Submission from campus antifascists, including members of the Autonomous Student Network, Solidarity 6.04, and United Students Against Sweatshops
UT students call on Austin to protest Katie Hopkins
British white nationalist encouraged Europe to meet migrants with “gunships”
On Tuesday November 13, UT students and greater Austin residents will gather outside UT’s Patton Hall to protest white nationalist Katie Hopkins’ scheduled speech. The UT chapter of Turning Point USA is hosting Hopkins, who is known for her extreme anti-migrant and Islamophobic rhetoric. Hopkins has advocated for the use of “gunships” against refugees entering Europe and a “final solution” for Muslims. In 2017, she collaborated with Defend Europe, a white supremacist organization with ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
Antifascist UT students mark the actions of Turning Point USA’s new chapter with concern. As Texans prepare to welcome the Central American migrant caravan, Hopkins brings racist sentiments that have incited violence against Muslims and migrants in her home country of the UK.
White supremacy is not an ideological position to be debated, it is a political force to be dismantled. While Turning Point masks their complicity in white nationalism under the guise of free speech, we know that these speakers do not come for good faith “dialogue” or honest “debate,” but to propagandize and normalize their rhetoric and the violence it entails. The ties between Hopkins’s rhetoric and spikes in hate crimes are not accidental—they are evidence of the direct link between white nationalist speech and the political project of white supremacy, which entails violence and domination.
Our response to fascism is not to appeal to institutions like the State, Police, or the University—which themselves are built upon a foundation of white supremacy and regularly collaborate with fascist movements—but to organize community responses. We have put out a call for a mass mobilization to oppose Eurofash Katie Hopkins and Turning Point USA in order to drown out, shut down, and raise the costs associated with white nationalist activities. We believe in mobilizing our communities to defend ourselves against rising fascism—whether it manifests in white nationalist speakers, or the everyday white supremacy at the core of our society.
¡No pasarán!
#TexasFightBack
The initial call to action, which lays out in greater detail the white nationalist views of Katie Hopkins:
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