The National Conservatism Conference is currently taking place at Emmanuel Centre
Westminster in London, UK. On 15 May, Day 1 of the conference, multiple incidents occurred that made headlines in all major British news outlets.
The keynote speech by the former business secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg was interrupted by a stage invader from the radical environmental group Extinction Rebellion.
The intrusive man, looking surprisingly old with grey hair for a left-wing radical, actually got a hold of the microphone and got to share some of his odd message, saying ‘Ladies and gentlemen, you’re very nice people and I’m sure you are fantastic. I’d like to draw your attention to a few characteristics of fascism…’. He was then cut off and escorted out by security.
And the antics by XR, as the group likes to refer to themselves, did not end there for the day. Home Secretary Suella Braverman also did not get to deliver her speech uninterrupted. An activist from the same organisation, disguised as a convention delegate, got up and shouted over the speaker. After he got booted, another one of the self-righteous crew did the same, to which Ms Braverman quipped: ‘Anyone else?’.
Extinction Rebellion UK claimed responsibility for all of these incidents on their verified Twitter account.
CPAC Hungary 2023
While the National Conservatism Conference is ongoing in the UK, the second annual CPAC Hungary has just wrapped up in Budapest. While, thankfully, it went down without any interruption, there are still some similarities in how the left framed their commentary about the event.
Former Free Democrat (SZDSZ) MP Gábor Horn went on the opposition-aligned Klubrádió to denounce CPAC Hungary as a gathering of ‘strongly nationalist, bigoted, xenophobic far-right people, failed politicians’. He added: ‘[PM] Orbán has written himself off in the circles of all of his allies, even allies in Central-East Europe, so that’s all that he is left with, Eastern dictators.’
While he managed to refrain from using the word ‘fascism’, the intention is the same as that of the radical left-wing protesters disrupting the National Conservatism Conference in the UK: trying to frame conservative leaders as fringe extremists, who are against democratic values.
It was not only an activist stage invader that called the British conservative event fascist. The farl-left online publication Bella Caledonia ran an article in agreement with the stage invader’s characterization of the conference. The piece is a compilation of ten moments from the event that, in the author’s view, confirms that the speakers there have fascistic tendencies. The author starts by taking umbrage with Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony calling Britain a ‘shining beacon of the world’, as though that alone was somehow a statement connected to fascism…
The Recent History of Left-Wing Radicalism in the West
Getting an event run by conservatives shut down by left-wing protestors, even if they did not manage to succeed in doing this in this case in the UK, has not been a rarity recently. Here are some of the most egregious examples.
In February 2016, conservative commentator and Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro was scheduled to speak at a Los Angeles college. Shapiro was initially banned from speaking on campus for his conservative views, but that decision was reversed by the university president on freedom of speech principles.
However, protestors made sure Shapiro did not get to exercise his constitutional right after all. They gathered outside the venue, assaulting eventgoers, including a disabled man. The event eventually had to be shut down as protestors barricaded the doors with their bodies, so no audience members could get either in or out.
In April 2017, the Oath Keepers, a right-wing group supporting then-President Donald Trump, held a free speech rally in Berkeley, California, precisely to stand up against the trend of activists shutting down conservative speeches. It again resulted in violence by the left. Most notably,
a tenured professor at Diablo Valley College named Eric Clanton hit an attendee (who was actually attempting to prevent a fight) over the head with a bike lock.
He ended up being sentenced to three years of probation.
Environmentalists have built up a reputation for their outlandish, disturbing ways of protesting in recent years as well. The aforementioned Extinction Rebellion is at the forefront of these stunts, which include throwing various substances on artistic masterpieces in museums (such as Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers), and blocking traffic on busy roads. Thankfully, the vast majority of the Hungarian youth does not approve of such actions here, as a recent MCC poll found.
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