If you didn’t get it before, perhaps you’ll get it now.
Michael Knowles is not a political philosopher or thinker. He does not share novel ideas worth anyone’s serious engagement. He is a propagandist whose sole job is to provoke the left.
That’s it – he exists to trigger the libs.
Or to make libs cry.
Or to troll the libs.
Whether or not he truly believes that “transgenderism” is a thing that should be “eradicated” is not especially relevant. So what if he does? So what if he doesn’t? It doesn’t matter – it took him in one week from a guy you never heard of to a local cause célèbre, strutting about the college towns of the western Great Lakes region telling 19 year-olds that women should stay home, barefoot and pregnant.
That’s what this is about – it is about the poisoning of the public discourse to make a buck. Michael Knowles didn’t come to UB for free. He’s on a YAF-sponsored speaking tour and his appearance fee is $5,000 – 10,000 per speech, plus travel expenses. From YAF’s national office’s website:
The second sentence is the giveaway – “despite the Left’s best efforts“. This tour is about getting the left on campus angry and out in droves. Knowles’ job is to provoke. YAF exists to provoke. There’s nothing here about how insightful and interesting his thoughts or speech are, is there? Just that they’re “in demand.”
While even banal grifters have free speech rights, let’s not kid ourselves about this being about the free exchange of ideas in a citadel of higher education. This is a traveling circus with a prime goal of pwning the libs and getting them to protest and look scary, with only a minor, tangential aim of preaching to a shrinking choir.
It is all designed to let depraved small-minded goons complain about students who hold wholly on-point signs cursing fascists, such as YAF and Knowles.
I do not use the term “fascist” lightly. Knowles has become prominent due to his declaration that the state of being transgender is non-existent and that society should not allow it. Knowles derives power and influence through denunciations of people different from him, whose experience he does not know, and essentially incites a pliant mob to join him in his hatred and derision. But his central thesis – that “transgenderism” is a novel phenomenon that requires “eradication” – the obvious parallels to Nazi rhetoric notwithstanding – is factually false. His defamation of transgender Americans is little more than a 21-st century Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
How would he react if someone called for the eradication from the public square of “conservatism?” Obviously, one cannot have conservatism without conservatives. It’s not really all that complicated, and his protestations are absurd.
But fascism is also about the wielding of authority and power in a way that oppresses those whom the regime hates – dissidents, LGBTQIA+ people, etc. Witness this exchange between a UB YAF female and a young man at a bulletin board. The young man was moving flyers around on the board because YAF supporters had deliberately covered up anti-Knowles flyers with Knowles event flyers. She launches into a belligerent diatribe against him and sticks her phone in his face, and he calmly explains what he’s doing and why. Her only retort is that her YAF flyers are “approved by [the Student’s Association] and his are not, and therefore his are not allowed on the bulletin board at all.
Do you get that? The “shall not be infringed” Constitutional absolutist crowd demands that speech applies only to them at all times, but to no one else unless officially sanctioned by SA. It is an absurd argument and he was right to be rude and flip the bird at her. Good for him and I hope he has a Venmo for a beer fund or something for standing up to this absurd person whining about her flyer.
Now look at this interaction.
That left wasn’t “angry.” She asked a direct question. In response, Knowles, who is not there to debate but to provoke, responded condescendingly and rudely to the student. He looks like an absolute shit, and the woman asking a question looks perfectly reasonable.
The right does not, in fact, demand free speech. That’s not what it’s about. They demand that you be exposed to their speech. This is why they whine incessantly about things like the “Twitter Files” and make up false allegations about artificially reduced conservative reach on social media. They think that the libs must be exposed to their fascist rants and incoherent ramblings and Catturd against their will. It is Elon Musk’s reason for being right now, and it is why Twitter is dead. Musk rehabilitated the Keks and the Pepes and the rest of the Nazis because “free speech absolutism” demands that libs be told that Jews are the devil and Black people should be enslaved.
As for YAF, I first became aware of them in the mid-1980s when I attended Boston University. The student body held a walkout from class to protest a University award of an honorary degree to a South African whom many deemed to be a Botha regime collaborationist, and to demand that the University divest its holdings connected to apartheid South Africa. YAF were there, taunting the students walking out of class to protest systemic racial segregation. Not a great look, but the look isn’t the point. We were the crazy pro-Mandela leftist students and it was all about provocation to get an angry response so they could say, regard the intolerant left, who cannot countenance some good-natured ribbing about their earnest opposition to apartheid.
Michael Knowles is a professional provocateur, and YAF is an astroturf group run out of Reston, Virginia. Founded in 1960, I see nothing in its constituent document about eradicating gay people or transgender people or pwnage of libs.
This is what conservatism has devolved into – not any sort of ideology or platform. It has morphed from a Reagan personality cult into a Trump personality cult and it demands that you move aside so that they can achieve cultural and political hegemony without actually earning it through persuasion or votes.
So, I do not for a moment want anyone to think that I disagree with the protests against Knowles and YAF and their hateful, bigoted provocation. I personally think that mockery is best. But provocateurs like Knowles and Yiannopoulos revel in the biggest and most confrontational crowds. That is the real win for them – the speech is an afterthought.
And it will forever be thus – while transgender Americans are desirous of a world where they can live their lives with dignity and without discrimination, there will be a population of morally depraved self-righteous professional provocateurs to make their lives a living hell over bathroom stalls.
People who make a habit out of lib-pwnership will call transgender people “pedophiles” and “groomers” because those are the slurs that helped to keep homosexuals oppressed for generations before.
I think trans people have always existed, do exist, and will continue to exist, no matter what some washed-up failed actor says. I think it is hate speech for someone to deny their reality and humanity and to call for their “eradication.” The failed actor doesn’t need to believe in transgender people or transgenderism – they exist regardless of his “belief.” The question is whether the failed actor would gladly direct the power of the state to outlaw them, oppress them, segregate them, or otherwise to terrorize them. In an interview with WBFO Thursday, attorney Heidi Jones identified this phenomenon as “stochastic terrorism.” It’s what “Libs of Tik Tok” Chaya Raichik is expert in.
The professional provocateur, to the extent he has any beliefs at all, would indeed use the power of the state to oppress and “eradicate” transgender people. And he would do it for pretty cheap money. And a small handful of Gen-Zers attending a public university are jumping up and down with glee over the oppression of peers who never bothered them even once.
