Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise

“Never apologise. Never explain. Just get the thing done, and let them howl.”
—Agnes MacPhail, 1890 to 1954

Recently, I learned that the Social Injustice Warriors were on a war footing at the University of Kansas. Never content with anyone ever disagreeing with anything they say, they were shouting in the faces of calm and polite conservatives who were gathering as free individuals often choose to do at the student union, a place on campus dedicated to students gathering.

My introduction to this situation was found at one of my favourite news aggregation sites, ZeroHedge.com run by the amazing Tyler Durden. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-26/stunning-university-kansas-safe-space-vs-free-speech-meeting-caught-tape

It was not difficult to come across the Twitter handle of @presidentgabe who is Gabe Lepinski. Gabe and I chatted a bit using Twitter direct messaging so I could learn more about a suitable time to interview him. To my delight, I learned that he and his friends were having an informal gathering this past Thursday. Naturally, I asked if he would mind if I covered the event for L. Neil Smith's THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE. He was happy to encourage me to attend, and asked that we talk briefly after.

As you can see from the ZeroHedge and similar articles, last week's meeting had caused quite an uproar. It also caused someone listed on the KU official web site as an employee to rant extensively.

https://heatst.com/culture-wars/kansas-university-staff-member-goes-on-profanity-laden-twitter-rant-about-conservative-activist/

Mark White, the “social psychology” researcher, apparently a graduate student, and now disavowed voice of KU insisted that Lepinski and, for whatever reason, reporter Kassy Dillon, should “fuck off” the KU campus. You are welcome to read the Heat Street recap of his vicious taunts.

So this week, I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen. I showed up half an hour early for their scheduled meeting, and there were already Young America's Foundation (YAF) enthusiasts gathered together. They had already staked out a room with Go Pro cameras in clever locations.

Owing to their inability to find a faculty advisor, yet, the group of students is not formally a campus group. Gabe opened the meeting with this comment, as a group of about 12 other students came into the room. The leader of the new group insisted that “They are not allowed to be here,” and indicating the group of calm students contemplating the formation of a YAF group at KU.

A student union official showed up and pointed out a few things. First of all, the student union building is designated as a place for all students from the University of Kansas. “Every person is allowed.” Indeed, buildings involved in the state of Kansas in public matters are always open to all persons, as a matter of social equality. (I use this term with amusement and enthusiasm.)

I believe that official's name is Lisa Kring, director of building services. Now, her voice was not welcomed, at all, by the loud, bullying, and unpleasant social justice warriors. Rather, they repeated their demands that the group of calm, conservative students were not allowed to be on campus, not allowed to exist, not allowed to meet, and were violating the “safe space” doctrine by daring to say anything about how stupid and childish the concept of a space safe from intellectual discourse might be. Not to mention suggesting that triggers and bigotry do not help foster an environment for open discourse.

The process was quite difficult to follow, since all the SJWs wanted to take turns berating the calm people in the room. Several SJWs demanded to know if I were the faculty advisor, which I found funny, and pointed out my enormous press badge. I then asked a few questions about why students aren't allowed on campus, and was told several times to shut the fuck up.

Naturally, having read Vox Day's excellent book “SJWs Always Lie,” I did not back down.

Click to buy at Amazon.com

On the contrary, knowing that all bullies enjoy it when their victims act intimidated, I was very brusque, telling them to go fuck themselves, standing on my right of free speech and a free press, and generally being as rude and obnoxious as they were. Which, by the way, was exceeding rude, vile, crude, and disgusting. I am speaking of myself, here. I give exactly what I get, as a perfect mirror reflects the world around it.

Gabe went calmly into some details. He was told that the SJWs demand he tell them the goals of his group. He refused to identify as a group. He pointed out that without official sanction, they were not the YAF at KU, they were just a few individuals getting together to talk. This idea infuriated the SJWs who insisted that nobody was allowed to talk in contradiction to safe spaces.

Gabe explained that they were not against the idea of a physical safe space, but against the idea of having no room to discuss ideas. His terminology of “an intellectual safe space” was challenged. Definitions of a safe space were read by several SJW apparatchikisti.

Of course, none of these people seem to be aware that English is not an authorised language, it is a found language. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) keeps publishing a foreword to explain this point. The definitions are made up as people go along, and all terms have whatever meaning is in common usage. The editors of the OED look at what people are doing, not what grammarians or SJWs demand. I wrote about this point in my earlier essay “Who Will Build the Syntax.” http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2012/tle672-20120527-04.html

The SJWs demanded that there is no such idea as an intellectual safe space. But, of course, Gabe was quite calm and explained, several times, the meaning he and his friends assigned to the term. The SJWs insisted that it was wrong, and bad, to use any meaning for any term other than the meaning assigned by themselves. Much shouting took place.

Gabe pointed out that he wanted no banned ideas, that he wanted a free discourse, so that all ideas might be freely discussed. Naturally, this thought is in the great tradition of American liberal arts education, a tradition that was so prevalent on campus at the University of Kansas in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and 2000s that students led repeated protests of the various governmental and university committee attacks on free speech. For example, a few years back the state government tried to impose on the free speech of professors and students commenting in social media, to the outrage of many on campus.

But those days are gone. Free discourse is evil, I heard repeatedly asserted by SJWs. By having any conversation with which they disagree, the calm students in the room were condoning violence. A rather mysterious post from John Smith @ InselPedra showing a 19th Century wood cut of some African animals in a tree with a human being of African descent incorrectly identified as “Neger” in the wood cut was thrown down on the table, angrily, as evidence that all the calm students were evil bigots. Of course, it was not posted by any of them, and Gabe immediately disavowed the idea of racism, pointed out that he has been a frequent and public opponent of Alt- Right white nationalism and related stupidity.

“Even though you are not committing violence, that is literal violence.” I wrote it down. No, I don't think it is a logical comment. It appears to conflate speech with violence, which is a very dangerous idea. Perhaps the thought was that printed documents are literary violence, but that isn't what was said, and doesn't improve matters much. After all, the Nazis and the Communists burned a lot of books over the years.

The SJWs described Gabe and the calm students as “Violent as fuck.” Which presumably functions as some sort of critique of preferences regarding sexual acts, or perhaps speaks to a widespread sado-masochism among the SJWs, I haven't quite worked out how to interpret this phrase. I wrote it down as it was repeated quite a few times.

Gabe was then called a literal figure of hate. And then something happened which I continue to feel was a very poor tactical choice. Gabe was asked, by the SJWs, to move the meeting from the small room, that the student union staff had pointed out was safe according to fire code for only 18 persons (there were persistently 19 in the room, I counted), out into a larger area. Gabe agreed. Whoops.

Out in the larger room, the calm students again took seats at a table and were surrounded by about 58 other students (I did a quick count) which Gabe subsequently estimated as “about 70,” not that far off my count. And they did mill about so it is hard to be sure of the exact number, moment to moment. When I say surrounded, I do mean it. The notion of these calm students getting up and excusing themselves out the door was quite obviously not going to be acceptable to the loud, rude, bullying SJWs. The same questions were asked over and over.

Gabe eventually pointed out that the time the calm friends had agreed to stop had come and gone, and adjourned his aspect of the meeting. The SJWs were against any such behaviour on his part, and hounded him with questions, frequently getting up into his face.

During this time, a KU student fromLenexa saw me standing next to Gabe, read my press badge, and identified himself as a libertarian. I spoke with him briefly and encouraged him to search on the name of our publication.

Again and again the same questions were asked. What group was Gabe wanting to destroy? Which physical safe spaces did he want to tear down? How could he be a conservative, how disgusting? Why were white people so fragile?

Here, a major aspect of the bigoted attitudes and hateful rhetoric of the SJWs came to the fore. SJWs hate white people, and if you have skin they identify as white, you are white. If you object in any way to anything they say, you are “whitesplaining” or “mansplaining” or worse yet “manspreading” or even, I fear, “whitespreading.” Egads. All objections from people misidentified by SJWs as white are evidence of “white fragility.” No dissent is ever tolerated.

Now, the meeting went on and on, and various topics were raised repeatedly. After a further half hour or longer, I was finally able to encourage Gabe to get out by noting “It is not going to get any better.”

We adjourned to a table outside the student union and chatted. Gabe is a junior, doing well in school, studying Arabic, and is seeking a future career in the foreign service. He believes that people all over the world are better off if they have freedom, including the freedom to speak their minds on any topics.

We've Been Here Before
From my perspective, the SJWs represent evil. They have determined what ideology is acceptable, what narrative is allowed, and all dissent is to be attacked, bullied, brutalised, and repeatedly shouted over in order to prevent anyone from disagreeing with them. All concerns expressed about SJW behaviour is “white fragility” whether the other party self-identifies as white or not. (The calm students were fairly clear that some of them were indeed white.)

My people were chased around Europe by the same evil aristocracy that has caused so much oppression in the world. People like Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Engels, and their direct intellectual descendants: Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot took a very narrow view of free speech, intellectual discourse, or the open discussion of ideas. Talk was wrong, in their view. Only a “will to power” and a “social contract” were important. All individual choice was suspect.

When I say that my people were chased around Europe, I mean that my ancestry includes persons of Scots, Irish, English (by rape in Norman times), Alsatian, and Jewish origins. My Scots ancestors were cleared out of their homes after the 1744 war by the British during the Highland Clearances. My Scots ancestors were forcibly transported, against their will, to the English colonies in North America in 1746, and forced into slavery to pay for their passage. Yes, white persons enslaved by the British, how strange. That was about two years after Sir Jeffrey Amherst began passing out smallpox blankets in an attempt to commit genocide with biological warfare. Not a happy time in human history.

My Irish ancestors were not only forcibly transported from Ireland by the British, and enslaved here in America, but were also routinely discriminated against into the early 20th Century where “no Irish need apply.”

I do have some English blood in me, in the sense that some Saxon women were raped by Norman French knights after the conquest of William the Conqueror. I also have some Alsatian ancestors who were drafted (enslaved) to fight the Franco Prussian War of 1870, recognised a bad deal, found an opportunity to run off to Amsterdam, and promptly took ship for America. My maternal grandmother had the cavalry officer's sword of the runaway Alsatian for many years.

My Jewish ancestors were hounded out of various European principalities going back to Roman times. Some of my people were killed in Auschwitz. My paternal grandmother kept track of these family members to the death camps as best she could prior to her passing in 1938. Yes, even then, the Nazis were rounding up the disabled, the transgendered, the LGBTQ, the communists, the dissenters, and putting them in camps. My father was present at the liberation of one of those camps in 1945. Grisly scenes.

On this contintent, my Ozark mountain hillbilly ancestors met and married my Cherokee ancestors, so long ago that I am not more than one part in 64 Cherokee, but proud of my heritage even so. Yes, the European aristocracy, that pushed forward the ideas of Rousseau, that funded Marx's writings, were hard at work on this continent, forcing Native peoples from their homes, seizing their lands, forcing them on a Trail of Tears, and degrading my ancestors in every conceivable way. The 19th Century reservations imposed by the US army were early models for Cecil Rhodes and the policy of “apartheid” in South Africa, and the policies of Hitler toward about 20 million people.

The part of this whole narrative that the SJWs lie about is: I look white. My people were oppressed. Europeans have been oppressed. Europeans, including white Europeans, have been enslaved: by white Europeans. White Europeans have been discriminated against, institutionally. It is not only historical fact, it is a fact of my personal family history.

The SJWs want to brutalise and terrorise anyone who dissents. No alternative views are tolerated. It won't be long until they demand that all dissenters be forcibly “re-educated.” And, those unwilling to tolerate re-education will be attacked.

Speaking of attacks, several SJWs were heard on various occasions talking amongst themselves, saying they planned to find out “where these guys work” and get them fired. Mind you, when Gabe said, “Thank you guys for coming,” as we left the building he was curtly informed that “Guys” is a micro- aggression, and terribly wrong.

So I spoke up and said, “Thanks fuckwads.” Gabe was not happy with my antagonistic speech, being an equal opportunity guy, he was not any more happy with me being antagonistic than with the SJWs being deliberately antagonistic.

While I understand his point of view, I believe it is mistaken on both strategic and tactical grounds. Apologising to bullies is not a good approach. Vox Day discusses this fact extensively in his analysis of SJWs.

In grade school, I made the mistake of trying to agree with the kids who were bullying the weaker kids, including especially me. I made that mistake once, and never again. I immediately learned that it does not get you on board the side of the bullies, and it does not exempt you from future bullying. It only serves to make things worse. So, I learned to fight. And I learned to take a beating, and eventually I learned to not get beaten down. Standing up to bullies has been a life of work for me. Even bullies in the Houston Police Department, breaking 11 of my bones in 2004, were not able to prevent me from standing up.

I think the SJWs are ethically challenged people who want an easy ride. They want to be the bigots, the racists, the ones who misidentify the ethnicity of someone else, the ones who abuse, both verbally and, ultimately, physically, anyone they believe is “white.” These are not people who believe in peace, and definitely not people who believe in freedom.

None of them remembers Martin Luther King, Jr., saying that he had a dream of a day when men and women would be judged by the content of their character and not the colour of their skin. The SJWs at KU are shameful bigots who persistently judge everyone by the colour of their skin. And they will go on doing so until they destroy humanity, unless they are opposed.

Stand up to bullies. It helps.

Jim Davidson is a principal with EldarCapital.com which is a news, information, and capitalist outfit seeking to disrupt a great many markets in ways that should benefit an enormous number of people. He is also the author of The Atlantis Papers, Being Sovereign, Being Libertarian, dozens of essays, hundreds of letters to editors and friends, and tens of thousands of e-mails. He is a poet, a scholar, a world traveller, a raconteur, and he is addicted to freedom.