UConn Students Do the Righteous Thing: Shut Down Nazi Speaker

December 4, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On November 28, a speech by the White House correspondent for the fascist website Gateway Pundits, Lucian Wintrich, was disrupted by students and others at University of Connecticut in Storrs. Wintrich was giving a speech he titled “It’s OK to be White,” and he began by sipping a glass of milk—understood by white supremacist scum bags as a symbol of “racial purity.” Many in the audience of about 350 repeatedly shouted down Wintrich with “Fuck You,” “Go home Nazi” and “Black Lives Matter.”

At one point, a couple of youth approached the podium, and the young woman boldly took the text of his speech and began to walk away. Wintrich ran after her and physically attacked her, appearing to either try to choke her or punch her face. This further angered the crowd, and some came to her defense. The police moved in to put him in the restroom area to protect him. It was reported that smoke bombs were thrown and windows were broken in the building. As the cops were driving away with Wintrich, protesters chased the police car.

Since then, the protest has been attacked by none other than UConn president Susan Herbst, in a statement that said in part: “...it is never the role of a university to shield our campuses from speech that is disagreeable, purposely provocative, or even outright hateful, such as Wintrich's. These characterizations are in the eye of the beholder, and so it is unwise for us to attempt to draw lines in the sand about what is or is not protected speech.” As Sunsara Taylor sharply pointed out when students at UC Berkeley came under attack from the university chancellor for shutting down fascists like Milo Yiannopoulos on their campus, what’s at issue in these protests is fascism, not “free speech.”

Across the country, from UC Berkeley to UConn, big questions are being put before students about the importance of truth and how to arrive at it, and what needs to be done in the face of the fascist offensives on campuses and elsewhere in society. The action of the UConn students to drive the white supremacist Nazi Wintrich from the campus was righteous, and they need to be defended from any attack by the school administrators and fascists. There is fertile ground, and urgent need, for students to be connected with the film of Bob Avakian’s talk, THE TRUMP PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible, and the society-wide movement to drive out the fascist regime before they can carry out even more catastrophic damage to humanity.

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