"I obviously believe in freedom of speech, but there is a line between freedom of speech and then posing a risk to public safety,” says Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguin to the Chronicle, as the city prepares for an event promoted as "Free Speech Week" by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, to which Ann Coulter and possibly Steve Bannon have also been invited. "That is where we have to really be very careful — that while protecting people’s free-speech rights, we are not putting our citizens in a potentially dangerous situation and costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing the windows of businesses."
Since having a campus appearance canceled at the last minute in February, and then being briefly a pariah after the revelation that he had condoned pedophilia in an interview, Yiannopoulos returned to the virtual airwaves in April vowing to Breitbart to return to Berkeley, saying "We will hold talks and rallies and throw massive parties, all in the name of free expression and the First Amendment. All will be welcome, regardless of political affiliation."
We then heard two weeks ago that Yiannopoulos's plan for Free Speech Week possibly endorsed by campus Republicans, though that is unclear... the event seems sponsored by conservative campus newspaper the Berkeley Patriot is for a four-day event from September 24th to the 27th. Last week we heard that Ann Coulter had been added to the bill, and there was a rumor about former chief strategist turned once-again Breitbart board member Steve Bannon.
UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof tells the Chronicle, regarding Arreguin's request that they cancel Free Speech Week, that it isn't the university's event to cancel. "We have neither the legal right nor ability to interfere with or cancel (students groups’) invitations based on the perspectives and beliefs of the speakers," he says. But the university has been able to regulate venues and security for these events, like a planned appearance by Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro on September 17.
As ABC 7 reports, Mayor Arreguin is "worried about mayhem coming to campus and then spilling out onto city streets." And while Shapiro is not a big name (and also not a fan of Trump), and less likely to cause as big of a stir as a planned return for Milo, it is clear enough that the black bloc/antifa show no signs of backing down when any gathering of the right is happening in their midst.
Adding fuel to the fire of this argument is a piece in the Examiner, and a piece in the New Yorker today focusing on how the visuals of the relatively small melees on Sunday between antifa activists and right-wing rally-goers only help Trump and those on the alt-right gain support. Ahead of Sunday's events, the organizers of both the canceled Saturday rally in SF, Joey Gibson, and the organizer of the "anti-Marxism" rally in Berkeley, Amber Gwen Cummings, had repeatedly argued that "antifa bring the violence," and video from Sunday only serves to prove their point. "This isn’t simply a problem of disparate right-wing groups being able to rationalize their existence more easily," writes New Yorker columnist Jelani Cobb. "We are in the midst of a Presidency that will manipulate such situations... Some of Trump’s opponents have said that they are waiting for a Reichstag fire a false crisis that will be used to justify the Administration’s worst instincts. We have not yet encountered such a moment, but the clear dictate of common sense is that no one should be in the business of providing this President with matches."
Jeff Conant of Showing Up For Racial Justice defended antifa's role in protests, speaking to the Examiner, essentially comparing them to the militia men who've appeared at certain alt-right events protecting their own in an inevitable street battle when police will be likely to stand back. "There are moments where optics are important," Conant says to the Ex. "I don’t think this is that moment."
Previously: Ann Coulter, Steve Bannon Might Join Milo Yiannopoulos's 'Free Speech Week' At UC Berkeley
