Wednesday, November 29, 2017

SPLC does victory dance over fascist disruption of Robert Spencer event at Stanford

NOV 28, 2017 6:17 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER33 COMMENTS

Just in case there are any people reading this who aren’t sure whether the SPLC is right or I am, the SPLC says in the article below: “Spencer and Horowitz’s records make it clear that they’re not interested in reasoned debate or the free exchange of ideas.”

Here, by contrast, is something I said when I spoke on November 14 at Stanford University:

I hope there are some people [remaining] who oppose what I stand for. The whole idea is to have a discussion. The idea of the university as a matter of fact is to engage in the discussion of ideas and ideas are supposed to be accepted or rejected on their merits. The idea that ideas are to be rejected on the basis of whether they are acceptable to various elites, that’s just the opposite of what free discourse really is. So these Stanford people, these lemmings that just left, are actually behaving in a away that is completely in opposition to what a university ought to be. A university ought to be a place where any and all ideas can be discussed freely…

These people cannot and will not engage on the level of ideas. They come in and they pack the event and then they leave so that nobody that wants to be here can be here. This again shows that these people are afraid of free discourse.

So who is in favor of reasoned debate and the free exchange of ideas, and who isn’t? I would gladly debate anyone of the SPLC’s choosing on Islam and jihad. They, however, will ignore this invitation, or deride it if they don’t ignore it.

Here is the video of the full event. Below is much more commentary from me on the SPLC piece.

Note first the SPLC’s title. Jihad terrorists who commit mass murder are commonly called “extremists” by law enforcement and the establishment. The SPLC is implying that I, who have never committed any violence, called for any violence, or approved of any violence, am their equivalent: “Anti-Muslim extremist Robert Spencer calls peaceful student protesters ‘children’ of ‘Nazis’ at Stanford,” Southern Poverty Law Center, November 22, 2017:

Notorious Muslim-basher and pretend expert on Islam Robert Spencer faced a tough crowd earlier this week at Stanford University. Hosted by the Stanford College Republicans, Spencer was unprepared for a peaceful student walkout.

“Pretend.” Name-calling is easy. Refutation is hard. I’m still waiting for someone to show my statements about Islam, jihad, and Sharia to be false. And my debate invitation stands, SPLC.

Spencer started calling students Nazis as soon as they began their silent protest. According to the Stanford Daily:

Shortly after this comment, the majority of the auditorium got up and left, accompanied by loud Arabic music and Spencer’s speech into the microphone.

Stanford Against Islamophobia clarified that the music was not associated with the original protest, which it said was intended to be a peaceful and silent reaction to the University’s decision to allow Spencer to speak on campus in the first place.

Spencer proceeded to speak loudly into the microphone, calling the students “neo-brown shirts” and “children and heirs of the fascists and the Nazis.”

Stanford administrators and Leftist students conducted a smear campaign before I arrived and made sure that as few people as possible heard me. In The Coming of the Third Reich, historian Richard J. Evans explains how, in the early days of National Socialist Germany, Stormtroopers (Brownshirts) “organized campaigns against unwanted professors in the local newspapers [and] staged mass disruptions of their lectures.” If you act like a Nazi, maybe you’re a…Nazi.

Thus ended another enlightening campus event sponsored by the billionaire-backed Young America’s Foundation.

The SPLC, with its millions in offshore accounts, is whining about its enemies having some money, no doubt less than it has? That’s rich. How many millions does YAF have in offshore accounts? Right, none.

Spencer’s ludicrous outburst and attempt to play the victim is of course a lie. According to the Daily, the campus opposition to the event, while fierce, was peaceful. It seems that what was most upsetting to Spencer was his opponents practicing their First Amendment rights….

Spencer and Horowitz’s records make it clear that they’re not interested in reasoned debate or the free exchange of ideas.

Disrupting an event is not exercising one’s First Amendment rights. Holding a rival event, or a rebuttal — that would be practicing their First Amendment rights. But that’s not what happened at Stanford. Nanci Howe, Associate Dean and Director of Student Activities and Leadership, and Snehal Naik, Assistant Dean and Associate Director of Student Activities and Leadership, made sure that the hall was packed with students who had no intention of attending the lecture, but were there only to sabotage it by denying seats to people who actually wanted to attend. They even kept out some members of the College Republicans, the group that was sponsoring the event. Then after the walkout, they refused to allow students who wanted to attend to come in to the mostly empty hall. That’s Brownshirt behavior, not exercise of one’s First Amendment rights.

Here is video of Nanci Howe happily circulating among the Stanford students walking out of my event there last Tuesday, patting them on the back and chatting with them.

Below is full video of the walkout. Howe appears at 2:44. She appears again at the end of this video, grimacing as I criticize Tessier-Lavigne and Drell for failing to teach or defend the freedom of speech, and for acting to crush dissenting opinions.

With Howe stage-managing the disruption of the event this obviously, it’s clear now why she refused to allow YAF to stream the event.