Our freedom of assembly is under fire from the left
Do law-abiding American citizens still have the right to gather peacefully to discuss their ideas without fear of government censorship and retribution?
In my adopted hometown of Colorado Springs, the answer is “no” if you believe in strict border control or question whether the U.S. can survive as a nation-state. The answer is “no” if you wish to meet with others to express concern about the unsustainability of current U.S. immigration policy. The answer is “no” if you dare to speak unvarnished truths about the deleterious security and economic impacts of illegal immigrants.
In spring 2017, award-winning journalist and former Hoover Institution media fellow Peter Brimelow and his educational nonprofit VDARE reserved the Cheyenne Mountain Resort for a conference on immigration and sovereignty issues. A local far-left gadfly who bragged about wearing her “pink hat while driving (her) Prius” launched an online petition condemning Brimelow’s organization as a “hate group.” The petition threatened both the resort and the mayor, bellowing that “the residents of Colorado Springs will not support businesses that profit from hate groups and will not re-elect politicians hospitable to those hate groups!”
What exactly is “hateful” about VDARE’s work? You can visit VDARE.com and read their wide variety of news and opinions yourself. VDARE hosts a vital and honest discussion of an “America First” immigration policy, long considered third rail by the establishments in both parties before President Donald Trump embraced it and won the White House. VDARE has never advocated violence or any illegal activity. The group counts foreign nationals, immigrants and members of racial and ethnic minorities among its strongest supporters.
In mid-August 2017, obviously spooked by the violent outcome in Charlottesville, Virginia, where “alt right” protesters and violence-provoking antifa agitators clashed as local police refused to intervene as a result of a disastrous stand-down order, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers issued a chilling statement regarding the planned VDARE conference. While paying lip service to “freedom of speech,” Suthers rather unsubtly used his executive authority as the city’s top elected official to pressure local businesses against engaging with VDARE and its supporters.
This is the kind of feckless virtue-signaling you expect from Democratic mayors attacking Chickfil-A over its founders’ commitment to traditional values. Here’s what’s truly pathetic: All it took for GOP Mayor Suthers to fold was one ambitious Democratic pot-stirrer and a few thousand crisis-exploiting petitioners on the internet (who knows how many of them were actually from Colorado Springs) echoing the talking points of the Southern Poverty Law Center smear machine — which has made a fortune calling everyone from Ben Carson to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Brigitte Gabriel to Jeanine Pirro to Trump an agent of “hate.”
Immediately after the mayor’s decree, the Cheyenne Mountain Resort canceled VDARE’s contract. The liberal hecklers won. The Republican mayor, a purported constitutional conservative, blithely threw the First Amendment under the bus.
VDARE is fighting back against what Brimelow calls the “Totalitarian Left”. Who needs antifa with free speech-squelching tyrants bullying patriots from inside the halls of power?