U of F president: Richard Spencer hoping for violence to build movement

That's okay. I know arguing is much easier when you can just call your opponent a racist.

 

Thanks. Let's see how it goes.

 

I was curious so I took it. It called me a racist. It says I have a strong preference for white people over black people. I'm skeptical, but there you go.

 

I took that test, too...

...said that I showed no apparent preference between white people and black people.

Now ain't that a kick in the head... the jig (pun intended) is finally up...my cover's blown for good now....

 

Yeah, but I think it was the test at fault. Is that me rationalizing?

It started off pretty easy, but by the end they had switched around the buttons on me and I have to remember that one thing that used to be on the right is now on the left, but another thing on the left is still on the left. I was not only slow, I picked the wrong thing half the time. I don't think being slow-witted should count as implicit racial bias.

 

Sorry, I guess I am just a unicorn. Believe it or not, those were my results.

It's only up to the courts to decide if someone files a lawsuit about it. As it stands, all we have is precedent, and the precedent which is directly on point is Brandenberg v. Ohio.

Oh, I absolutely think his goal is to court controversy. That is why I said from the very beginning that my preferred response is to just ignore him and he will go away. Here you are admitting that if he is ignored he will just go away. The fact that his motive is to generate a controversial response doesn't take him outside of the bounds of Brandenberg. Giving an intentionally provocative political speech doesn't strip away your first amendment protections.

 

Maybe the thing is just broke?

I mean, come on...it said I tend to treat white people and black people the same...

ME...the poster child for reverse-racist n!ggerishness....think about how that fries my white-devil-hating bacon...

 

It's a lot easier to connect those dots when they're constantly defending racism and racists under the pretense of some intellectual prowess.

 

Um, I didn't say he does not expect the people he is organizing to come to commit violence. I said that like the KKK speakers in Brandenberg, he is not calling for imminent violence, and thus his speech is still given first amendment protections. What lets people like Trump claim that "both sides" are responsible is when both sides are committing violence. You know what would not let him say both sides are responsible? If one side was non-violent (or even if one side just didn't show up). The second Charlottesville march gave the perfect blueprint for how to respond to him. There were no big protests, there was no violence, there was limited media coverage, and Spencer and his buddies came and chanted their BS for ten minutes and then left.

BTW, you know what else helps his cause? When people try to ban him from speaking. The bans draw media attention, he gets to play the victim, he gets to sue the University (and most likely win) and then he gets to move on to the next place.

Who said it wasn't violent. The distinction is a call for imminent violence versus advocacy for violence in general in support of a goal.

Where are you getting this stuff. When did I ever say Richard Spencer was like MLK (I'm pretty sure I equated him to the KKK, which is markedly different than King, though they are both represented by three initials, the third of which is K) or that he was preaching non-violence. That isn't at all the issue in whether or not his speech is protected.

 

They are two different issues. Public speeches about incendiary topics like Spencer's talk at UF, the Charlottesville marches, or KKK marches in black or Jewish neighborhoods are analyzed under Brandenberg v. Ohio. This is political speech and the court has allowed even support of violence and lawlessness in furtherance of a political agenda. Fighting words is when you say something directly to another person that is so offensive that the natural reaction of that other person would be to attack you. If someone came up to Richard Spencer and said his mother is a w****, that could be fighting words. If someone held a rally on a campus and said that it should be okay to punch Nazis, that is protected political speech, even though it is supportive of lawlessness and violence.

That is not the question. It may be your question, but it has no legal effect.

Of course it isn't. You can't ban political speech because it is opposed by a violent group. If Nazis showed up to every Democratic Party event and started hitting people and burning cars, would you call for Democrats to be barred from holding events? You cannot take away people's rights because other bad actors create a disturbance.

Tiki torches are fighting words now? Are luaus just constant orgies of violence?

The government cannot create a duty for Spencer to discourage violence. Compulsion to make political speech would be absolutely corrosive to freedom and democracy.

That's why the campus had security. No one died at UF or any of his university speeches. Someone died in Charlottesville during his first march there when there was widespread violence between the racists and the protesters. I already told you the solution to that problem.

They are allowed time, place, and manner restrictions. For example, you cannot just march into a classroom during a lecture and start giving a speech. There would be some mechanism in place for the distribution of limited resources (in this case, time in fora for speeches). The mechanism must be content neutral. I would guess there is some sort of first come first serve basis.

I know. It is baffling that you are doing so.

They are communist (more specifically anarcho-communist) fools. It isn't that they represent liberals, it is that they are far left radicals.

See above re: the difference between political speech and fighting words.

People say both sides were violent because both sides were violent. Factual statements are not a defense of a position or implicit blame. The only reason it is necessary to say both sides have violent actors is because people insist on saying only one side is violent. I blame Rachel Haier's death only on the moron that drove his car into a crowd of people, not on the protestors and not on Spencer.

Yep. Unfortunately, if he loses it not only strikes a blow to his fascist movement, but also to free speech in America. I would rather protect free speech than damage an already marginalized extremist group.

 

I get it. But it does seem like a sweet gig. You make a test and if anyone says it doesn't work, you respond, "it's testing for implicit bias, so you don't even know how much of a racist you are without this test." How do you test a test like this for accuracy anyway? So I googled it and found a bunch of articles dogging the test for exactly this problem, like this one. I don't have any problem with the idea of implicit bias. It's not even that I don't think I have an implicit bias. I see it in myself. I just think the test -- or at least the test-taking atmosphere of just sticking it on the internet -- is not rigorous. Maybe if I went into the psych department office and sat in a cubicle, eagerly awaiting my $5 Starbucks gift card for submitting to testing, I would have the mental focus necessary to try as hard on test #7 as I did on test #2. Maybe those Harvard guys can still use the data in aggregate, but the results for one individual test-taker on one individual day is probably not something that should change how you see yourself.