Grifters gotta grift but they got trouble.
Or maybe Glittering Steel is more about raising the tariff on tinfoil hats than diamonds and rust.
The failure to create a meaningfully violent civil disturbance in Berkeley on the same scale as Charlottesville last Thursday may have doomed the RWNJ financial guarantees for the “conservative” speakers at Free Speech Week (24-27 September) at UC Berkeley.
To some observers, it seemed that it might be yet another “bait and switch” with no intention of actually staging the event, closing with claiming some imaginary bias on the part of the university.
After the original outbreaks of violence this year, university and city police devised greater security measures that enabled minimal disruption of the Ben Shapiro event.
That speech was sponsored by a group different from the one sponsoring the upcoming event, but using some of the same funders.
Those resources may have been withdrawn as they were in April, or perhaps never even available.
UC Berkeley’s Mogulof said Ben Shapiro’s event Thursday night was “safe and successful” because the Berkeley College Republicans, who organized the event, did several things:
they signed a contract with the venue,
paid the venue fees,
secured insurance for their event,
had a contract with the speaker that they shared with the campus and
provided to the police department all the information the police department needs to put the measures in place.
He emphasized that the Berkeley Patriot “has not done a single one of those things” at this time.
“The main thing is that time is running out,” Mogulof said. “Very soon there just simply will be no options open.”
www.dailycal.org/...
Yet right-wing provocateur Yiannopoulos, the driving force behind “Free Speech Week,” still released the full speakers list last week. It was a veritable who’s who of right wing extremists and pro-Trump groupies, including Steve Bannon, Ann Coulter, Pamela Geller, Mike Cernovich, Erik Prince, Monica Crowley, and a host of other fringe activists.
Almost immediately after Yiannopoulos released the list, several of the scheduled speakers announced that they had no plans to come to the four-day event. At least one speaker included on the list, Charles Murray, said he never even agreed to speak in the first place.
In an e-mail to The Daily Californian, Murray said, “The inclusion of my name in the list of speakers was done without my knowledge or permission. I will add that I would never under any circumstances appear at an event that included Milo Yiannopoulos.”
As of Friday, only three of the 25 people listed as speakers had actually been confirmed by the university.
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It still seems like there’s a lack of kaopectate as well as money, but perhaps a smaller speech venue for the three speakers committed so far might allow for the anticipated protests because of compromised security arrangements.
The result is that Berkeley Patriot will not be able to use two large indoor venues, Zellerbach Auditorium or Wheeler Auditorium…
“It made it look like we don’t have our shit together,” Berkeley Patriot News Editor Pranav Jandhyala told KQED.
UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof told KQED that Berkeley Patriot did not meet a deadline to pay the university for use of the larger theater spaces they requested.
“The university cannot defend spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide security arrangements for events based on a press release and inconsistent schedules,” Mogulof wrote in a statement. “The campus will require Berkeley Patriot to confirm the details of its 10 remaining proposed events in the coming days.”…
Hard-right, anti-government and white nationalist groups have been targeting UC Berkeley and the surrounding city as a place of demonstration since the 2016 election. That includes the near-riot in the streets of Berkeley in February after an event featuring Yiannopolous was canceled due to safety concerns.
Given the people involved in organizing the event, there is good reason to be skeptical about whether the event will even happen — or if the organizers actually intended for it to happen in the first place.
In April, Coulter claimed that Berkeley canceled a speech she was scheduled to give on campus. However, it was later revealed that the campus group hosting Coulter, the Berkeley College Republicans, had failed to reserve a space for her to speak.
A month later, Yiannopoulos pulled a similar bait-and-switch, claiming that he had scheduled an appearance at Berkeley and then canceling the event before it ever happened.
After both events, the far-right provocateurs blamed the liberal university for “shutting down free speech” and being intolerant of conservative voices. Neither acknowledged that the university had no role in canceling their speeches.
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Sept. 24: “Feminism Awareness Day”
- Miss Elaine
- Lucian Wintrich
- Lisa DePasquale
- Chadwick Moore
- Milo Yiannopoulos
Sept. 25: “Zuck 2020”
- Heather Mac Donald
- Monica Crowley
- SABO
- Professor Jordan Peterson
- James Damore
Sept. 26: “Islamic Peace and Tolerance Day”
- Michael Malice
- Raheem Kassam
- Katie Hopkins
- Erik Prince
- Pamela Geller
- David Horowitz
- Milo Yiannopoulos
Sept. 27: “Mario Savio is Dead”
- Mike Cernovich
- Charles Murray
- Ariana Rowlands
- Stelion Onufrei
- Alex Marlow
- Milo Yiannopoulos
- Steve Bannon
- Ann Coulter