Richard Spencer and his ilk are descending upon the city I call home. Mere weeks after sowing chaos in Virginia, the epicenter of whatever is to come is the University I have come to love. Their detestable views target people whom I greatly respect and admire simply because they fall outside Spencer’s racially pure ideal.
I can’t even begin to imagine how it feels for them– for your home to host people who literally advocate for your genocide. My heart aches just thinking about it.
I am afraid, dismayed, and angry.
To be fair, there’s not much that UF could have done to prevent Spencer’s arrival. As it stands, the university must make their facilities available to anyone practicing constitutionally protected speech. Contrary to popular belief, hate speech is constitutionally protected– although, as was seen in Charlottesville, it can quickly devolve into things that aren’t.
They have the right to speak. They don’t have the right to spread hate uncontested.
That is not an endorsement of violent resistance tactics. Although I firmly disagree with the moral equivalence peddled by President Trump and others (we should be able to condemn violent activism without facile equivocations to actual Nazis), we shouldn’t combat their venom with brute force. However, we can’t afford to pretend that this can be settled by the presence of “rational debate,” either. There is no compromise to be made between “liberty and justice for all” and White Supremacy. The two are totally anathema. We must contest the latter by staying resolute to the former. We must drown their divisive cacophony with a chorus of unity. We must let our loving actions to our neighbors– of all races and creeds– speak louder than their abhorrent words.
We Conservatives have a unique responsibility in all this. They are trying to establish themselves in our wing by cloaking their dogma in faux science and bastardizations of our principles. We must deny them safe harbor and any sense of legitimacy. We must stand tall, hold firm, and withstand every putrid wave.
We must show that when we joined the rest of the world in saying “Never Again” that we damn-well meant it.
