supremacists as “a very small select group of absolutely terrible people who believe absolutely terrible things.”
The campus and surrounding Berkeley streets were under tight security after a series of previous events turned violent.
City and campus officials anticipated protests against Shapiro, and prepared for possible violence with a variety of new strategies and tightened security. It was not immediately clear whether the people arrested Thursday were protesters.
Back to my reference to law enforcement. Four points.
First: Berkeley police agencies decided to utilize actual preparation this time in concert with some proactivity as well, to include the disallowance of persons wearing face covering as is customary with Antifa elements.
Second: Berkeley police agencies came out in force with barriers, gear, presence and plans in place.
Third: They did not stand back as they had in times past, instead making arrests, preventing injury to citizens and protecting property, which proves:
This means that those people injured and those businesses and persons suffering property damage should individually and collectively sue the City of Berkeley, City of Berkeley Police Department, the Mayor of Berkeley and the UC Berkeley Police Department for negligence, as well as advocate prosecution under California penal code 182 PC for conspiracy, RICO, and federal code 42 USC § 1983, Civil action for Deprivation of Rights — as I delineated in this post.
Because up until last Thursday in Berkeley, what happened was this:
Americans were left to fight it out on the streets of the United States as law enforcement officers were either forced to or willingly allowed violence to occur directly in front of their eyes.
And that is absolutely unacceptable, unsustainable and anathema to actual keepers of oaths.
Oh please, let the suits commence.
Finally, as UC Berkeley itself pointed out: walls work.
They’ve repeatedly tried and failed to impose regulations on Internet political communications, possibly even media sites like the Drudge Report, but congressional testimony that unnamed Russians spent $100,000 for politically themed ads on Facebook is sparking a new bid by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission.
The FEC, specifically, tried back in 2014 as Paul Bedard, the author of this newest article above, documented here:
FEC chair warns that conservative media like Drudge Report and Sean Hannity face regulation — like PACs
by Paul Bedard
Government officials, reacting to the growing voice of conservative news outlets, especially on the internet, are angling to curtail the media’s exemption from federal election laws governing political organizations, a potentially chilling intervention that the chairman of the Federal Election Commission is vowing to fight.
The real truth is this — no more complicated.
“The right has begun to break the left’s media monopoly, particularly through new media outlets like the internet, and I sense that some on the left are starting to rethink the breadth of the media exemption and internet communications,” he added.
When you cannot win the war of ideas, that is to say “the message,” then your only alternative is to shut down “the messenger” which, in these cases, translates to the internet itself and some sites specifically, like Drudge. Mine is next. So is yours.
(FEC Chairman Lee Goodman) added, “Truth be told, I want conservative media to have the same exemption as all other media.”
That translates to, as I have said for quite some time: “No one is equal until everyone is equal.”
The history explained here, as well.
You can already see the Leftist social media giants shutting down free speech. But whose free speech? Those on the right. Leftist speech remains predominantly uninterrupted, undisturbed and inviolate unless it is so shockingly egregious that even the American Media Maggots begin to notice a bit. Even then, not consistently. Death threats against President Trump on Twitter, for example, tend to remain unless they are somehow brought to light. Massive light.
Liberals over the years have also pushed for a change in the Federal Communications Commission‘s “fairness doctrine” to cut off conservative voices, and retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has delighted Democrats recently with a proposed Constitutional amendment that some say could force the media to stop endorsing candidates or promoting issues.
At one point the “fairness doctrine” — which is the precise opposite, of course — ruled in media. Its attempt, originally, was to actually ensure some semblance of “fairness” in broadcasting when media choices were extremely limited, the precise opposite of today.
See my previous posts about the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”:
I value two things primarily: honesty and clarity. So let’s be clear: the only reason the FEC or the FCC wish to limit and regulate speech under the guise of “fairness” or “equanimity” is to limit the speech of only one side: the conservative side. To limit the dissemination of information which thusly informs voters and allows Conservatives to acquire facts, data and particulars on political issues.
Because, after all, everything is political now.
Finally: where are the Republicans on this? Why no public GOP umbrage over the issue? Statements? Decisions to oppose? Republicans taking a stand against this?
Another reason Conservative trust in the GOP has almost vanished.
I am particularly disgusted by the continuing insertion of police departments as obstructionists to our civil rights, namely our First Amendment rights of free speech and peaceful protest. Note: peaceful protest.
You police departments, police administrators and local bureaucrats who enable Antifa, never forget this Antifa phrase. They mean it quite seriously.
Let’s not forget that Leftists and Antifa despise you and oppose law enforcement. When you stand back you are at cross-purposes with yourselves and the oaths you took to protect life and property.
“There is a war on cops. It’s very real and it’s very dangerous. Why is the left not exposing THAT hate speech?” pic.twitter.com/LracNMGysD
Supreme Court unanimously reaffirms: There is no ‘hate speech’ exception to the First Amendment
by Eugene Volokh
From today’s opinion by Justice Samuel Alito (for four justices) in Matal v. Tam, the “Slants” case:
[The idea that the government may restrict] speech expressing ideas that offend … strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the thought that we hate.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote separately, also for four justices, but on this point the opinions agreed:
A law found to discriminate based on viewpoint is an “egregious form of content discrimination,” which is “presumptively unconstitutional.” … A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the government’s benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society.
This flies directly in the fact of what Leftists, Demorats, the American Media Maggots, globalists and even a few Republicans are saying: there is “hate speech” and it is a crime.
False. So sayeth the US Supreme Court.
Leftists, however, predicate their bleats about so-called “hate speech” but upon feelings and emotions, not upon facts or reality. I wrote this back on July 31st.
Leftists: speech is brutality
As long as it fails to correspond to their version and values attached to speech. Any speech. All speech.
Imagine that a bully threatens to punch you in the face. A week later, he walks up to you and breaks your nose with his fist. Which is more harmful: the punch or the threat?
The answer might seem obvious: Physical violence is physically damaging; verbal statements aren’t. “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Wait. So can eggs. Cow farts. A blue ringed octopus. Loose lug nuts. The cargo door from a 747. A bee. Bad spinach.
If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech — at least certain types of speech — can be a form of violence.
You might even say that, in the eyes of Leftists, Demorats, Antifa, anarchists, the next sentence encapsulates it all, fervently embossed and endorsed by Howard Dean.
The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks.
This is nothing more than one of the most brain-dead statements ever made. The writer and its jejune sympathizers fail to properly load the difference between the words “speech” and “action” into their fetid and fissured brain housing groups.
This is free speech and I support Olbermann’s right to write it. He utilized expletives. But he did not advocate outright violence as in today’s vernacular. Olbermann is insane, yes, but he has the same rights as Nazis to disagree with issues.
Free-speech protections — not only but especially in universities, which aim to educate students in how to belong to various communities — should not mean that someone’s humanity, or their right to participate in political speech as political agents, can be freely attacked, demeaned or questioned.
With that as background, the City of San Francisco decided to outright cancel this past Saturday’s (August 26th) rally organized by Patriot Prayer, a group typified by most all the American Media Maggots as Nazi-like in nature and purely evil in intent. The AMM quantified it is a “controversial free speech rally.”
Stop. You see? Free speech is now labeled “controversial.”
Patriot Prayer is an American conservative advocacy group whose stated aim is to support free speech and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.[1] The group is known for organizing rallies and protests in predominately liberal areas. Some of the rallies have drawn controversy due to the attendance of white nationalists, though the group’s founder Joey Gibson has disavowed them and denounced racism.[2]
Stop. Wait. Let’s list the numerous ways this group is inherently evil, yes?
Anything conservative is evil;
Anything or anyone advocating conservatism is evil;
Supporting free speech is evil;
Supporting the First Amendment is evil;
Supporting the US Constitution is evil;
Organizing rallies and protests in predominantly liberal areas is evil;
Joey Gibson is evil for disavowing white nationalists and denouncing racism.
You see? Rampant and unmitigated evil which must be immediately shut down.
Immediately immediately immediately!
And shut down it was.
Aided and abetted by the Berkeley Police Department. From Breitbart.com:
Berkeley Police Allowed Antifa to Jump Barricades, Assault Demonstrators
by Joel B. Pollak
Berkeley police deliberately allowed masked “Antifa” anarchists to jump a barricade and attack a demonstration by a peaceful right-wing group on Sunday, leading to five assaults, including on Patriot Prayer group leader Joey Gibson.
The counter-demonstration had reportedly been “largely peaceful” until that point.
The police later defended their decision by arguing that keeping the anarchists out would have led to greater violence. There was “no need for a confrontation over a grass patch,” Berkeley police chief Andrew Greenwood said, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
Note how Leftist Chief Greenwood inartfully and clumsily crafted his biased response in terms of “keeping the anarchists (he admits that’s what they are and their nature) out would have led to greater violence,” thusly “over a grass patch.”
This is called a cowardly excuse for not doing his job. By the way, what is the City of Berkeley paying this chief to execute their city council’s non-interventionist policy and that of its Antifa-embracing Mayor Arreguin? Right. $210,000. Not including benefits.
Check this:
Berkeley Mayor Is Member of Antifa Facebook Group that Organized Riots
by Tom Ciccotta
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin is a member of the anti-fascist Facebook group, By Any Means Necessary, which orchestrated the riots that occurred ahead of a scheduled lecture by Milo Yiannopoulos.
The original “No to Marxism” protest had been denied a permit by the city, but a small group of protesters showed up anyway, as did 2,000 “largely peaceful” counter-demonstrators, the Mercury News reported. SFGate.com reported that there were 400 police on hand to prevent violence.
But wait. There’s more.
But (Berkeley Police) stepped aside, the Mercury News reported, when over 100 masked anarchists “busted through police lines, avoiding security checks by officers to take away possible weapons.”
The result was several severe beatings of those who had gathered to protest against Marxism. Thirteen of the anarchists were arrested, the Chronicle reported.
Again, how many times do I have to point this out? In my opinion, I would submit that the City of Berkeley, Mayor Arreguin, the city council and Chief Andrew Greenwood are all complicit in a conspiracy, 182 PC, to allow lawful citizens of the State of California and the United States to become injured by indifference, and to allow private and public property to be damaged and destroyed, having received their marching orders not to interfere if the forces of Antifa were having their way.
I would submit that these forces possess a history sufficient to instigate both a federal RICO investigation of the entire Bay Area bureaucracy, and a 42 USC § 1983 “deprivation of civil rights” action.
Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.
It’s long past time for Leftists to be subject to the same lawful scrutiny others are.
In the meantime, this past weekend was simply another excuse for Antifa anarchist elements to riot, strike, injure and act violently because, after all, at their base they simply enjoy it.
I continue.
But the Mercury News report, citing Berkeley law enforcement authorities directly, made it clear that police knew that “Antifa” intended to cause violence, and allowed it to happen:
Berkeley police chief Andrew Greenwood defended how police handled the protest, saying they made a strategic decision to let the anarchists enter to avoid more violence.
Greenwood said “the potential use of force became very problematic” given the thousands of peaceful protesters in the park. Once anarchists arrived, it was clear there would not be dueling protests between left and right so he ordered his officers out of the park and allowed the anarchists to march in.
He ordered his officers out of the park.
Let that sink in. By the way, for those not yet aware, it’s 2017. Not 1923. There is no Beer Hall Putsch. Or is there?
The Associated Press corroborated that report: “Berkeley Police Chief Andrew Greenwood said officers were told not to actively confront the anarchists. He applauded officers’ restraint, saying it forestalled greater violence.”
I say to the apparently scattered few police officers on the Berkeley Police Department who actually wish to uphold their law enforcement oaths — and there are obviously a shockingly-deficient number of you now — it is long past due time to make a stand. But at some point you must. Do you stay or do you go? Do you fellate the Leftist cock of your local government or do you leave it to do some actual good for a department that will appreciate your talents, your training, your education and your experience?
Because, frankly, Berkeley PD never will.
It is not unlike this:
DISPATCHER: Attention all units, 211 in progress, Bank of America, Main and 51st, two masked males with handguns, units to respond?
UNIT: Paul 17 enroute from Franklin and 17th Ave.
UNIT: Paul 19 enroute from Josiah and Henry.
UNIT: Sam 5 from Henry and Stockton.
CHIEF: Units stand down, reduce code, clear the call. Citizens and suspects could be injured by your response and interference.
No. I am not kidding. This is apparently where we are today in some departments, in some areas, in some municipalities, in some Leftist states.
And the above. Berkeley PD obviously standing and watching. One wants to go, one does not.
I tell a police officer I’ve been seeing people get beat up all day and they haven’t been around. “Okay, and?” he says. pic.twitter.com/OuGEcvvb8R
Okay and, how about you honor the law enforcement oath you took when your badge was pinned on by your wife, husband, parents, a loved one upon graduation:
“I, ______, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and Constitution of the State of California, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.
It’s called an oath. And it is what you swore to uphold.
Not anarchy. Not Antifa. Not chaos. Not insurrection. But calm and order and the rule of law.
Some people got slapped out of Antifa as they deserved.
Some people bitched about having violated the law but not yet afforded their rights to incredible luxuries afforded nowhere else on the planet. Note to bitcher: perhaps you should have left your “service dog” at home. But no. You’re a “Four-Fer.” A black. A female. A Leftist. A recipient of a service dog. All at Taxpayer Expense, yes? Because I’m sure you had the thousands and thousands of dollars required to have your claimed dog trained, did you not? Oh wait. That was on the taxpayer’s hook, was it?
But wait. Stop. Bestill my clotted heart. Am I hearing what I think I may be hearing”
But only for a microsecond or three.
Then there were the people who had the temerity and naked audacity to suggest they had a a right to protest non-violently. Note: non-violently.
Let’s go to Tucker Carlson.
“Using the police forces for their own political gain.”
This literally makes me heartsick. Physically nauseous. But the ultimate realization makes me even more concerned.
You have two legs and at least something of a brain. You can decide to leave the room, turn off the television, stop reading, leave the website, put down the magazine, turn off the iPad, etc. Any number of logical adult decisions can be made. Logical. Adult. Decisions.
You are not a Stegosaurus. It required a semi-brain, and a ganglion of nerves in its hips to make the legs move.
And that’s my ultimate point.
Who has control? The receptor of the message? Who is forced to, say: Click on. Click off?
Even Noam Chomsky believes in free speech, and on campuses.
The United States of America is one of the very, very few Western Civilization countries left that does not have a “hate speech” law guaranteeing prosecution of that vastly nebulous phrase.
Be thankful.
Be very, very thankful.
But be very, very mindful.
Moreover: be vigilant. And be prepared to defend your Constitutional rights.
Imagine that a bully threatens to punch you in the face. A week later, he walks up to you and breaks your nose with his fist. Which is more harmful: the punch or the threat?
The answer might seem obvious: Physical violence is physically damaging; verbal statements aren’t. “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Wait. So can eggs. Cow farts. A blue ringed octopus. Loose lug nuts. The cargo door from a 747. A bee. Bad spinach.
If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech — at least certain types of speech — can be a form of violence. But which types?
There you go. Speech is in fact violent. With that in mind, I wonder just what kinds of speech Leftists will consider violent because, after all, the author is quite the Leftist herself? Moreover, who will make these weighty decisions?
This question has taken on some urgency in the past few years, as professed defenders of social justice have clashed with professed defenders of free speech on college campuses. Student advocates have protested vigorously, even violently, against invited speakers whose views they consider not just offensive but harmful — hence the desire to silence, not debate, the speaker. “Trigger warnings” are based on a similar principle: that discussions of certain topics will trigger, or reproduce, past trauma — as opposed to merely challenging or discomfiting the student. The same goes for “microaggressions.”
Ah, here we go. Safe spaces. Coloring books. Safety pins, trigger warnings and microaggressions. The only things truly required at universities any more are drool cups. And sippy cups.
The scientific findings I described above provide empirical guidance for which kinds of controversial speech should and shouldn’t be acceptable on campus and in civil society. In short, the answer depends on whether the speech is abusive or merely offensive.
Again: define “abusive.” In whose eyes? And who makes that ultimate determination?
What’s bad for your nervous system, in contrast, are long stretches of simmering stress. If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that’s the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain. That’s also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it.
Wait. Are these hateful words. Is this an advocacy of violence?
A history of violence? On whose side?
What of the loving and peaceful Diablo College professor Eric Clanton? Correct me if I’m wrong, but this appears to be actual violence committed by a Leftist on camera.
Then there is Leftist professor Kevin Allred from Montclair State University who Tweeted last Friday night, July 28th: “Trump is a fucking joke. This is all a sham. I wish someone would just shoot him outright.”
What does that sound like to you? Just a wee tinge of violent speech? Enough to nut up a snowflake? Not necessarily for, you see, it is all quite topic-dependent.
To me it sounds like the environment one customarily encounters on any given campus in the United States when any student, singly or in a group, begins speech which is conservative in nature. In this aspect Barrett makes a perfect point. But not the one she intended.
That’s why it’s reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. There is nothing to be gained from debating him, for debate is not what he is offering.
Let me unpack the obvious here, something few people point out. Milo is or isn’t anyone’s particular cup of tea. Frankly, I enjoy his willingness to display pushback right in the revered houses of “education” so unfailingly determined to restrict speech. But the reason debate isn’t generally acquired in a Milo campus presentation is because of two aspects: 1. He thinks on his feet with remarkable rapidity, and 2. He is quick to throw facts and situations back at the commenters and questioners in the audience. Leftists don’t operate in the sphere of facts but instead of emotions.
That was pretty emotional, I’d wager. Thanks, professor. Nice advocacy of violence.
By all means, we should have open conversations and vigorous debate about controversial or offensive topics. But we must also halt speech that bullies and torments. From the perspective of our brain cells, the latter is literally a form of violence.
Then Barrett encountered a problem. She appeared on the Tucker Carlson show.
Leftists are at least nothing if not consistent. They only deign to answer questions fitting their narrative. And certainly not the questions I posed as did Tucker: define abuse and tell me who becomes the ultimate determinant of same?
Leftists would resoundingly answer in unison to the one question: government should be the determinant by way of laws restricting speech. Damn that First Amendment.
Oddly enough an article exists in New York magazine countering Barrett’s argument.
Stop Telling Students Free Speech Is Traumatizing Them
by Jesse Singal
One fairly common idea that pops up again and again during the endless national conversation about college campuses, free speech, and political correctness is the notion that certain forms of speech do such psychological harm to students that administrators have an obligation to eradicate them — or, failing that, that students have an obligation to step in and do so themselves (as has happened during recent, high-profile episodes involving Charles Murray and Milo Yiannopoulos, which turned violent).
Agreed. Just ask snowflakes. I love that word. It’s so apropos.
So it’s weird, in light of all this, to see the claim that free speech on campus leads to serious psychological harm being taken seriously in the New York Times, and weirder still to see it argued in a manner draped in pseudoscience. Yet that’s what happened. In a Sunday Review column headlined “When Is Speech Violence?” Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, explains that “scientifically speaking,” the idea that physical violence is more harmful than emotional violence is an oversimplification. “Words can have a powerful effect on your nervous system. Certain types of adversity, even those involving no physical contact, can make you sick, alter your brain — even kill neurons — and shorten your life.” Chronic stress can also shrink your telomeres, she writes — “little packets of genetic material that sit on the ends of your chromosomes” — bringing you closer to death.
This is a weak and confused argument. Setting aside the fact that no one will ever be able to agree on what’s “abusive” versus what’s “merely offensive,” the articles Barrett links to are mostly about chronic stress — the stress elicited by, for example, spending one’s childhood in an impoverished environment of serious neglect and violence. Growing up in a dangerous neighborhood with a poor single mother who has to work so much she doesn’t have time to nurture you is not the same as being a college student at a campus where Yiannopoulos is coming to speak, and where you are free to ignore him or to protest his presence there.
Thank you. Finally, someone points out the Captain Obvious aspects of campus speech and pretty much speech everywhere.
And that’s this. You have two legs and at least something of a brain. You can decide to leave the room, turn off the television, stop reading, leave the website, put down the magazine, turn off the iPad, etc. Any number of logical adult decisions can be made. Logical. Adult. Decisions.
This is apparently a concept with which Leftists, snowflakes, raindrops and all makes and models of emos are stultifyingly unfamiliar.
Nowhere does Barrett fully explain how the presence on campus of a speaker like Yiannopoulos for a couple of hours is going to lead to students being afflicted with the sort of serious, chronic stress correlated with health difficulties. It’s simply disingenuous to compare the two types of situations — in a way, it’s an insult both to people who do deal with chronic stress and to student activists.
Thank you. Again more shocking clarity and honesty.
Now, it would be just as much of a stretch to say that a single column like Barrett’s could cause students to self-traumatize as it would be to say that an upcoming Yiannopoulos appearance could traumatize them. But in the aggregate, if you tell students over and over and over that certain variants of free speech — variants which are ugly, but which are aired every moment of every day on talk radio — are traumatizing them, it really could do harm.
Yes. Self-fulfilling prophecy.
And there’s no reason to go down this road, because there’s no evidence that the mere presence of a conservative speaker on campus is harming students in some deep psychological or physiological way (with the exception of outlying cases involving preexisting mental-health problems). This is a silly idea that should be retired from the conversation about free speech on campus.
From whom does trauma occur to others? Leftists.
From whom does violence on campus occur? Leftists.
Who cannot brook or tolerate opposing viewpoints, thoughts or exposition?
If you’re unaware, Gab.ai was created as an alternative social media platform for those of a conservative mind or, more importantly, an actual free speech mind.
First, from the 
And I’ve had enough.
This is nothing more than one of the most brain-dead statements ever made. The writer and its jejune sympathizers fail to properly load the difference between the words “speech” and “action” into their fetid and fissured brain housing groups.
And to think we once had a First Amendment.
speech and pretty much speech everywhere.