DRAFT - Elijah Wald on Berkeley Riots

Elijah Wald on the Berkeley Response to Milo Yiannopoulos

A lot of people are invoking the history of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement to decry the riots against right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos being invited to speak on the UC Berkeley campus, and the administration's cancellation of his talk.

Whatever one thinks of Yiannopoulos, this is a simple misreading of history. The Free Speech Movement started in response to the administration forbidding political groups to set up informational tables on the campus -- that is, protesters were demanding the same right to free speech on university grounds that they had in a public park or street corner.

If Yiannopoulos walked onto the campus and began handing out literature or giving an impromptu speech, and the university ordered campus police to remove him, that would be an analogous situation and I would be on his side -- for the simple reason that as a leftist I see nothing but danger in expanding the rights of powerful institutions to curtail the rights of individuals.

But -- at least as I understand it -- that's not what happened at Berkeley. What happened at Berkeley was that some students invited Yiannopoulos to give a talk at the university, sponsored and using the official UC facilities, and other students felt the university should not be sponsoring hate speech. They first protested in peaceful, dignified ways, and when that didn't work, they rioted.

Whether one approves of rioting is a separate question -- my own take is that I'm not wild about it in most cases, but we need to hold a strong line against use of the term "violence" to describe destruction of property. The rich and powerful always want to equate crimes against property with crimes against people, just as they want to equate the rights of corporations with the rights of people. In both cases, that equation serves their interests, not ours.

Likewise, it's a separate question whether I personally would have preferred that Yiannopoulos give his idiotic, hateful speech, with a crowd of students outside holding signs, chanting chants, and passing out literature explaining why he is a dangerous nut. If you're interested in the answer to that question: yes, I would have preferred that.

But that's not what happened, and if I have to take sides in what actually happened rather than a theoretical construct, I'm with the rioters -- because we are living in very nasty times, and when the times get nasty enough it is appropriate to react by breaking stuff. I would only urge the rioters to think about what they are breaking -- smashing relevant windows sends a clearer message than smashing random ones.

(Elijah Wald, 2/3/17 -- feel free to paste and share if so inclined)