Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazrim
There have been people sending letters and calling schools to explain why they shouldn't allow hate speech at their schools. There have been protests for quite some time against the garbage he spews out. Milo keeps poking the bear and taunting them knowing they can't do anything about it without being given all the labels being used for last night's violence. Are you really surprised it came to this considering he has no consequences to his hateful words, but starts freaking out only when his events are cancelled?
He tries to hide behind his self proclaimed identity as if that gives him the right to hate on other people. He's a despicable person who doesn't deserve the time of day, and hides behind things like free speech to hand out his brand of hate. So what should those who are opposed to this be doing in this perfect world of yours?
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One of the things that always serves as a reminder and challenge for me in regards to freedom of speech and freedom to protest is the good ole Westboro Baptist Church. The things they spout off have always been crazy and offensive, but they continue to do it and continue to be protected to do it.
And while sometimes I think the world would be a better place if all those people were no longer on it, I have to remind myself that sometimes that dissent is important to have. To be the extreme case to remind people that all views should be allowed.
The reason I bring them up here, is that when thinking about Milo Y., and what should and could be done as a response, I think about how people deal with a similar troll group like WBC. Rarely do we see violence against them even when they do things like protest a soldiers funeral. They hit people at their most vulnerable but you don't hear about much violence anymore. People have responded by counter protesting and trying to just drown out their evil message.
So is that not what the goal should be here? Just continue to drown out the voices of those trolls? Its certainly easier to do against WBC who often can only send a handful of protesters compared to the throngs of support trolls like Milo attract. But to me the response still needs to be the same, just on a larger scale.
In the case of these Berkeley events, similar to many of the BLM protests, I genuinely believe that the protests were co-opted by people that had nothing to do with the protest itself. Certainly there were others doing less than desirable things, but it seems in this case there is much more video evidence that these anarchists were the ones causing most of the problems. So I don't want to imply that a vast majority of people were still just trying to protest as they should.
But the reason I typed out this long winded response is I felt like your post was advocating for peaceful protest but also accepting that if people like Milo poke the bear, its ok that they suffer the consequences. Personally, I think no matter what, we always have to take the higher ground.