Today I posted on The Salt Lake Tribune’s website a letter from one Ian Decker, who says he speaks for the University of Utah chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society [I didn’t know they were still around] and the Salt Lake City chapter of Black Lives Matter.
Yes, he got into print a lot faster than most people do. But this one was now or never. And, I thought, constitutes fair warning of what some people plan to do at the talk by alt-right firebrand Ben Shapiro tomorrow night at the U.
— Why we intend to shut down Ben Shapiro — Ian Decker | The Public Forum
Of course, Shapiro’s The Daily Wire instantly picked it up and used it as fodder for Shapiro’s own argument that it is he, not the LGBT community or Black Lives Matter or anyone else, who is the victim here. Which means that the SDS/BLM approach may well backfire.
— Leftists At University of Utah announce intention to ‘Shut down’ Shapiro speech — The Daily Wire
The whole mess is enough for the University administration to post a Safety Update:
“Please be advised of Ben Shapiro’s appearance on campus tomorrow, Sept. 27, as well as counter-programming events and protests planned. ... Much of the surrounding area will be blocked off, and faculty have had the option of relocating their classes to other buildings. There will be significant police presence in the area ... As noted in the university’s speech policy, demonstrations are a legitimate means of expression. For this reason, university policy allows individuals to demonstrate freely, as long as their conduct is not violent, does not unduly disrupt the functioning of the university, interfere with the rights of other members of the university community or damage university or private property. ..”
I have twice now used my space in The Tribune to say that Shapiro, and just about anyone else who has something to say, has the right to say it. No matter how nasty and unpopular it may be.
— This was supposed to be the Golden Age of Free Speech - posted Sept. 15
— Controversial U. speaker should be criticized for what he says, not what others imagine - posted Sept. 22
I encouraged those who have a problem with that message and that messenger to peaceably assemble near by, wave some clever signs, then repair to a counter-event where they can say and hear things they like better. Or drink beer.
I do think the people who really don’t want Shapiro to have something as important and respected as a university campus as a platform have one point that deserves to be made, if not necessarily agreed with.
From Decker’s letter:
We intend on shutting down Ben Shapiro precisely because we don’t live in a fantasy world where hate speech has no consequences. We believe his hate speech can and will have material consequences for vulnerable people.
The fear is that people like Shapiro give a rationale to those who are already predisposed to not just look down on gay or transgender people, on women who claim their own place in the world, on minorities or immigrants. That they rationalize and normalize not just discrimination, but violence.
That matters everywhere, and matters a lot in Salt Lake City, as Decker points out, where the rates of homelessness and suicide among LGBT youth is obscenely high.
The argument for a fundamentalist interpretation of the First Amendment and the larger principle of free speech is that speech isn’t violence. It is speech. If someone hears the speech and gets violent, that’s not the speaker’s fault. It’s the fault of the idiot who did something awful because some other idiot told him it was OK.
Remember, though, the words of Martin Luther King in his masterful “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” on some things other than gunfire and bloodshed that do, indeed, constitute violence.
... when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: ‘Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?’ ...”
Of course, one quotes King here because his answer to the kinds of behaviors he cites — emotionally and psychically violent though they were — was non-violence.
This is a case where both sides appeal to the larger community to win the title of the put-upon minority. The victim of a hostile and unfeeling society. The underdog. The one who stands up to The Man. And it is a case where both of them have a point, at least on that narrow issue.
But I would argue that the first one to get violent — in actions, not just words — loses.
In the very wise words of John Lennon:
When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you — pull your beard, flick your face — to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.
I fear that Shapiro and his allies, slimy though they may be, are better at using humor, sick though it may be, to come out of these conflicts looking, if not like the victim who deserves our sympathy, then at least not like the oppressor.
Watch it, guys.
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