I will start this post by saying “I wasn’t there,” but here is my best attempt to recap the Spencer-ISFLC incident based on direct reports from those who WERE there and from the videos. I invite anyone who was actually there to correct any errors in the comments and I’ll try to edit the post accordingly. After the narrative, I offer a few observations.
Alt-right neo-Nazi Richard Spencer was NOT invited by ISFLC. He did not pay for a registration to what was a private, if large, event. A rump group called the “Hoppe Caucus” (after the philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe) with no official affiliation with SFL had been planning on their Facebook group to bring Spencer to the conference hotel as a pre-meditated, intentional troll.
Spencer showed up in the hotel bar and the Hoppe Caucus had a sign saying “Richard Spencer ISFLC 17” making it appear as though there was an official association. Members of the caucus referred to it as “an impromptu breakout session” making it (fraudulently) seem as though it was part of the conference.
When participants heard Spencer was there, a number went to the bar to confront him. According to witnesses, the conference participants engaged in “boring political conversation” for around 30 minutes. More SFL folks showed up. At the peak, witnesses say around 30 people were gathered in the bar. There was no force or violence used. There was no property damage.
After awhile, the conversation got more heated, with the SFLers chanting and using obscenities. Again, no threats or violence. The hotel warned the whole group that they needed to keep it under control.
At some point, Jeffrey Tucker showed up and engaged with Spencer, telling him that there is no place for fascists at an anti-fascist conference, among other things. The yelling and cursing and chanting continued. Jeff left the scene. (As much as we all might have loved it if Jeff were responsible for “physically removing” Spencer from the hotel, that’s simply not what happened.) Eventually hotel security came to break up the shouting match, asking everyone around Spencer to leave the bar.
Multiple witnesses, confirmed by video, indicate that Spencer ASKED hotel security to escort him out, presumably for fear of his own safety. At least one witness said there was no reason for him to be concerned as no one had behaved violently or made threats. One might say that Spencer was the snowflake here, but I’ll leave that exercise to the reader.
Immediately afterward, a “news” story was posted to a Spencer sympathetic website with libertarian in its title in which the author gave a false and misleading description of the events spun to make Spencer look like the victim. Presumably, this was all part of the pre-meditated trolling from the start.
A few editorial comments:
Contrary to what some have claimed, there WAS an attempt to converse rationally with Spencer before the shouting and chanting on the videos. IMO, one is not at all obligated to engage rationally with someone with his views. There’s no punching of Nazis of course, but there is no moral obligation to engage in civil discourse with someone who so blatantly rejects liberal ideas and institutions.
The SFL kids perhaps could have moderated their language and volume, but otherwise I have no fault with their behavior. They did EXACTLY what many of us have tried to tell the left to do with Spencer or Milo: respond to speech with more speech and don’t engage in violence, threats, or the destruction of property. This is particularly important in this case when they were not disrupting an official event at which Spencer was supposed to speak, so there was no attempt to deny him a true platform. This seems like a perfect example of how to chase off a Nazi.
I have no problem with how the Marriott handled this. They kicked everyone out of the bar and gave Richard Snowflake his escort out. It’s their property, their call.
SFL should find out who organized Spencer’s visit and ban them from all future SFL events.
Lots of people (especially Jeff) have raised all kinds of concerns about supposed “libertarians” having sympathy for the alt-right. We now know for sure those are justified. BUT… some of us have been warning of the destructive and illiberal influence of Hoppe and his ideas for decades. That it was the “Hoppe Caucus” that did this is the LEAST surprising part of the story. If young libertarians don’t spit out the Hoppe poison right now and recognize him for what he is – part, if not a source, of the alt-right presence – we are going to keep running into this sort of problem.
Jacob T. Levy is right: “Spencer crashes ISFLC and is protested then evicted. Milo invited to keynote CPAC. That tells you all you need to know.”
It’s time for libertarians to pick a side, and it sure looks like a good hunk of SFL has…chosen wisely. The bromance with the right is over folks. Many of them have made it clear that they would rather fight against the left than fight for liberty. Students FOR LIBERTY need to walk away from the conservative movement in the Age of Trump.
- Jacob is also right about this: “If it's the case that yesterday's events provide "more free publicity" to Spencer, because ISFLC is a publicity-worthy event, then it's also necessarily the case that a story that would be misreported as "white nationalist gives invited talk at young libertarian conference" also would have gotten publicity. I think the number of people who were otherwise unsympathetic to Spencer but will now decide he's a free speech martyr and therefore white nationalism has something to be said for it is smaller than the number of people who otherwise don't know much about libertarianism but would have learned through that story to associate it with racism.”
So that’s my attempt to recap this, along with a few comments of my own. Again, if you were actually there and have corrections or additions, please put them in the comments and I’ll edit the post as need be.