Hitchens Protester Speaks: Joseph Anderson

I Was the Hitchens Protester

The point has already been made that the selection of Hitchens was inappropriate to a memorial lecture honoring the spirit, philosophy, and memory of a life-long ANTI-WAR philosopher and activist Mario Savio.

Therefore, this is not a free speech issue. No one is preventing Hitchens from speaking anywhere else, and certainly, no one--not even I--prevented him from speaking at the Savio event. I, though, do have the right to protest his selection. And although Lynn Savio shared the selection of Hitchens, Mario Savio is a man of 1960's history, a champion of the anti-war movement, not the personal property of his wife.

No one is denying Hitchens' right to speak wherever else he wants--even on the UC Berkeley campus. He will have more than enough opportunity as a visiting lecturer this spring--although also quite inappropriately as an "I.F. Stone Lecturer." (Look up I.F. Stone, as both Stone and Mario must be turning over in their graves!)

As for free speech, Mario Savio championed the free speech rights of people to DISSENT against the state voice of power (and its propaganda).

Hitchens is neither anti-war--quite to the contrary, he is supporting the govt's idea of PERMANENT WAR!--nor is is he, therefore, a dissenter: he SUPPORTS the state in its global imperialist ambitions, especially over the non-European world--a goal that will create int'l resentment and hostilities that will have the entire world living--and dying--in a never-ending cycle of literally explosive violence, as in Israel.

Do you want to live in a world with a never-ending cycle of global violence: of U.S. state terrorism and 9-11 reciprocal group terrorism? A world where you can't go to the store, the cafe, the office, the pedestrian mall, on a bus, etc., without being blown up? A world where you dare not go with all your family members, or both parents together, or with all your familial brothers &/or sisters together, to any of these places--or on a plane--without losing either both your parents, or your parents losing all their kids in regular terrorist explosions?

And how many more wedding parties in the non-European world will the U.S. military bomb?--again with whole families, especially the new bride and groom--on "the happiest day of their lives"--destroyed.

Finally, to make it clear: The Annual Mario Savio Memorial Lecutre is to HONOR and CELEBRATE the spirit, philosophy, world goals, ideals and memory of MARIO SAVIO, not antithetical ones of Christopher Hitchens.