Angry student mobs shutting down free speech on U.S. college campuses are behaving like “terrorists,” charges war hero Lt. Col. Allen West.
“I think the American people are repulsed by what they are seeing on these college campuses,” West told WND in an interview this week. “When you have these young people that are wearing masks and things of this nature, there’s no difference between the terrorists we see operating in these other countries and them being terrorists in our country.”
Rioters and anarchists, West said, go against everything America represents.
“Hiding their faces burning, property, attacking people – why? Because they are saying things that they don’t want to hear? I’m sorry, everyone in America has a right to free speech,” he said.
“If you want to have an open debate, that’s fine. When you want to up and start attacking people because you don’t like what they are saying, that is fundamentally against who we are as a country.”
Watch West’s comments:
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Noting that he frequently speaks on college campuses, West said he observes a major contradiction in the leftists’ rationale for destruction and disruption of constitutionally protected speech.
“These young people are talking about they’re against fascism, but the first thing they want to be able to do is prevent people from having their free speech,” he said. “We need to call out the hypocrisy.”
West’s comments to WND came on the same evening U.C. Berkeley abruptly canceled a planned April 27 speech by conservative author Ann Coulter, claiming the school had concerns about safety and security at the event. Coulter told WND that U.C. Berkeley’s reasons for canceling the event were “all lies.” The school has proposed an alternate May 2 date for Coulter’s speech, but Coulter has rejected it, announcing she is filing suit.
Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks claims police have “very specific intelligence regarding threats that could pose a grave danger to the speaker,” her audience and protesters, the Associated Press reported Thursday evening.
The cancellation came just days after left-wing protesters clashed with Trump supporters at a pro-Donald Trump rally in Berkeley. Several people were injured and arrested.
Conservative speaker and former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos felt the sting of left-wing hysteria in February when students at U.C. Berkeley rioted, apparently with the blessing of left-wing faculty members, and forced the cancellation of one of his speaking engagements. During the Feb. 2 melee that forced Yiannopolous to cancel his event, rioters beat up Trump supporters, pepper-sprayed bystanders, looted a Starbucks, smashed bank windows and ATMs, and spray-painted “Kill Trump” on storefronts.
West blasted Democrats who incite hatred among their leftist base against conservatives and Trump supporters, calling them “the biggest collection of hypocrites that I’ve seen.”
“We need to have the right types of leaders in the House and Senate that are challenging these Democrat House members,” he said. “I mean, Nancy Pelosi, someone should say, ‘Is this something that you’re for?’
“Berkeley is not too far away from the district that she represents in San Francisco, and so, ‘You are the House minority leader, what do you have to say about this?’ So we need to start calling the other side out.”
Berkeley is in California’s 13th congressional district, represented by Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee.
Concerned individuals may contact Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
If Democrats and radical leftists continue their “fascist” onslaught against conservatives, the party will face perpetual electoral jeopardy, West predicted.
“They will never be in a position of power,” West said. “They will never win the White House, and they will continue to lose seats in state legislatures, governors’ mansions, and the House and the Senate.”
As WND reported, hundreds of students also rioted at Middlebury College in Vermont in early March, preventing a respected libertarian scholar from finishing his speech and leaving one female professor in a neck brace.
Charles Murray was invited by the American Enterprise Institute Club on campus to discuss his book “Coming Apart,” which chronicles the struggles facing the white working class in the United States. However, a mob first protested and later assaulted both Murray and Professor Allison Stanger.
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More than 450 alumni at the college released a statement before the event declaring Murray’s invitation to speak was “unacceptable and unethical” and “directly endangers members of the community.”
“We hope many of you dissent, and we hope you make that dissent known to whosoever you see fit,” the statement concluded.
The result was both verbal and physical abuse. Protesters turned their backs on Murray and chanted, preventing him from delivering his scheduled address. As an alternative, Murray was led to a different location where he was recorded on a closed-circuit telecast being interviewed by Stanger. However, even the recording was interrupted as students slammed chairs, screamed and pulled fire alarms, occasionally shutting down the building’s power.
Masked demonstrators then physically attacked both Murray and Stanger as they tried to move to a college administrator’s car. Stanger’s hair was pulled by one of the attackers, twisting her neck and inflicting an injury that required hospital treatment and the use of a neck brace. Once Stanger and Murray made it to the vehicle, demonstrators climbed on the hood, slammed on windows, ripped a stop sign from the ground and used it to prevent the car from moving.
Even after security cleared a path, Murray’s ordeal was not over. He was later chased from a nearby restaurant when management was warned demonstrators had located him.
