Free Speech rallies for Google employees canceled after antifa threatens to show up.

[2aguy]

Here we have the true racists, socialists and violent terrorists.....antifa......and the democrats are giving them support, credibility and love....

Blog: Nationwide anti-Google protests canceled due to Antifa threats

 

[theHawk]

Sure glad those "anti-fascists" are putting a stop to free speech.

 

[usmbguest5318]

The Threats:
One thing I have to ask is this: Though Rick Moran says there were threats of violence from the "Alt-Left," what credible evidence is there that Antifa (or some other group) actually made such threats regarding the anti-Google protests? Indeed, from the OP-er's linked article:

Protest organizers didn't respond to requests for information about the alleged threats.....Jeremy Warnick, a spokesman for the Cambridge Police Department, said the department knew of no possible threats. "Through our various public safety partners, there were no known threats made against the March on Google here in Cambridge," he said.​

If there were indeed threats, that's one thing, but if there were, one'd think the organizers would come forward with "something" that credibly shows they were indeed threatened....



Freedom of Speech:
The rancor surrounding the so-called freedom of speech issue at Google has no legal merit.

• The SCOTUS determined that speech/expression made by public and private employees that occurs within the scope of their official job duties is not constitutionally protected under the U.S. Constitution. (Garcetti v. Ceballos)
• Is There Free Speech at Work?
  
• Supreme Court Free Speech Ruling Bolsters Employee Rights -- It's relevant to note that Heffernan v. Patterson expands employee rights, but only to a point: the employer in Heffernan was a government, and the 1st Amendment has long been construed as establishing speech rights with regard to citizens/individuals and governments, not between individuals and private sector organizations. [1]
  
• The First Amendment doesn't guarantee you the rights you think it does
  
• 7 Things the First Amendment Doesn’t Protect
• Over 70% of workers are unaware that the First Amendment doesn't protect them from getting fired over dumb social media posts

Sure, one can have a normative viewpoint that doesn't concur with legal precedent and case law. Yes, the government cannot prohibit one from griping about what one's private-sector employer does/permits. Need one's employer give any accord to one's grievances regarding its constriction of one's speech/expression? No, not at all.


Note:

1. See the following for a more comprehensive understanding of the matter:
   • Private Employees' Speech and Political Activity: Statutory Protection against Employer Retaliation
   • First Amendment
   • Free Speech and Due Process in the Workplace

Antifa:
As for Antifa, well, I fully understand one's not cottoning to their or any other organization's belligerent means and modes of expression. The thing about the invective I've of late heard about Antifa is that it strikes me as much ado about not much.

What Trump calls “the alt left” is actually Antifa, which is short for anti-fascist. The movement traces its roots to the militant leftists who in the 1920s and 1930s brawled with fascists on the streets of Germany, Italy, and Spain. It revived in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, when anti-racist punks in Britain and Germany mobilized to defeat neo-Nazi skinheads who were infiltrating the music scene. Via punk, groups calling themselves anti-racist action -- and later, anti-fascist action or antifa -- sprung up in the United States. They have seen explosive growth in the Trump era for an obvious reason: there’s more unadulterated white supremacism against which to mobilize.

As members of a largely anarchist movement, Antifa activists generally combat white supremacism not by trying to change government policy but through direct action. They try to publicly identify white supremacists and get them fired from their jobs and evicted from their apartments. And they disrupt white-supremacist rallies, including by force.

Some of their tactics are genuinely troubling. They’re troubling tactically because conservatives use Antifa’s violence to justify -- or at least distract from -- the violence of white supremacists, as Trump did in his press conference. They’re troubling strategically because they allow white supremacists to depict themselves as victims being denied the right to freely assemble. And they’re troubling morally because antifa activists really do infringe upon that right. By using violence, they reject the moral legacy of the civil-rights movement’s fight against white supremacy. And by seeking to deny racists the ability to assemble, they reject the moral legacy of the ACLU, which in 1977 went to the Supreme Court to defend the right of neo-Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois.

Antifa activists are sincere. They genuinely believe that their actions protect vulnerable people from harm. Cornel West claims they did so in Charlottesville, as did several Christian bystanders at the Charlottesville events.

...had the antifa not stepped in, those of us standing on the steps would definitely have been injured, very likely gravely so. On Democracy Now, Cornel West, who was also in the line with us, said that he felt that the antifa saved his life. I didn’t roll my eyes at that statement or see it as an exaggeration—I saw it as a very reasonable hypothesis based on the facts we had.
-- Brandy Daniels, Postdoctoral fellow at the Luce Project on Religion and Its Publics at UVA

There was a group of antifa defending First United Methodist Church right outside in their parking lot, and at one point the white supremacists came by and antifa chased them off with sticks.
-- Rabbi Rachel Schmelkin, Congregation Beth Israel

I stood with a group of interfaith clergy and other people of faith in a nonviolent direct action meant to keep the white nationalists from entering the park to their hate rally. We had far fewer people holding the line than we had hoped for, and frankly, it wasn’t enough. No police officers in sight (that I could see from where I stood), and we were prepared to be beaten to a bloody pulp to show that while the state permitted white nationalists to rally in hate, in the many names of God, we did not. But we didn’t have to because the anarchists and anti-fascists got to them before they could get to us. I’ve never felt more grateful and more ashamed at the same time. The antifa were like angels to me in that moment.
-- Rebekah Menning, Charlottesville resident

I am a pastor in Charlottesville, and antifa saved my life twice on Saturday.
-- Rev. Seth Wispelwey, Directing minister of Restoration Village Arts and consulting organizer for Congregate C'ville​

But for all of Antifa’s supposed anti-authoritarianism, there’s something fundamentally authoritarian about its claim that its activists -- whom no one elected -- can decide whose views are too odious to be publicly expressed. That kind of undemocratic, illegitimate power corrupts. It leads to what happened this April in Portland, Oregon, where Antifa activists threatened to disrupt the city’s Rose Festival parade if people wearing “red maga hats” marched alongside the local Republican Party. Because of Antifa, Republican officials in Portland claim they can’t even conduct voter registration in the city without being physically threatened or harassed.

So, yes, Antifa is not a figment of the conservative imagination. It’s a moral problem that liberals need to confront. But saying it’s a problem is vastly different than implying, as Trump did, that it’s a problem equal to white supremacism. Using the phrase “alt-left” suggests a moral equivalence that simply doesn’t exist.

For starters, while Antifa perpetrates violence, it doesn’t perpetrate it on anything like the scale that white nationalists do. It’s no coincidence that it was a Nazi sympathizer -- and not an antifa activist -- who committed murder in Charlottesville. According to the Anti-Defamation League, right-wing extremists committed 74 percent of the 372 politically motivated murders recorded in the United States between 2007 and 2016. Left-wing extremists committed less than 2 percent.

Second, Antifa activists don’t wield anything like the alt-right’s power. White, Christian supremacy has been government policy in the U.S. for much of American history. Anarchism has not. That’s why there are no statues of Mikhail Bakunin in America’s parks and government buildings. Antifa boasts no equivalent to Steve Bannon, who called his old publication, Breitbart, “the platform for the alt-right,” and now works in the White House. It boasts no equivalent to Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, who bears the middle name of a Confederate general and the first name of the Confederacy’s president, and who allegedly called the NAACP “un-American.” It boasts no equivalent to Alex Jones, who Donald Trump praised as “amazing.” Even if Antifa’s vision of society were as noxious as the “alt-right’s,” it has vastly less power to make that vision a reality.

And Antifa’s vision is not as noxious. Antifa activists do not celebrate regimes that committed genocide and enforced slavery. They’re mostly anarchists. Anarchism is not a particularly practical ideology, yet it’s not an ideology that depicts the members of a particular race or religion as subhuman.

If Trump, conservatives, liberals, anyone is to undermine Antifa, the way to do so is eradicating the bigotry that Antifa -- counterproductively -- combats. Absent emboldened white supremacy, Antifa have no raison d'etre.

 

[EverCurious]

On 12 June 2017, the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security described Antifa as anarchist extremists, listing clashes between Antifa and white supremacist groups across the United States:[29]

• On 18 April, following the Patriots Day Free Speech Rally in Berkeley, California — which turned violent — an Antifa member wrote, “Every Nazi that gets punched is a victory ... We must realize that these days are going to become more and more common, unless we put a nail in this coffin once and for all."[30]
• Beginning in March, the Philadelphia Antifa Chapter used Facebook to encourage followers to disrupt a “Make America Great Again” event in Philadelphia, resulting in over 300 participants. Antifa’s presence resulted in law enforcement shutting down the event early for safety concerns. As of May, a manual on how to form an Antifa group—posted on a well-known Anarchist website in February—had approximately 13,500 views.[31]
• On 1 February, the University of California Berkeley canceled a controversial speaker’s appearance following a protest by approximately 100 Antifa members. In response, far-right extremists assembled at a free-speech rally, which Antifa members disrupted, resulting in 10 arrests and seven injuries. Additionally, on 15 April, Antifa and far-right extremists clashed at a demonstration, leading to 23 arrests and 11 injuries.[32]
• On 11 February, members of the 211 Crew/211 Bootboys, a white supremacist gang, allegedly attacked two brothers at a New York City bar after seeing a “New York City anti-fascist sticker” on the back of one of the victim’s cellphones, according to New York authorities.[33]
• In June 2016, 300 counter-protesters, including anarchist extremists, attacked 25 members of the white supremacist Traditionalist Worker Party with knives, bottles, bricks, and concrete from a construction site while rallying at the California State Capitol in Sacramento, injuring 10.[34]

 

[MindWars]

Here we have the true racists, socialists and violent terrorists.....antifa......and the democrats are giving them support, credibility and love....

Blog: Nationwide anti-Google protests canceled due to Antifa threats

And all that did was send a message that ANTIFA won, because the cowardly little bitches can't stand up to those who act just like they do .

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Thats great news!!!
That'll really garner support from dems!!
These antifa people are complete morons.

 

[Tax Man]

To be against fascists is a bad thing now? Maybe my dictionary is out of date.

 

[BlackFlag]

Dumb little trolls couldn't get anybody to come to their pity party, so they claim they were threatened

 

[Jarlaxle]

There is nothing wrong with Antifa that could not be fixed with a few thousand rounds of .50BMG and an M2.