It's not just Ann and Milo whom violent thugs known as "antifas" are silencing (Berkeley), or trying to, like Charles Murray (Middlebury). It's not just college campuses, which are not only turning out Marxists (gee, I wonder why?), but also abiding by the speech laws of totalitarian dictatorships such as Communist North Korea and China. (Read the crawling apology of Bertam Johnson, the Middlebury political science department chairman, for sponsoring Murray's appearance if you have a very strong stomach.)
Now this, via Gateway Pundit: "Portland cancels annual Avenue of Roses parade after antifa terrorists threaten to rush parade and beat Republicans."
Multnomah County Republican Chairman James Buchal explained the gravity of this assault on free, peaceful society:
“The road to fascism begins with armed gangs of thugs using violence to shut down opposing points of view. The question now is whether the City of Portland will be complicit in such conduct. We hope the City’s new leadership has the courage to respond to these threats appropriately.”
Unconscionably, they did not; the city cancelled the parade. Now the question becomes, Where is the Justice Department? Where is Donald Trump?
In Portland, as at Berkeley, the totalitarian Left threatens or carries out violence, and the authorities, those we trust to enforce the law and keep the peace, respond by appeasing them. They do the totalitarian bidding of this lawless Left by clamping down on the exercise of free speech by those this Left deems untermenschen.
Let's consider Russia, where the authorities just do it themselves, without the "antifa" middleman.
From the New York Times:
MOSCOW — The Russian government moved on Wednesday to defang efforts to stage antigovernment rallies this weekend by blacklisting the coordinator, Open Russia, an organization founded by the Kremlin critic Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky.
Sounds something like the way our campuses "blacklist" Milo, Ann Coulter, Charles Murray and many others.
For a little historical perspective on campus "freedom," when I was editor of the Yale Political Monthly in 1982-1983, the magazine and I invited UN Amb. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick to campus to speak. Mrs. Kirkpatrick, as related here, had been shouted down on other campuses that spring, and she agreed to come if Yale would take precautions to ensure her free speech rights. I will never forget meeting with the president and provost of Yale in august Woodbridge Hall, along with my faculty adviser Prof. Donald Kagan, to discuss what measures we might take, including, as I recall, students signing in for the lecture. Long story short, the Yale administration, then led by Bart Giamatti, refused to take even minimal steps to ensure Mrs. Kirkpatrick's safety and free speech rights so she did not come to Yale.
That was on the QT then. While conservatism was unpopular on campus, it was not seen as an invitation to violence. Today, many campuses are openly thuggish city-states where the free speech rights of the rest of the nation are suspended, the mob rules, and the police do nothing.
Back (?) to Russia and the Times report:
Although the main organization [coordinating anti-government/corruption rallies] is based in Britain, Russia’s prosecutor general labeled it “undesirable,” effectively making it illegal for the body to operate inside Russia. It cited the protest efforts as the main reason.
How efficient. That is, who needs "antifas"? Come to think of it, do antifas ever protest Putin/Russia? Anyway, I think that prosecutor general has a future -- at the University of California.