What do you do if you’re a climate activist and a geoscientist speaks at a meeting near you offering scientific evidence against your point of view? Well, of course—you do what any rational person would do. You attend and listen carefully and weigh the arguments and consider whether you should change your views. Maybe you ask some questions during the Q&A at the end of the talk, challenging some of his evidence or reasoning. Maybe, if you’re really confident of your views, you contact the event organizers in advance and offer to debate the speaker, making the event all the more valuable to people of all persuasions.
Or maybe not.
Maybe, instead, you just show up and start shouting slogans like, “When scientists lie, people die!” or “Climate change is killing us!” or “You have the blood of climate refugees on your hands!”
And when you’re asked to leave the premises so the speaker can continue and the audience can hear what he has to say, you keep marching around inside the room, shouting, for as long as you can—and then you keep on shouting your slogans as you’re escorted out of the building.
That’s what happened when Cornwall Alliance Contributing Writer Gregory Wrightstone, a veteran geologist, spoke for Eagle Council in St. Louis, MO, September 15. Protesters interrupted him and began chanting those slogans and walking in circles around the room in which he spoke. You can view the protest here. (Caution—protesters use profanity and vulgarity near the end of this video.)
Later, when they’d been escorted outside and Mr. Wrightstone went out and tried to talk with them, they self-identified as Antifa. Wikipedia identifies Antifa this way:
… a conglomeration of left wing autonomous, self-styled anti-fascist militant groups in the United States. The principal feature of antifa groups is their use of direct action, harassing those whom they identify as fascists, racists or right wing extremists.
Perhaps the greatest irony is that the tactics the protesters used at Mr. Wrightstone’s talk were the very tactics most commonly used by—you guessed it—real fascists!
Cornwall Alliance won’t be intimidated, though. Just as when protesters tried to disrupt two of Dr. Beisner’s talks for the Illinois Family Institute last year, so also in this case, Mr. Wrightstone finished his talk. We’re glad to speak to any group, anywhere, any time the meeting can be arranged, sharing our reasons for the positions we hold.
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Raymond H. Clary, Jr. says
This article highlights the difference between the radical left’s “jungle rules” approach to politics and that of the conservative right. The left can’t win with the content of their agenda so they resort to preventing the right from getting their truths into the debate.
jim says
When are we going to start standing up? I would jerk those phones out of their hands and stomp them. Then grab them by the seat of their pants and collar and frog march them out the front door. It’s time to put civility in the closet till we can regain our ground then we can bring it back out. As long as we kowtow to these bullies they will continue. Sometimes you just have to get red. Signed: A Redneck from Alabama.
Tom says
One of Keith Ellison’s favorite groups.
RGHunt says
I cannot see why people get so excited about this so called climate change! If they can truthfully show there is . But come on if we talk about 1 or 2 degrees and argue about it, you have to be spending too much time down at the corner pub! The science has been written already about most of the solar effects, some include stuff that was in print back in the early sixties of last century. So why all the noise over what is just normal?
Edward Gross says
The long arm of George Soros strikes out at his opponents, like Hitler’s brown shirts using Germany’s own freedoms against them to shout down German parliament members in the 30’s until they bullied their way into power. That’s the track these Antifa members are using, as they learned from fascism’s success in the past to promulgate fascist tactics in the present and foreseeable future.