America’s state-sanctioned hate speech

This is what it’s come to: a new breed of young, “hip” fascists have embraced the slogan “Hate Speech is Free Speech.”

They’re probably not incorrect in the legal sense. The Constitution protects them from being jailed for their dangerous, hateful beliefs. But publicly funded universities aren’t legally bound to give hate speech a public forum, especially when its message endangers students.

For colleges, it’s a lose-lose situation. If hate is allowed on campus, they risk infecting young adults and putting students in harm’s way. If it’s banned, it turns these fascists into martyrs and gives them an even larger forum. Either way, this country is in trouble.

Milo Yiannopoulos, the Brietbart News editor who was banned on Twitter for hate speech, travels around our country’s college campuses on his “Dangerous Faggot” tour. He fires up students with a message of hate. He’s not your grandfather’s fascist: He has long hair and wears earrings and sunglasses. He’s openly gay yet mocks the gay community all in the name of anarchy. His fans include White Supremacists like Richard Spencer. Spencer told Mother Jones magazine that Yiannopoulos has been an inspiration and “what we are doing is known to people. It’s edgy and dangerous, it’s cool and hip. It’s that thing our parents don’t want us to do.” This would be frightening on its own, but it’s so much worse when you consider that Brietbart’s former editor, Steve Bannon, is now the White House’s chief strategist.

Yiannopoulos’ speech at Berkeley on Wednesday was canceled after demonstrators smashed windows and started fires. In addition to his usual hate mongering, Yiannopoulos was reportedly prepared to out undocumented Berkeley students.

Violence is not the answer. But true to form, Trump took to Twitter Thursday threatening to cut off federal funding at Berkeley if the university “does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view.”

There you have it — our president brushing off this hate as “a different point of view.” It’s state-sanctioned hate speech.

The fascists point to Black Lives Matter, saying they’re allowed to speak at colleges and they spread hate against police. But their movement at least is aimed at systematic discrimination. The fascists’ main argument is that they have a right to say what they want. If they want to rail against Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, blacks or homosexuals, that’s their prerogative. They are not being systematically discriminated against. They just want to remain the superior race in a country that continues to get browner.

There are harsh laws against hate speech in other countries, including Germany. The Germans learned the hard way that scapegoating a group of people can lead to a Holocaust.

The goal of Nazism 2.0 isn’t to murder Jews, but to put minorities in their place.

According to Politico, the White House last week blocked the State Department’s statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day that referenced Jewish victims. The TrumpBannon White House specifically didn’t want to use the word “Jewish” or “Jews,” instead refrencing generic victims. There was no public sympathy for the six million Jews murdered in a movement that began with hate speech.

Whether or not you believe hate speech should be allowed on college campuses, there’s a terrifying movement in this country and the White House approves of it. Trump sends out tweets when there’s terrorist attacks somewhere in the world involving a Muslim perpetrator. But he was silent this week when a white nationalist in Quebec killed six Muslims in a Mosque.

Donald Trump Jr. retweeted false information that a Moroccan was responsible for the attack. Trump Jr. even “liked” a tweet that bragged of the “tremendous spike in political capital” his father would receive once “it’s revealed that the Quebec Shooting terrorists are Muslims.”

Is hate speech free speech? It’s acceptable speech to the White House.

Andrew Abramson