Opinion

The Georgia Tech Riot’s Dark Message To America

Scott Greer Contributor
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Georgia Tech may be the unlikeliest of places to witness violent riots, but in the current climate of campus insanity it seems no college is immune from student unrest.

On Monday, cop cars burned down and police were pelted with rocks in retaliation for a “non-binary” student shot to death by law enforcement over the weekend. The slain student brandished a knife at officers while demanding that they shoot him.

Video of the shooting and the multiple suicide notes left behind by the deceased student, Scout Schultz, indicate he was trying to goad police into killing him. (RELATED: Student Killed By Police At Georgia Tech Left Three Suicide Notes)

Regardless of the evidence, aggrieved Techies took it as an act of police brutality against the LGBT community and decided upon violence.

Georgia Tech was not the first place to see such aggressive demonstrations on a college campus this year. Riots took over the University of California – Berkeley over a planned Milo Yiannopoulos speech in February, resulting in several people assaulted by leftist demonstrators over the suspicion they may like Milo. (RELATED: Berkeley Student Paper Publishes Columns PRAISING Anti-Milo Riot)

Leftist students took over Evergreen State University in May after a liberal professor suggested it was a bad idea to kick out all white students and faculty for a day of protest. After forcing the offending professor to flee campus, students effectively took most of the faculty and wouldn’t allow to them to even use the restroom unless they agreed to their ridiculous demands. (RELATED: Evergreen State Calls Protesters’ Actions ‘Criminal’…Two Months After The Fact)

Additionally, baseball bat-wielding leftists patrolled the Evergreen campus to look for imaginary Nazis in the ensuing weeks.

Physical violence has become an increasing factor in campus insanity, an element that was largely absent when I wrote my book, “No Campus for White Men,” last year.

Sure, there were protesters aggressively disrupting speeches. There was that one University of Missouri professor who threatened to get “muscle” to remove a reporter from a safe space.

But there were no burning cop cars and no conservatives getting beaten unconscious. A lot of the violence on campuses so far has appeared to have come from outside agitators affiliated with Antifa, as shown in the Berkeley riots.

Georgia Tech, on the other hand, shows a riot originating from the student body, not from anarchists living in the nearby community.

This is a big development for higher education. Students no longer have to rely on the local crust punk scene to shut down speakers and attack their political foes. They’ll just do it themselves.

The bad news for America is that we are all but guaranteed to see similar, left-wing student-driven riots this academic year. Recent polling shows that more Georgia Techs are bound to occur.

A poll released this week by the Brookings Institute showed that one-fifth of American students support violence against speech they find offensive. Sixty-two percent of self-identified left-wing respondents believe shouting over a disagreeable speaker is a great idea. Forty-four percent of students think hate speech is not protected by the Constitution, a false notion that would encourage left-wing agitators encouragement to use any means necessary to shut down their enemies.

As a society, we’ve liked to tell ourselves that violence outside of self-defense is wrong. It is considered especially wrong if it is used against somebody expressing their constitutional rights, whether it be to vote, pray or share their political opinion.

To the young leftists of 2017, however, violence is a good thing — if used by themselves and against those they deem beyond the pale. To them, their intimidation of wayward professors and macing of suspected “Nazis” are not acts of aggression, but measures of self-defense. Allowing dissidents to go unmolested means that vulnerable students are going to get hurt…somehow.

“I put my safety and my freedom on the line because letting Yiannopoulos speak was more terrifying to me than potential injury or arrest,” one Berkeley rioter argued for why he took up violence to shut down speech.

Violence is a righteous solution to offensive speech and alleged police oppression. It can be morally justified and defended with the most fantastical of claims. However, violence is still bad if it’s practiced by the other side as it’s only good when it remains in the Left’s grasp.

The images coming out of Berkeley and Georgia Tech are shocking to most Americans, but to those who engage and sympathize with the riots, they’re brave acts of resistance. Burning a cop car is okay if done for a noble cause. Good moral standing is on the side of the rock throwers, not the police who just murdered a student belonging to a protected class.

We may long for the days when checking your white privilege was the worst part of campus Leftism, rather than being sent to the ER over failure to check it.

WATCH BEN SHAPIRO SHAME COLLEGE CAMPUSES THAT STOP POLICE FROM REDUCING VIOLENT OUTBURSTS FROM STUDENT:

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