A student socialist group at The University of New Mexico attacked two conservative speakers even though they have not been invited to speak at the University yet: Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro, whom they called a “fascist” and “very similar to alt-right supporter Milo Yiannopoulos,” and Christina Hoff Sommers, whom they referred to as a “rape apologist.”
The group posted a notice reading:
UNM Students for Socialism
Movement Alert
Prevent fascists and Rape Apologists from Speaking at UNM
UNM is in the process of authorizing $10,000 in student money for right-wing student clubs to invite alt-right speakers to campus. One is Ben Shapiro, a former Breitbart editor, very similar to Milo Yiannopoulos. The other is rape-apologist Christina Hoff Sommers.
Join us Mon. April 24, 3 p.m. at the office of the president to demand: Cancel future events for these and other alt-right speakers! Take away the money allocated for these speakers and use it to meet student needs!
The group added on Facebook:
Students for Socialism, working with other outraged students and community members, have set up a meeting with the president of UNM to demand that these future events are cancelled, and that the student money be returned and used for student needs instead of rolling out the red carpet for bigots.
The meeting will take place Monday, April 24 at 3pm in front of SCHOLES HALL. There will be a rally outside the president’s office while a delegation of community members and students deliver the student demands to the president.
We need everyone in the community to help shut down hate speech!
The epithets hurled at Shapiro and Sommers are hilariously inaccurate; to call either of them alt-right is ludicrously wrong-headed. Shapiro was the number one target of anti-Semitic hate directed at journalists on Twitter in 2016, with roughly 40% of the hatred on Twitter directed at him, about four times more than any other journalist on Twitter, with most of the hatred coming from members of the alt-right. To call him similar to Yiannopoulos, who embraced the alt-right and even directed some of his own hatred at Shapiro on the day Shapiro’s son was born, is simply disgusting.
To term Sommers a “rape-apologist” is also totally misguided, as is explained here.
The group was taken to task on Facebook and Twitter:
One commenter wrote on Facebook: “You do know that Nazis were NATIONAL SOCIALISTS right? Fascists use violence, propagandized lies, and oppose free speech to silence their enemies. This is sad and disgusting. You people are RETARDED.”
Another wrote: “Ben Shapiro is a Jew who quit Breitbart in protest of Bannon’s embrace of the Alt-Right and dislikes Milo. You are not being asked to oppose Shapiro because he is Alt-Right. You are being manipulated into opposing him because he is anti-communist.”
Plus there were these dissenters: