In an interview with The College Fix, a Berkeley College Republican said that he and his compatriots feared for their lives during the violent riot last week and some of them continue to face threats from the “anti-fascist” (Antifa) terrorists on campus.
Naweed Tahmas, who helped organize the Milo Yiannopoulos speaking event, said he was “pushed and shoved” by agitators as he headed to help prep for the speech. As the demonstration devolved into a riot, he and his peers sheltered in place as left-wing goons threw firebombs at the building.
And now Tahmas said he’s been told to watch his back because he may get jumped, and an Antifa affiliate has also threatened to publish the names and contact information of those sympathetic to Milo’s visit, called “doxing.”
Undaunted by the harassment and threats, he told The College Fix he is proud to stand for free speech.
Tahmas told The Fix that the crowd was violent and menacing from the start.
By the time he got to the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union to begin prepping for the event at 5:30 p.m., a throng of students and other demonstrators flanked the building. As he walked through the crowd, protesters surrounded him and closed in on him, pushing and shoving him from all sides.
“We know who you are, you can’t hide from us,” Tahmas recalls them saying as he pushed through the crowd.
“It was so violent at that point,” he said. “They were surrounding me. They were assaulting me.”
Rattled but essentially unharmed, he made it into the building. There he met up with Yiannopolous and other Berkeley Republicans. But it was not long before someone pulled the fire alarm. Then protesters began shooting M-80 firecrackers at the building, with several narrowly missing the group and the police officers attempting to guard them.
Tahmas said one of Milo’s security guards, a former Navy Seal, even commented: “I haven’t seen protests like this since Afghanistan.”
As the protesters began to light fires around the building, Tahmas recalls thinking that “they [were trying] to burn the building with us in it.”
“I don’t think they would have had any regrets burning us alive,” Tahmas told The Fix. “We were basically like cattle. The protesters shouted, ‘We’re going to burn and shut your shit down.’”
When the event was canceled, they tried exiting from the back of the building, but still had to pass through a gauntlet of rioters yelling, “F-ck the Berkeley College Republicans!” Milo, in the meantime, made his way out separately to an underground parking garage.
Tahmas told The Fix that he ended up sleeping at a friend’s house that night for his own safety because someone had posted his personal information on Facebook and Twitter. He said he continues to face threats for his role in organizing the event. “One individual mentioned they were ‘going to catch me in the shadows’ when I was on campus,” he said.
Tahmas disagreed with the notion propagated by some on the left that the troublemakers only came from outside groups.
“It was a combination of both [students and protesters],” he said. “To suggest students played no role in the protests in preposterous. There is footage of even the so-called ‘non-violent’ protesters cheering the violent actions of the other protesters. There were meetings on campus organizing the protests that alluded to the planned use of violent tactics.”
Even worse, at least one Berkeley staffer is apparently under an FBI investigation for his role in the riot, which includes allegedly assaulting a Trump supporter. UC Berkeley acknowledged on Facebook over the weekend that the university is “working with the FBI to pursue all leads” in the case.
Since the event, an “antifa” group has threatened to dox hundreds of prospective Berkeley Republicans members.
“You [are] all receiving this email because you provided your names and emails to the Berkeley CRs at the Milo Yiannopoulos event this week at UC, Berkeley and that sign-up list was leaked,” the email, obtained by Campus Reform, states. “I’m currently writing a story about the event, the signup sheet, the College Republicans’ lack of security protocols, and your attendance at this questionable event promoting the hateful bigot, Yiannopoulos.”
Here’s the creepy message the group posted on Twitter:
So, I'm working on a new blog post. I plan to post on Monday. Here's a little teaser. #MiloAtCal #Berkeley #Antifa #GoodnightAltRight 🏴🏴 pic.twitter.com/RU3sN4kAik
— The Warring 20s (@OLAASM) February 4, 2017
These people are fanatics and they despise us says Kurt Schlichter at Townhall:
They are fanatics, and by not surrendering, by not kneeling, and by not obeying, you have committed an unpardonable sin. You have defied the Left, and you must be broken. They will take your job, slander your name, even beat or kill you – whatever it takes to break you and terrify others by making you an example. Your defiance cannot stand; they cannot allow this whole Trump/GOP majority thing to get out of control. They must crush this rebellion of the normal, and absolutely nothing is off the table.
We’ve seen them burn UC Berkeley and how the police controlled by the leftist state government of California stood by and watched as Americans were beaten by the mob. Why? Because the government of the State of California approves of the violence. Do you think it’s a coincidence that California is doing everything it can to disarm its normals?
The Left won’t say it out loud – at least not yet – but make no mistake. If violence is what it takes for the Left to prevail, then violence we will have. You saw it, and you were meant to. Berkeley was a message about the price of dissent where leftist hold sway. And they seek to hold sway everywhere.
Read on for Schlichter’s ideas on how to respond to what some are calling the “days of rage” part two. “They hate us,” said Schlichter. “And however they come at us, we need to be prepared to fight.”
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