Students at the prestigious US university Penn State are outraged that Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right group the Proud Boys, is coming to speak at their Pennsylvania college on Monday.
The Proud Boys, an often violent US extremist group, have been labeled a terrorist organization by New Zealand and Canada. Many of its members align with white supremacist, antisemitic or Islamophobic ideologies. And five of its members were charged for their actions during the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
“My friends and I are pretty disgusted,” said Sam Ajah, a third-year student. “The university can’t just abdicate all responsibility. They’re giving [McInnes] a platform, access, legitimacy.”
Ajah, a 21-year-old geography major and president of the Penn State College Democrats club, is one of many students who feel strongly about the university hosting McInnes. Although organized by Uncensored America, a conservative student-led group at the cost of roughly $7,000, Penn State is holding out against pleas to cancel or ban the event.
“As a public university, we are unalterably obligated under the US constitution’s first amendment to protect various expressive rights,” the school said in a statement. It also acknowledged and criticized the hateful rhetoric that speakers like McInnes are known to espouse.
Such an event is not a first for Penn State. Last year, Milo Yiannopoulos, a British “alt-right” political commentator, was hosted by Uncensored America at a talk on campus.
Yiannopoulos, who told a crowd at the University of Massachusetts a few years prior that “feminism is cancer”, often plays off his offensive remarks as ironic jokes. “Pray the Gay Away” was printed on a red poster advertising his talk in Penn State’s student union hall.
Students were opposed to that earlier event too, but the tension surrounding this upcoming talk is different – it is palpable.
“I mean, Yiannopoulos is offensive and kind of a clown,” said Mia Bloom, a former professor at Penn State who researches extremism, conspiracy theories and the far right.
“But Gavin McInnes is actually dangerous. This event is deliberately provocative. It’s not a free speech issue if it endangers the student community.”
McInnes established the Proud Boys during the 2016 presidential elections. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, white nationalists and neo-Nazis cite him as a gateway to the far right.
Since then, members of his organization have been regulars at Make America Great Again rallies, recognizable for wearing black and yellow clothing, and they are frequent participants in street riots across the country.
“We will kill you. That’s the Proud Boys in a nutshell. We will kill you,” McInnes said during his Compound Media show in 2016.
Ajah and many of his peers will not attend the protest against the talk scheduled for 24 October, partly out of fear of violence. They feel this is the best message to send. Ajah wants students to think twice about their safety.
“It’s not my place to go as a black queer person,” he said. “Why would I when people are espousing hateful rhetoric at you for just being you.”
Ajah disagrees with Penn’s “lackluster and hands-off approach”, which the school also came under criticism for after the Yiannopoulos talk last year.
“It’s not our job to verify or take into consideration speakers like this just because they are palatable to a certain student audience,” Ajah said. “In ignoring the hateful stuff McInnes has done, the university is just accepting it.”
When Kevin McAleenan visited Georgetown University’s law school in 2019 to give a lecture, he was effectively driven from the stage. McAleenan, then the acting secretary of homeland security under Donald Trump, could not be heard over chants such as “Hate is not normal” and “Stand up, fight back” from the audience.
Georgetown has since re-evaluated the school’s free speech policies.
