First, a black bloc protester punched alt-right figure and white-nationalist sympathizer Richard Spencer during inauguration weekend, and some people defended this blatant exercise of violent censorship on the grounds that Spencer is a fascist and as such should not enjoy free speech right. (The Nation‘s Natasha Lennard called it “pure kinetic beauty.”)
Some weeks later, protesters at the University of California, Berkeley, smashed windows and set a large fire in order to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus. Yiannopoulos is not as extreme as Spencer—he does not identify as a white nationalist or a member of the alt-right—but nevertheless holds a number of deplorable views and is closely associated with Breitbart and Trump-ism. Again, the black bloc said that defending people from fascism requires Yiannopoulos to be silenced by the mob.
The day after, similarly-aligned people tried to prevent Gavin McInnes from speaking at New York University. Black bloc protesters maced him as he left the building. McInnes, a former Fox News personality aligned with Trump and Yiannopoulos, certainly does make ugly and offensive statements. But was violence the best answer to those statements? Some say yes.
Mike Monteiro, cisgender male on Twitter: “It’s ok to punch nazis AND white male libertarians who wanna talk about free speech. / Twitter”
It’s ok to punch nazis AND white male libertarians who wanna talk about free speech.
Via Reason