To Thwart Fascism, Leftist Students Start Self-Defense 'Fight Club,' Which Actually Sounds Awesome
Republican students: stop whining.
Did conservative students accidentally convince their liberal counterparts to take the right to self-defense seriously? To guard against Trump-inspired hate crimes, a socialist student club at the University of Central Florida has started a "Leftist Fight Club"—an ode to the well-known Chuck Palahniuk book and fim—to practice hand-to-hand combat and self-defense.
This ought to be applauded.
"In response to the record number of hate crimes against Latinxs, Immigrants, Muslims, Women, the LGBTQIA+ community, Jews, African Americans and other minorities since the rise of Donald Trump and other Alt-Right Neo-Nazis, Knights for Socialism has decided to host a series of self-defense clinics for anyone that wants to learn how to BASH THE FASH," the event's Facebook page reads. "For our first seminar, a local amateur boxer will teach us the basics of hand to hand combat. Following his instruction, we will all have the opportunity to face off against one another and practice what we've learned."
Organizers stress that women are especially welcome to attend, which is open to everyone except Republicans. "Don't wait until it's too late to learn how to defend yourself!"
In response, some students—possibly Republicans—notified the administration that the existence of the club was making them feeling unsafe. UCF is looking into the matter, which is completely unnecessary. Campus Reform reports:
Scott Benton, a UCF College Republican, told Campus Reform that he considers the impulse toward violence to be a natural consequence of the intellectual indefensibility of leftists beliefs, saying, "If you can't hang with someone on a debate stage, then you resort to other means to try and justify your cause."
Leftist groups that practice violence—like the ones that shut down Milo Yiannopoulos at UC-Berkeley and attacked Gavin McInnes at New York University—deserve criticism. But Leftist Flight Club doesn't purport to start any fights, as far as I can tell. Instead, it's teaching people self-defense.
Conservatives ought to be happy that liberal students are taking self-defense seriously, since it's a practical justification for campus concealed-carry—a cause celebre of Republican student groups.
Indeed, it's blatantly hypocritical for right-leaning students to complain about needing a safe space when liberals suddenly show an interest in self-defense. Instead of whining about not being included in Leftist Fight Club, conservatives should challenge liberals to fully commit to the principle of self-defense and embrace the Second Amendment.
On a semi-related note, the use of "snowflake" as a term of derision synonymous with fragile and delicate actually originated with Fight Club. As the popular line from the book/film goes: "You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
