Froma Harrop’s sermon to campus liberals instructs them to “rise above” ultraconservative speakers by ignoring them. She is dead wrong to think this is an effective strategy. It invites them to proselytize and recruit unopposed.
She is also wrong to claim that demonstrating against these provocateurs is censoring their freedom of speech. Those who protest against the right wing are exercising their own rights to freedom of speech and assembly in the most effective way, by opposing a reprehensible ideology directly.
Harrop’s most serious miscalculation is to understate these views as merely offensive or disgusting. Make no mistake. The alt-right wingers who are speaking on campuses across the country are neo-Nazis, and we ignore or appease them at our peril. The Nazis came to power in Germany because the Left refused to unite to fight them.
The effectiveness of the strategy of confrontation was proved in this region in the 1990s when the United Front Against Fascism demonstrated on Whidbey Island and elsewhere against white supremacists who wanted to found a “white homeland” in the Pacific Northwest.
I hope that protesters on- and off-campus will ignore her advice. It is ignorant of the real history.
Megan Cornish, Seattle
Note from KBJ: This woman lives in Cloud Cuckoo Land. The fascists today are in her corner.
