The neo-Maoist mobbing of Riley Gaines: More people need to speak out against the unhinged misogyny of transgenderism.

I also have a second concern. And that is for the young people who are attacking women like Gaines. For years, I have been watching left-wing twentysomethings, who claim to be protecting the little guy, scream, destroy property and attack anyone who even slightly disagrees with them. These are not so much political activists as wannabe tyrants. Also last week, for example, a mob at the State University of New York at Albany attacked an event hosting a conservative speaker, hurling obscenities at him and destroying a Bible in the process. The speaker was there to discuss free speech on campus.

Yes, these young people are the aggressors, and they should face consequences for whatever violence they commit. And yes, their authoritarianism is unhinged and terrifying. But they are also, in part, products of the failures of older generations, including my own. Adults have abdicated their responsibility for socialising these young people in sane, commonsense ways. Instead, these young people’s incivility, threatening behaviour and neo-Maoist dogmatism has been tacitly encouraged or blithely ignored. Indeed, an administrator at San Francisco State told students she was ‘proud’ of those who ‘participated peacefully in Thursday’s event’ – that is, who participated in the mobbing of Gaines. ‘It took tremendous bravery to stand in a challenging space’, she wrote in an email.

After Thursday’s attack, Gaines told the Daily Mail: ‘I have never once said anything remotely threatening, remotely hateful towards a trans-identifying individual or anyone in the LGBT community. I have always been on the receiving end of that hate.’

She makes an important point. Anyone can see where the real ‘hatred’ is coming from here. To pretend otherwise at this stage is to be wilfully blind.

Approved ~ FS