Edit: I feel like it is worth mentioning that my friends and I were told that the money from our $15 student tickets went directly to Cal Performances and not Ann Coulter.

As noble as the fight for truth, equality, and justice is, to refuse to have our beliefs tested, questioned, and challenged is an affront to these values we are fighting for. In the context of the recent Ann Coulter event, the truth we are fighting for is one that we, as immigrants, ideally ought not be fighting for: our existence and place in this country. I am aware of this. My friends and I had hoped to attend this event not in support of Coulter, but because we wanted to(and were able to) be an active part of the dialogue that would ensue, and to see and understand for ourselves why Coulter and her supporters believe in what they do.

It is reported that the protestors were in the thousands(2000 being one of the higher estimates). Some people were simply surrounding Wheeler with protest signs, and were chanting and voicing disapproval of Coulter. There was a sense of camaraderie and solidarity, and at first was a beautiful display of what peaceful protesting looks like. Around 8 p.m., when the doors opened to the event, a significant amount of protestors had created a blockade around the event entrance. My friends and I were physically blocked, shoved, and pushed out from entering. In a great bout of irony, a group of white protestors yelled at us — second-generation Indian immigrants — and were screaming at us to “go home” as we were Nazis, Fascist/Fascist-enablers, and “Uncle Toms”. We tried to explain that we did not at all agree with Coulter, and we simply wanted to be a part of the discourse — to ask questions and engage with the ideas presented. I mentioned that while I care so much about immigration-rights work, preventing students from entering does little to mitigate right-wing extremism and does even more to exacerbate it — an echo chamber of Ann Coulter and right-wingers without any adversarial voices seems to be cultivating an environment exactly against what these folks would want. I was promptly yelled at for being a fascist-enabler, and, once again, told to go home. The student next to me, who was also trying to enter, mentioned that the environment reminded him of the time he had been tear-gassed in Iraq.

I was only able to enter due to another friend I ran into who had been observing the protests for a while. She mentioned that individuals were entering from the North side of Wheeler hall. After we had taken her advice and walked off to find the “easy entrance”, she was approached twice and asked if the people she had just talked to- my friend and I, now labeled Berkeley’s resident fascists- were trying to see Ann Coulter speak. She had seen another individual with a ticket harassed and followed by three protestors for trying to enter the auditorium. My friend lied and said that we were going to the North entrance to join the protest.

The environment inside the auditorium was very different. I felt uncomfortable in a room with a considerable amount of “MAGA” hats. I was certainly distraught at the things that were said, but never did I feel as unsafe as when entering and exiting the event. Coulter made her usual arguments: that the U.S. should have a complete moratorium on all “third-world” immigration. She had her typical crude and xenophobic “non-pc” jokes sprinkled in, for which one section of the audience would consistently applaud. However, the students also did have an opportunity to engage during the question and answer period. One student read out “The New Colossus” poem on the Statue of Liberty and asked Coulter what she thought of it. Another asked a question on the trade war with China. A Native-American graduate student pointed out one of her statements in “Adios, America” where Coulter writes that if it weren’t for colonialists “Native Americans would still be chasing the rear end of the buffalo.” A Muslim-American student called Coulter out on her hypocrisy. An elderly immigrant man, who had immigrated to the US when he was fourteen, mentioned he wanted to see what the commotion was about. He teared up when talking about his experience entering the event. He was surprised and completely distraught as to how he could have been called a Nazi.

Leaving the event, even in a group, was difficult. We saw lines of protestors (seemed like the people were in the hundreds, definitely a significant amount compared to the 50 or so people who were leaving). As my friend and I left, we had cameras shoved in our faces, were spit on, and were called disgusting. There was an older man behind us who had gotten into a physical altercation. He seemed to have been punched and shoved pretty hard. Someone threw a smoke-bomb, so we ran off to the sides.

In reflection of attending this event, I am reminded of my favorite John Stuart Mills quote:

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

As troubled as I am by the nativist sentiments perpetuated by Ann Coulter and the Trump administration, I cannot disregard that there is some educational value to hearing from a woman who single-handedly constructed the administration’s stance on immigration. There is something both empowering and educational in being able to listen and assert my presence, as an immigrant, in a space where the speaker and her supporters believed I had no right to be in. I understand how my attendance can be seen as complicit to her “hate speech”; I viewed my mere existence in that room as a powerful form of resistance.

Furthermore, how can I, in complete faith, possibly believe in something with full conviction if I am never forced to confront the ideals I spend every fiber of my being defending? If my most deeply held beliefs are never threatened? The visceral reaction I felt when I heard her say that my people should not be in the country could not have been replicated from a youtube video. I left the event with a greater certainty that the causes I wholeheartedly believe in — the rights of immigrants, refugees, and undocumented people- are the righteous causes and will stand the test of time.

My support of Ann Coulter’s right to speak on the UC Berkeley campus and my belief in immigrant rights are not mutually exclusive(and quite honestly I’m surprised at the amount of times I’ve had to clarify or defend myself to my peers). The United States is imperfect, but it is a democracy. And democracy is disorderly and chaotic. It means having the freedom to speak, the freedom to assemble peacefully, the freedom to hear others speak, and in this great country, this freedom is extended to all. Hate speech- an undefined, nebulous, and subjective label — however disgusting and unsettling, is free speech. The Supreme Court (and the ACLU, along with many civil rights organizations) has generally acknowledged this.

It is also important to remember that freedom of speech is not only protection from the government, but is an essential tenet of democratic culture. This freedom is not a given, and it’s one that we must fight for. I find this quote from Justice Kennedy to be particularly relevant: “A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all…our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society.” Hateful speech must be combated with more speech; protest, assemble, and fight with voices and ideas- not by deplatforming speakers and obstructing the right of students who want to and are able to be a part of this dialogue. I do understand that I am privileged in being able to enter such a space, and I fully hope that everyone who needed support were able to find their safe spaces. But, please, do not denounce or invalidate the power that open dialogue and discourse have(one such example here). If we cannot agree upon the basic foundations of a democratic civil society- that speech has power and people are rational beings capable of change- then I have little hope for the future. If we cannot agree on these basic principles, the only remaining option for change is violence. Historically, one can find moments of successful violent resistance. Most notably slavery, for one, would not have been abolished if not for the civil war. However, history also shows that sustainable change, like any successful revolution, begins and ends with the change of the hearts and minds of the people. We ultimately cannot defeat ideas with arms; we can only defeat ideas with ideas.

More importantly, even if one is in no place or feels uncomfortable engaging with certain forms of speech, it makes little sense to stop other students from doing so. Even if one makes the argument that Coulter and her most ardent supporters are unphased by a few questions from college students, what is the alternative? A significant portion of the room- dare I say at least twenty to thirty percent - seemed to be there not out of blinding support for Ann Coulter, but out of curiosity or resistance. For the sake of the audience members who were there without a well-developed idea about what immigration policy ought to be, would it seriously have been better if the only opinions present were those of Ann Coulter and her followers?

Equally worrying as the “free speech paradox” is the premise in which a lot of these protestors were operating on: that the United States is a fascist state, or that the current administration is particularly fascist, or that Ann Coulter is a fascist, or the belief that x person who said x offensive/racist/xenophobic statement is responsible for a totalitarian United States of America. I am not completely sure what or who were fascists because the terms “fascist” and “Nazi” were indiscriminately used. Whatever is or is not actually fascist, to denounce all offensive speech or persons as “fascist” or “Nazi” without understanding the power behind such words is almost as dangerous as not denouncing fascism at all.

Certainly, we must be vigilant against any abrogation of our constitution, democracy, and rights; fascism and any threat to the erosion of all our freedoms, including those for our fellow people at the border, should not be taken lightly. However, being a vigilant protector of democracy and fundamental rights is contingent to being a vigilant protector of truth. To claim that fascism is prevalent in Berkeley, and that fascism is furthered by the Berkeley College Republicans (which has a membership of probably less than 2% of UC Berkeley’s population) and a speaker who was speaking on campus to a closed group for at most two hours, is a fear-mongering tactic and blatantly erroneous. Furthermore, to claim that the plight of the protestors was similar to the plight of those protesting in Hong Kong(which was mentioned a significant amount of times in a protesting circle that had formed) is extremely fallacious. The protestors in Hong Kong are protesting against the authoritarian CCP government, where Xi Jingping has a life term, and where what we would consider fundamental freedoms are greatly limited.

I am curious as to what makes the Trump Administration exceptionally authoritarian or fascist. President Obama deported a record number of undocumented people. There were extreme due process violations against people of color during the Bush administration. And, of course, how can we forget the human rights violations during Cold War and the War on Drugs? I do not wish to dismiss legitimate concerns about the Trump administration’s un-democratic and worrying behaviors. But, before one makes the claim that “X is fascist”, it must be more than a catchphrase to seem woke™. If people are sincerely convinced that the United States is a fascist state, and on par with the authoritarian government of China, then we are confronted with a very dangerous slippery-slope and it becomes very easy to justify violence. If fascism actually comes about, the gradual eroding of the weight of what fascism actually is will contribute to our detriment.

Even if there are moral or philosophical disagreements to the aforementioned argument, one cannot disregard the impracticality of allowing such wide-scale “dysfunctional” protests. Ann Coulter has only gained in popularity among her right-wing fans and is being lauded by Breitbart and similar websites as a martyr for free speech. While in the short term blocking entrances might have discouraged her actual, neo-nazi supporters from entering, in the long term it only brings extreme right-wingers more “victim” points.

To students who feel unsafe, threatened, and marginalized: I hope you were able to find your safe space and the support you needed during this time. It is not easy to be confronted with such vitriol. To the Berkeley community who showed up to peacefully and magnanimously stand in solidarity with our peers- thank you.

Warmly, and as always, Go Bears.