Tagging Robby Soave’s book with a Tucker Carlson quote is a mistake – he makes a good case for the virtues of free speech
Protesters against a scheduled speaking appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos fill Sproul Plaza on the University of California at Berkeley campus in 2017. Photograph: Ben Margot
When a member of the American Nazi party spoke at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, he did so at the invitation of a leftwing student group. As a stunt to promote the event – part of a series which also featured Malcolm X, the conservative William F Buckley, communists and a member of the fringe rightwing John Birch Society – the students wore Nazi uniforms.
All such guests were “greeted politely”, according to the feminist scholar Jo Freeman, and no one tried to stop them speaking. Debates about what the speakers had said, not whether they should have been allowed to say it, “dominated student bull sessions for days”.
Contrast that episode with another recounted by the libertarian journalist Robby Soave. When a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union spoke at the College of William & Mary in Virginia in 2017, activists declared liberalism “white supremacy” and surrounded her, chanting “Shame, shame, shame” until she abandoned the stage.
Older audience members, knowing the ACLU’s history as an advocate for free speech, due process, criminal justice reform, abortion rights and other issues historically dear to the left, must have felt bewilderment – and maybe even the hair-tingling realization of a character in a slasher movie. The phone call was coming from inside the house.
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