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The protest against the anti-immigrant
Minutemen at Columbia University and the national media uproar
that followed highlight both the growing threat of the far right
and the challenges facing those who want to confront racism.
The planned speech by Minutemen
founder Jim Gilchrist at Columbia was part of an effort by the
racist group to gain a foothold on college campuses--and to further
burnish the group's newly "respectable" image.
It wasn't a surprise that the
right-wing media would turn the facts on their heads and use
the protest to accuse immigrant rights supporters of violence
and attacking "free speech." But unfortunately, some
liberals and even radicals joined in the denunciations. Progressive
magazine editor Matthew Rothschild said the Columbia protest
was "a defeat for free speech worthy not of progressives,
but of goons." Jon Stewart of the Daily Show claimed
the protesters made Sean Hannity of Fox News "look like
the reasonable one."
Such arguments display both
ignorance of what Gilchrist and the Minutemen represent, and
disrespect for the historical commitment of the left to speak
out against racism and oppression.
The issue of the Columbia protest
has been framed as a narrow question of free speech--for Gilchrist
only, it seems, not those who protested him--when the important
issue is the responsibility of anyone who opposes racism not
to let it go unchallenged.
* *
*
Not long ago, the virulently
anti-immigrant ideas that Gilchrist champions were consigned
to the right-wing margins of U.S. politics. But the crackpot
right's position on immigration has been legitimated by the conservative
shift in mainstream politics.
Though Bush and a variety of
Republicans and Democrats would prefer to include a corporate-backed
guest-worker program, both parties overwhelmingly agree that
the starting point of immigration policy must be the draconian
border enforcement measures championed by the Minutemen.
Gilchrist and his vigilantes
are the shock troops for the right-wing offensive on immigration,
formed to mobilize armed patrols to harass immigrants at the
border. Lurking just beneath the surface are the Ku Klux Klan
and other neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups--as watchdog
organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center have shown.
When these bigots are given
a platform at a prestigious university such as Columbia, it further
solidifies the far right's presence in the mainstream debate
and gives them additional legitimacy.
As the Columbia protesters
said in a statement soon after the event, "We are sure that
if the Nazi party held a public meeting on campus, Jewish groups
would be there to challenge them--so would we. We are sure that
if the Ku Klux Klan held a public meeting on campus, African
American groups would be there to challenge them--so would we.
The Minutemen are no different."
Nevertheless, the Minutemen's
claims about what took place at Columbia during the October 4
forum were accepted and promoted unquestioningly by the mainstream
media.
But video footage circulating
on the Internet corroborates the protesters' version of events.
The "protesters rushing the stage," which featured
in almost every media account, consisted of two demonstrators
unfurling a banner on the stage 45 minutes into the program.
The audience, grown increasingly angry with the Minutemen's message,
loudly showed their support, and some followed the lead of the
two demonstrators.
Minutemen supporters and College
Republican sponsors of the event physically attacked the immigrant
rights supporters--television footage shows one Latino student
being kicked in the head by a right-winger.
In this context, the claim
that the Minutemen's right to "free speech" was violated
begs some questions: Did the audience members who opposed them
not have a right to speak? Were they obligated to stay silent
while the Minutemen spread their message? Do the Minutemen have
some right to not be protested?
The double standards about
free speech were evident in the reaction of Columbia University
officials as well. University President Lee Bollinger has denounced
the anti-Minutemen protesters, but two years ago, when faculty
supporters of Palestinian rights came under attack--from some
of the same media outlets and politicians now hounding the students--Bollinger
said the university didn't have to respect their First Amendment
rights because Columbia is a "private institution."
Yet Columbia administrators
are preparing to punish the student protesters. If they do, they
will send a message that it is acceptable for the Minutemen to
meet peaceful protest with racist violence, and that the victims
of violence will suffer the consequences.
* *
*
In the 1960s, one of the important
stages in the development of the anti-Vietnam War movement came
when the State Department sent a team of speakers on a tour of
college campuses.
Representing the authority
of the U.S. government and implicitly endorsed by university
officials, the tour was meant to regain the initiative in the
growing debate over Vietnam. Fortunately, these speakers were
met by jeering students--a few were driven off the stage by chanting
and booing.
Those protests marked a recognition
by student activists that following the rules of polite discourse
would be a step away from the goal of ending the war.
Knowing now the full scope
of what was taking place in Vietnam, no one who deserves to be
called progressive would say those students were wrong to confront
the State Department propagandists--that the antiwar activists
should have remained silent out of respect for the "right"
of the war machine to excuse its killing.
Minutemen leaders like Gilchrist
are no less propagandists, but for a different war--a racist
war on immigrants. They need to be confronted and challenged.
And that's what happened at Columbia.
As the Columbia protesters
point out, in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin
Luther King wrote that the "great stumbling block is not
the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the
white moderate...who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the
goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct
action.'"
Anyone who cares about justice
or freedom should support the Columbia students who stood up
against racist hate.
CounterPunch
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