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| Carol outside the Rayburn House Office Building photo: Claire |
Over a decade ago I used to go to Washington DC 3-4 days a week while a student at the Corcoran College of Art and Design. It's been four years since my last visit, but the Middle East Forum, Dr. Daniel Pipes' think tank, hosted a panel discussion Wednesday at noon at the Rayburn Senate Office Building, just south of the Capitol. The topic: "De-Platforming, a New Problem."
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| Tommy Robinson via video from the UK, Ezra Levant to the right of Kassam photo: Claire |
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| photo: wiki |
The Rayburn room could seat about 50 and was 3/4s full. We needed to sit near the front so I could hear. We sat in the middle of the second row, right next to a man wearing a yarmulke. Dr. Pipes family escaped Poland and the Nazis during WWII. He, like his father before him, is a historian who strives to portray as honest a picture as possible of what’s going on in the Middle East.
Besides Tommy Robinson, the panel consisted of Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona, Raheem Kassam, a UK writer and editor, Ezra Levant, CEO of Rebel News, a Canadian conservative, and Ann Marie Waters, the head of newly formed 'For Britain' political party, with Dr. Pipes moderating.
Dr. Pipes had just started introducing the panelists when the man in the yarmulke jumped up and starting shouting that everyone there were racist haters. “Shame on you,” he must have shouted 100 times in an booming, actor-trained voice. He shouted vile accusations against Rep. Gosar, Robinson, Levant and Waters, then directed the same at all of the attendees. There was no pause in his verbal attack, no room for debate, just a constant fevered rant of the most intense degree.
As soon as the man in the yarmulke started shouting, I stood and walked over to wall. Claire started filming him on her cell phone and Raheem came over to him and began peppering him with questions: “What’s your name? Who are you with?” etc. A man near us called him a fake Jew. Some women tried to engage the shouter, but he wasn’t having it, he just kept shouting. He was like a badly trained Rottweiler, in a barking frenzy.
Rep. Gosar, one of three true conservatives in Congress, and a keen advocate of free speech, gave the man, and his two less-verbose, self-proclaimed Muslim women agitators in the back of the room, a good 7 minutes before calling the Capitol police, who removed them from the room with little effort.
Who was he? Was he Jewish? Can he actually believe those gross generalizations he shouted? Was he a paid provocateur? Being in that room yesterday was the closest I’ve ever knowingly sat next to a fascist, right next to someone who believes that only his politics were valid so mine must be stomped out.
He was also so unlike any Jewish person I've ever known. My closest friends at my first job at St. Louis U. and in college were Jewish. A hallmark of their character was an ability to debate and exchange ideas with joyful elan. They expanded my worldview. They were true students of Socrates. This man with the yarmulke, however, rattled everyone, except Tommy, who joked that it’s a shame he couldn’t have actually been with us (as a quite young man he too eagerly settled issues with fisticuffs).
For the next hour and a half we listened to a measured discussion of the countless ways free speech is being erased by technology worldwide. Each panelist recounted how their work has been targeted by so-called algorithms which led to them being banned by this or that social platform and or banking connection. Ezra Levant suffered dirty tricks involving a Scandinavian cruise he was lining up for conservative holiday makers. It had to be cancelled at great expense to him. Waters recounted how social media was used to disrupt her forming and maintaining her free speech political party by deliberately sending confusing/conflicting messages to her data-base attendees, further silencing her.
It was all thoroughly depressing yet oddly heartening too, to have a chance to see in person leaders of the opposition to this dire state of affairs. Raheem cheerfully and charmingly signed my copy of his 2018 book that I brought with me, “Enoch was Right: The Rivers of Blood Speech 50 years On.”
Dr. Pipes, a soft-spoken academic, was a a gracious moderator. He apologized that the security measures he'd taken didn't prevent the unpreventable.
All of the panelists made mention of what Ms. Waters aptly described as ‘our outspoken guest,’ in wise and poignant observations. I suspect they've experienced such behavior before and probably far more intensely. Needless to say, I did not expect Wednesday to be quite such a visceral learning experience regards the shocking, real people working so hard to destroy our freedom of speech.
We didn't have time to visit long afterwards, because Claire had to get back to work, so we dashed by the exquisite autumnal plantings of the U.S. Botanical Garden, the injured war vets memorial, and that seemingly serene part of the District.
Claire navigated us through the Tidal Basin back to the Roosevelt Bridge and Highway 66 west, usually easy going at 2 p.m. But not this Wednesday.
Just before reaching a wide underpass, a police car flashed past on 66, going east, then within a minute, must have turned around and was zooming past the far right lane of our westbound lanes in the darkened gloom of the underpass. Traffic slowed then stopped. Another police car was already up ahead at the end of the underpass.
Besides Tommy Robinson, the panel consisted of Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona, Raheem Kassam, a UK writer and editor, Ezra Levant, CEO of Rebel News, a Canadian conservative, and Ann Marie Waters, the head of newly formed 'For Britain' political party, with Dr. Pipes moderating.
Dr. Pipes had just started introducing the panelists when the man in the yarmulke jumped up and starting shouting that everyone there were racist haters. “Shame on you,” he must have shouted 100 times in an booming, actor-trained voice. He shouted vile accusations against Rep. Gosar, Robinson, Levant and Waters, then directed the same at all of the attendees. There was no pause in his verbal attack, no room for debate, just a constant fevered rant of the most intense degree.
As soon as the man in the yarmulke started shouting, I stood and walked over to wall. Claire started filming him on her cell phone and Raheem came over to him and began peppering him with questions: “What’s your name? Who are you with?” etc. A man near us called him a fake Jew. Some women tried to engage the shouter, but he wasn’t having it, he just kept shouting. He was like a badly trained Rottweiler, in a barking frenzy.
Rep. Gosar, one of three true conservatives in Congress, and a keen advocate of free speech, gave the man, and his two less-verbose, self-proclaimed Muslim women agitators in the back of the room, a good 7 minutes before calling the Capitol police, who removed them from the room with little effort.
Who was he? Was he Jewish? Can he actually believe those gross generalizations he shouted? Was he a paid provocateur? Being in that room yesterday was the closest I’ve ever knowingly sat next to a fascist, right next to someone who believes that only his politics were valid so mine must be stomped out.
He was also so unlike any Jewish person I've ever known. My closest friends at my first job at St. Louis U. and in college were Jewish. A hallmark of their character was an ability to debate and exchange ideas with joyful elan. They expanded my worldview. They were true students of Socrates. This man with the yarmulke, however, rattled everyone, except Tommy, who joked that it’s a shame he couldn’t have actually been with us (as a quite young man he too eagerly settled issues with fisticuffs).
For the next hour and a half we listened to a measured discussion of the countless ways free speech is being erased by technology worldwide. Each panelist recounted how their work has been targeted by so-called algorithms which led to them being banned by this or that social platform and or banking connection. Ezra Levant suffered dirty tricks involving a Scandinavian cruise he was lining up for conservative holiday makers. It had to be cancelled at great expense to him. Waters recounted how social media was used to disrupt her forming and maintaining her free speech political party by deliberately sending confusing/conflicting messages to her data-base attendees, further silencing her.
 |
| Raheem and Carol photo: Claire |
Dr. Pipes, a soft-spoken academic, was a a gracious moderator. He apologized that the security measures he'd taken didn't prevent the unpreventable.
All of the panelists made mention of what Ms. Waters aptly described as ‘our outspoken guest,’ in wise and poignant observations. I suspect they've experienced such behavior before and probably far more intensely. Needless to say, I did not expect Wednesday to be quite such a visceral learning experience regards the shocking, real people working so hard to destroy our freedom of speech.
We didn't have time to visit long afterwards, because Claire had to get back to work, so we dashed by the exquisite autumnal plantings of the U.S. Botanical Garden, the injured war vets memorial, and that seemingly serene part of the District.
Claire navigated us through the Tidal Basin back to the Roosevelt Bridge and Highway 66 west, usually easy going at 2 p.m. But not this Wednesday.
Just before reaching a wide underpass, a police car flashed past on 66, going east, then within a minute, must have turned around and was zooming past the far right lane of our westbound lanes in the darkened gloom of the underpass. Traffic slowed then stopped. Another police car was already up ahead at the end of the underpass.
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| Highway 66 underpass inside the Beltway photo: Claire |
At that moment a secret service agent, or possibly plain clothed policeman, had his fire arm drawn and pointed straight at me—for a mercifully brief moment—right before he zipped in front of the car in front of us, then along side both our cars as he was yelling for the man to drop, who’d by now had run behind our van, then onto the verge. A state policeman was doing the same behind us. They wrestled the man to the ground and at that point traffic started moving again. We resumed our westward journey home. We found no mention of the incident in the media, all another day in the District.
It was a fitting end, I suppose, to what I'd seen that afternoon of Washington DC after a long hiatus. Stunningly beautiful buildings but with a looming malaise at its heart, a teetering on edge of a new not so brave world.
Stay safe out there.
