The Other Side of the Pacifica Forum Coin
For weeks now we’ve been debating back and forth about the Pacifica Forum, and the subsequent maneuvering its protesters have done to try to make the discussion about “student safety”. It came to a head last week when the ASUO Senate Rules Committee passed a resolution that politely asked the Pacifica Forum to fuck off.
It seems that through a highly convoluted series of events, the Student Insurgent has coincidentally “intercepted” a message from Billy Rojas, which has been denied as being a fake. Even if the e-mail is real, it’s long and boring and I don’t really need to go over its contents. The best part is that the Black Tea Society has decided to call on anti-Pacifica supporters from all over the state to protest the next Pacifica meeting on the 12th because of the e-mail.
Here’s where it gets juicy. The Black Tea Society intends to bring militants to the University of Oregon campus in order to protest the Pacifica Forum. That’s right… militants.
“Militants wishing to participate in this action should arrive in front of Agate Hall on the University of Oregon campus, this Friday February 12th at 4:30pm”
In case you didn’t read that correctly, that means the anti-Pacifica people–the ones concerned with student safety–are bringing militants to our area. Their reasoning?
“The Northwest is front line of the the battle against the fascism, many of their ilk are hoping to make this part of the country where they make their stand, it is also where we and all students of history will put an end to them. ( we mean end philosophically of course)”
Oh, philosophically. Well in that case, right this way sirs. My fears are put to rest, and this no longer seems highly hypocritical, since you mean to end their existence “philosophically”. Here I was thinking that inviting militants–which, mind you, is a far different term than mere “protesters” and takes on the assumption that by calling a group “militants” they are inherently a group that is unafraid to use violence as a means of enforcing their views–was a bad idea. Now I see that everything’s OK because you’re going to battle them philosophically.
Although I admit it would be hilarious to watch a bunch of smelly, protein-deficient freegans mix it up with a group of old men, I find it hard to believe that the Black Tea Society, and the anti-Pacifica movement in general, doesn’t see this as an inherent escalation of the situation in general. Bringing a violent-minded group to such a hostile environment will inevitably only exacerbate things, and if things go south–if violence breaks out–their entire argument goes to pot.
Further, the fact that they use words and phrases like “battle” and “make their stand” conjures up images of a violent nature. I understand that it’s just neohippie babble being used to stir up some testosterone, but it seems hardly a smart idea being as how they’ve been harping on the Pacifica Forum for “inciting violence”.
I can see it now–too many DPS and EPD officers, masked trustafarians with drums and a very old man in a wheelchair. Components of a massive riot. I find it amazing that the anti-Pacifica side of this debate has been the first side to publicly and specifically call individuals of a violent nature to this campus.
Actually, now that I think about it, it’s not that surprising.
My question now is where is the ASUO Senate on all of this? Will there be a separate resolution banning anti-anti-Pacifica violent protesters as well? Not to disappoint you, but that resolution could have been. A student (who shall remain nameless until I acquire his permission) turned in to us an edition of the resolution that had more general denunciations of bigotry and perpetrators of an “unsafe environment” on campus.
The purpose of this more general, less Pacifica-specific language? “To include the campus protesters. Technically, according to University bigotry codes, many of them qualify,” he said (If I get the permission to, I’ll publish the resolution that could have been). In the meantime, I’ve got a big, shiny penny for anyone who files a resolution, and gets it sponsored, that says the ASUO stands resolute against individuals or groups who knowingly bring militant, dangerous groups to campus.
In any case, I won’t be attending the Pacifica meeting for fear of my safety. You know, because of the militants.
PF Related Comment dangling outside of OC PF archive.
[Till now]
http://www.oregoncommentator.com/2010/02/16/noise-complaints/#comments
dc says:
February 18, 2010 at 11:57 am
Is
These dangerous leftists have gone too far. They held up scary signs and looked frankly cantankerous. I think I heard one of those curmudgeons even use profanity. If I lived on campus I would be shaking in my suit just like you.
Metzger was never charged in criminal court. Members of his group went to prison. He was only sued.
No, Metzger wasn’t a victim of double jeopardy. His wrongs had two streams of damage: the first being civil, the second being public.
Re-read your Constitution. Double-jeopardy is clearly defined in there. They didn’t put him in danger of being damaged in life or limb – just in wallet.
Well it’s over. For the first time, our critics have something genuine and not fabricated to sink their hatred into.
Have a good life all~
And Grace, I wish you many happy rereads of that ridiculous email.
maybe you’d like to incorporate my ‘rebuttal’ into your gossip?
http://uoinsurgent.blogspot.com/2010/02/pacifica.html
Dane, I just wanted to assure you that the email was not fake. I received it as well, directly from the same email address that Billy used to set up an in person interview with me last week. I’m sorry that you were left out of the fun; I can forward it to you if you’d like. I’m pretty sure that Billy Rojas sent it to everyone on his email list as some sort of press release. I’d also like to say that the letter is not boring at all, as it suggests that the entire controversy is the product of a love triangle involving Etter’s care provider and Jimmy Marr. If we can’t at least have a brief respite from melodrama to laugh about Nazi love affairs, well, we’re fucked.
Jack said his letter was severely edited and that it’s main focus was an Anti-Muslim movie. –2 paragraphs that were chopped.
Also, remember that he has not been at Forum, for 2+ years, now, so he has only the media (and people like ER) to brief him on how to think with re to PF.
He got this part right though:
“…possibly intended as a deliberate thumb-in-the-eye of their watchdogs ..”
Former PF member Jack Dresser speaks out on PACIFICA OBNOXIA:
“With its oft-reported white separatist orientation and equal-opportunity bigotry with virtually no minority group spared their scorn, Pacifica Forum has become increasingly obnoxious to most of us, including the
I got into an exchange with Michael Williams on the Student Insurgent blog. I’ve only been to one rather inoffensive Pacifica Forum meeting, not counting the recent protests I’ve been to. But I did see Williams and Dan Bryant of the Anti-Hate Task Force on community access TV when they spoke at Pacifica Forum a few years ago.
Here’s an example of what Williams claimed was anti-Semitism:
They did a forum on Alan Dershowitz’ book The Case For Israel. Norman Finkelstein exposed it as having been in part plagiarized from Joan Peters’ book, From Time Immemorial, which he had already exposed as a complete fraud when it came out in 1984. Peters book tried to claim that Palestinians didn’t exist, that Palestine was pretty much empty when the Zionists began to colonize it, and that Palestinians are actually from other Arab countries drawn to Palestine to cash in on the Jews’ presence.
So Pacifica Forum did one forum on Dershowitz’ book, and one on Peters’ book. Seems reasonable. Deshowitz book was a bestseller about a significant issue.
But according to Williams, this was anti-Semitism because they did two forums on plagiarism, both involving Jewish authors. He said he was sure that there were non-Jews who had committed plagiarism. Why didn’t they talk about one of them?
He continued to defend what he said in our exchange on the Insurgent site. He confirmed that my memory of it was accurate. He continued to pretend that the issue was plagiarism and that they had picked the books to discuss simply as an excuse to attack Jews.
I’ve never been impressed by Pacifica Forum, and now they’re bringing in a bunch of stinkin’ Nazis here. But I wouldn’t take anything Michael Williams says at face value.
Tony – so Metzger was a victim of double jeopardy, too. When I say ‘victim’ I don’t mean I like the guy. (I have to say this because antifascists take words out of context). OJ Simpson was also a victim of double jeopardy when he was fined for violating the civil rights of Nicole having been acquitted in a proper criminal trial.
Tony is right.
A name doesn’t make a comment any more or less valid.
Betz
Here’s an example of why this issue is even an issue:
Witness the “witness” at work (Williams on FaceBook)
Posted by Michael Williams:
While it is true that “It could be any number of types of people who have done this,” it is also true that only one group of people in our area have consistently presented public programs that
1) deride and disparage the LGBTQ community;
2) promote the neo-Nazi ideologies of White Nationalism / Supremacy, symbolized by the swastika;
3) recently devoted an entire meeting to a video of an anti-immigrant rally of the (neo-Nazi) National Socialist Movement that was literally littered with swastikas.
… See More
This does not mean that any of the Pacifica Forum regulars were involved in the vandalism. (I personally doubt that any were, but I think it a gross insult to even mention the LGBTQA victims in the same breath as possible perpetrators.)
The history of the Pacifica Forum makes clear that Pacifica programs have persistently laid the foundations that justify and encourage expressions of bigotry, consistently expressed in words what the vandals expressed in action, and that PF is the only organization in the region that has done so as publicly as frequently and for so long.
Is there a connection somewhere? Do toxic spills spread?
~
and this:
Posted by Michael Williams
For at least 13 years before the Reichstag fire, the Nazi party had been exploiting racism, white nationalism and antisemitism as organizing tools. (cf. Program of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, 1920), which echoed similar earlier programs in the region.
Existing prejudices and bigotries were cultivated and used to create scapegoats to explain the poor lot of the German people post WWI. This process will sound familiar to anyone who has attended enough Pacifica Forum programs.
Are all the Pacifica Forum members Nazis? No. … See More
Does the mainstream of PF programs use the same methods to exacerbate existing prejudices, to scapegoat minorities (non-Aryan immigrants, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals) as responsible for real or perceived injuries? Yes.
Is it “reasonable” to encourage this scapegoating and organizing and preaching of bigotry in the name of some hypothetical “free speech” that seems unconnected with the First Amendment? Hmmmmmmm …. that depends.
Whether it is “reasonable” to us may depend a lot on who we are, what our experiences in life have been so far.
What may seem to us as “reasonable” because of our experience as a majority member in a relatively homogeneous culture can seem indifferent or hostile to those whose experience is being a minority in a relatively homogeneous culture.
Given Oregon’s racist history, we live in a region of drought where there is entirely too much tinder available to those who would light the fires of hatred. Most of us do not have the everyday experience of working and living in communities where up to half (sometimes more) of our associates are non-white. We do not have the everyday experience of learning what sets our friends and neighbors and co-workers on edge, the code words that give us away, of learning the language and behavior of love, respect, safety and community that can bring us together as human beings committed to the welfare of each.
One step toward learning these skills might be to listen to what our friends say, the friends who are members of the communities singled out for attack by the speakers at Pacifica Forum.
END WILLIAMS SNIP.
NOTES: THE MICHAEL WILLIAMS VERSION OF “PF HISTORY” IS SURE TO BE MORE OF THE SAME STYLE OF LIES.
HE FORGETS THAT ALL OUR PF SESSIONS ARE RECORDED, ME THINKS. OR MAYBE HE SIMPLY DOESN’T CARE IF SOME OF YOU CHECK TO VERIFY HIS ‘CLAIMS’ AND THEN COME UP EMPTY HANDED.
THE ‘FOMENTING’ WORKS ON A PERCENTAGE OF THE STUDENTS, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER OR NOT HE IS AN HONEST BROKER. (WHICH HE IS NOT.)
INTERESTING THAT HE DOESN’T EVEN MENTION THE ANTI-SEMITE RAP ANYMORE.
HAVE A FEW OF HIS RADIO SHOWS TO POST AT pacificaforum.org SOME OF YOU MAY BE INTO COMPARING HIS RHETORIC NOW WITH HIS STUFF FROM 07, AND 08. SAME SENTENCES, DIFFERENT PEJORATIVES… Crafted with $PLC’s help, no doubt– to ‘appeal’ to his current Targeted Audience= The UO Campus Community. SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS.
Not sure if RB is trying to be sarcastic (partly b/c his/her grammar is terrible) but I can’t believe Eugene is big enough to have all those people!
Also, what’s the point of speaking out if one doesn’t associate one’s name w/ one’s post? I’m sick of computer screens protecting people who don’t have the balls to use their name. I believe it would nullify many online debates. Just a thought.
Anyone else see a backstory here?
A STRANGE ALLIANCE IN EUGENE, of Zionists, Communists & Anarchists;
Behind the scenes, a board of Directors created an anti-HATE FORCE; hired a Thought Policeman, who now summons his commrades & militants. So, who works for whom?
A rally cry “we are one”. Is it possible it’s not an alliance at all but a merger?
I aint giving up my nobels, I worked hard like Obama.
Cims G. is pulling a GULLEY here…that is all this sustainable shitstorm is. Congrats Cims…give him one of those tinfoil Nobels like Drew got.
Do you wanna know why this issue has gone all ape-shit on campus this year? It has to do with the ego of the protesters involved. PF has been around for years, and they were doing the same stuff now that they were doing when I first enrolled in the UO – over 6 years ago.
Never before had protesters made it a personal vendetta against the PF – they would protest the speaker, and then afterwards, everybody would go home: problem solved. The speaker was gone, the campus was safe again, and the protesters could rest easy knowing that they had won this battle. The only reason that the whole mess with the PF and the protesters has gathered this much steam is the protesters are making it personal; after that first protest attempt, someone decided that they wanted to “stick it” to the PF, to make it THEIR choice and THEIR action.
@Old Senator:
The correlation is in the fact that the protesters in Iran, as here on campus, have been infiltrated and incited, the ‘revolution’ is fostered through misinformation, plays on EMOTION, fomented–and financially supported, by the people’s REAL enemies: the agenda driven social-control freaks (Hate-Forcers here/USIsrael there).
The playbooks are largely the same.
It’s all too easy to find (and fund) provocateurs who’ll instantly sell- out Truth, in exchange for a crack at falling upwards–rubbing elbows with other players in the “Network”. And much of the youth in both countries are easily manipulated–by design. Most have been breathing in the propaganda since birth and have little conception of the real forces, working through them.
Others, perhaps wiser, are compromised “morally” by the fact that they are already beholding to the Network– when their number is up, they perform or suffer the consequences of ruin.
“What’s next?” you ask. Well, that remains to be seen. In the meantime, the HateForcers have galvanized themselves a whole little and ever expanding community of footsoldiers. Who knows what they will be fomented to do.
But I have a good number of new names on my list of folks to watch, in the upcoming years and months. It will be interesting to note who “falls upward”, who gets discarded, and who eventually speaks out.
All i can say is that it is really funny to draw a comparison with the protests against Pacifica Forum with the anti-government protests now happening in Iran. As a method of quelling the protesters, the Iranian government uses militiamen, military force, police, plain clothes police, etc.
What’s next? honestly, i feel very blase about the whole topic. The more media coverage this issue gets the harder we are fanning the flames… just let the flames die away… The Pacifica Forum has been on campus for years! Suddenly, within the last year, students care about their safety? Please!! really?! There are more important issues in the world to get worked up about!
I studied that case in detail. Metzger didn’t get fined by the government – he lost in civil court on a wrongful death tort and he more than had it coming. He wasn’t found -guilty- he was found -liable- and if you read the facts of that case he barely skipped by the criminal conviction, too. He wasn’t a victim of the miscarriage of justice, he was a prime example of effective use of the law by an individual to acquire punitive damages on the basis of wrongful death.
It would factually invalid to equate the Pacifica situation to the Metzger case, further, that would be one of a handful of cases in which an individual did, legally, cross acceptable free speech lines by intending to cause harm and death.
On topic though: I think that the invitation of “militants” – joke or not – is an escalation of this situation and is now more likely to result in violence.
This is a reply to Evan P Thomas’s comment in his ‘Pacifica Forum for Dummies’ but it seems relevant here…
http://www.oregoncommentator.com/2010/02/08/pacifica-forum-for-dummies/comment-page-2/#comment-112912
Anti-fascists and Pacifica Forum are not equivalent. PF regulars don’t use the same technique of exagerating how bad they feel as the pc left. Anti-fascists try to use violence to undermine freedom of speech, and Forum attendees do not. Pacifica Forum removes its critics’ names from its website when requested. Antifascists don’t.
Evan you say an antifascist and me both show no ‘legal credit’ of these actions. I guess you mean we don’t show our opponents are breaking the law. In 1989, a neo-Nazi called Metzger was fined $12
Just more self-fulfilling prophecy from the leftwing nutjobs we’re dealing with in this scenario. I consider myself left of center on a lot of things too, but these morons just alienate themselves with their ideological circle jerks.