Obama wasn’t divisive. He went out of his way to be a uniter, probably to a fault, and was LAMBASTED by the right wing press. They’re still lying about his response to the Dallas shooting to this day. The truth is that a lot of white people were deeply uncomfortable with having a black president. Now here we are, with a birther conspiracy theorist as our president. The Republican Party’s leaders had so many chance to stop this, but they didn’t and now they’ve lost control of the right wing press and a major portion of their base. Whoops!

Also, to be clear, I’m not saying free speech itself elevates an ideology, I’m saying that white supremacists try to make their arguments *about* free speech because their policy arguments are so loathsome and unpopular. It’s a strategy they’ve used and continue to use to try to normalize their views and go more mainstream.

I also never wrote about what the government’s role is here; the facts are that activists constantly play around the boundaries of what is and isn’t acceptable speech to provoke controversy. For instance, in Berkeley, protesters were convinced that the speaker was going to out undocumented immigrants and encourage his audience to harass them. So in a world of doxxing, it’s just not as clear as I think most of us would like it to be. We can condemn violence and government suppression of free speech all we want…that’s just not the lived reality of activism right now.

I hope that makes my case a little more clear and little less “intellectually dishonest” for you. :)