A week ago today, student protesters and their more violent allies in the psychopathic black bloc/antifa movement managed to successfully shut down the First Amendment rights of Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos. Armed with bricks, smoke bombs, fireworks, and pepper spray, the left-wing agitators injured about four Milo/Trump supporters and did an estimated $100,000 worth of damage to the campus.
While some of their allies in the media have lamely tried to suggest that alt-right infiltrators dressed as masked ninjas caused the violence, organizers of the riot have publicly admitted that they support law-breaking and violence as a means to an end.
Via the San Francisco Chronicle:
“We are happy with the results,” said UC Berkeley Law School alumnus Ronald Cruz of the group By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN. “We were able to meet Mr. Yiannopoulos’ fascist message with massive resistance.”
An estimated 150 “black bloc” anarchists attacked police with rocks and fireworks and used barricades to smash windows at the student union Feb. 1, forcing the cancellation of Yiannopoulos’ appearance.
“We are not affiliated with them, but were united in shutting down the Milo event,” Cruz said.“Everyone played a part,” he said. “Some engaged in breaking windows — others held signs and made sure that the fascists and the police did not attack anyone.
“This was self-defense,” Cruz said. “Windows can be replaced. People can’t be.”
Another BAMN leader is also a Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) middle school teacher. Yvette Felarca railed against Yiannopoulos through a megaphone during the riot; and later during an interview with KTVU, she called the violence and destruction a “stunning achievement.”
The KTVU reporter asked Felarca what she had against Yiannopoulos.
“Well, first of all, Milo Yiannopoulos is a fascist,” Felarca deadpanned. “He’s a white supremacist. He’s funded by Steve Bannon and Breibart. He’s an acolyte of Donald Trump, and he was on the UC Berkeley campus to try to recruit more fascists and wage attacks on Muslim students, immigrant students, women and trans students.”
Asked what would be so wrong about allowing Yiannopoulos to speak before the 500 people who bought tickets, the middle school teacher answered, “This isn’t a matter of violent versus peaceful protests.” She added, “I was there, and there were thousands of people out there who were united. It was a mass protest, it was a militant protest, and everyone was there to shut him down. And so — whatever it was going to take to do that, we were all there with a united cause, and we were stunningly successful.”
Despite the gloating, Felarca didn’t answer the question. Because she couldn’t without sounding even more insane.
Rather than pointing out that Felarca failed to articulate a non-hallucinatory reason for denying Yiannopoulos his First Amendment rights, the interviewer gently pressed her. “Why not be peaceful about it?” she asked. “Why not chant, and hold your signs and things — but when you take the barricade and destroy the building, and when you set fires — isn’t that counterproductive?”
(In other words, “Might that hurt our cause?”)
Felarca answered, “I think the left has been far too timid for far too long and it’s why we’ve gotten into this position where we have someone like Donald Trump leading a fascist movement in the United States.” She added somewhat repetitively, “We need more mass protests, more militant protests that are mass and militant.”
The interviewer lamented that potential allies might have been turned off by all of the property damage. “There is a lot of concern about what is happening at these protests,” she said.
Felarca had an answer ready for that. “Chancellor Dirks is responsible for anything that happened,” she said. “And if the business community is upset, they should join the professors and the students and community members who are demanding that Dirks step down immediately. Because he had a chance to cancel the event to make sure it didn’t happen; there were hundreds of professors that demanded that for safety reasons — he didn’t listen.”
How’s that for circular logic? The chancellor should resign because he didn’t listen to our warnings about how we’d destroy the campus if he didn’t cave in to our demands.
But Felarca wasn’t done.
“A few broken windows is nothing compared to the lives that are at stake,” she said. “And if that’s what it takes to make sure that more people don’t get targeted, if that’s what it takes to make sure that Milo Yiannopoulos or another white supremacist is not welcome or allowed to come to UC Berkeley and attack our community, then good. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again in the future.”
In other words, join us — or prepare for more violence and destruction to your livelihoods.
She concluded by admitting that the “protests” are not spontaneous. “This is about organizing and fighting by any means necessary,” she said.
Watch the video, and ask yourself if a peaceful and law-abiding tea partier would have gotten as respectful a hearing from a journalist in San Francisco.
It looks like fightin’ Felarca is going to have a chance to wield her bullhorn again — perhaps in the near future.
The Berkeley College Republicans, who were sponsoring Yiannopoulos’ appearance, tell us they have met with university officials about the Breitbart News editor returning to the campus.
“He has said that he wants to, and we are looking into it,” said Pieter Sittler, a spokesman for the group. “Nothing official yet, but the club would like to have him back.”
Yiannopoulos himself said in a post on his Facebook page Saturday, “I’m planning to return to Berkeley to give the speech I was prevented from delivering. Hopefully within the next few months. I’ll keep you posted.”
He added the next day that he had already booked a “VERY special guest.”
BAMN’s Ronald Cruz said, “I would be surprised if he tries to after his humiliating defeat. But if he wants to be defeated again, he will be if he tries.”
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