Daily Wire Host Michael Knowles faced down protestors at University of Buffalo after lambasting gender ideology at CPAC last weekend.
Knowles’ lecture, ‘How Feminism Destroys Women (And Everything Else),’ was interrupted from the beginning by a group of activists who shouted down Knowles with cries of “Trans Lives Matter” for several minutes before they were escorted out of the room by security.
“I especially want to thank those people in the audience.” Knowles responded. “Because even though they’re trying to interrupt the talk they are showing a lot of bravery for even coming into this auditorium with such an allegedly genocidal maniac.”
Knowles was making light of several headlines put out by left-wing media outlets after his speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, where he called for a ‘complete eradication of transgenderism from public life.’
“I didn’t know that I was a genocidal maniac before this week,” Knowles continued. “But I read about it in Rolling Stone and The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post … I’m just not really a ‘genocide’ kind of guy.”
In his speech last weekend, Knowles argued that gender ideology was built on false premises about the human condition and that it could not be imposed or indulged in any context without granting those premises, which undermined the foundations of society itself.
“For the good of society and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely, the whole preposterous ideology — at every level.” Knowles said.
Despite expressing concern for the well-being of trans-identifying individuals and specifying that he was speaking of an ideology rather than a group of people, several outlets and even a sitting member of Congress claimed that Knowles was calling for the mass killing of trans people. Those claims crossed the extremely high threshold for libel of a public figure under US law, and most of the outlets retracted and revised those statements, likely, as Knowles notes, after counsel told them “Change the headlines before you get sued into oblivion.”
“I am not quite sure how someone could hear those words and conclude that I was calling to murder all the transvestites,” Knowles said. “When one calls to eradicate poverty, one is not calling to murder the poor. When one calls to eradicate cancer one is not suggesting that we ought to murder cancer patients.”
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Despite these revisions, many people continue to characterize Knowles’ comments as that of a genocidal tirade, including New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman(D) who wrote:
“Michael Knowles is a Nazi hellbent on keeping only white men alive and in power. We cannot allow him and others to push their evil agenda and we must stand up for the transgender rights.”
“I think I struck a nerve.” Knowles mused.
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