Yesterday, I met up with John Medlar-- one of the organizers of the "Boston Free Speech Rally." He is a young college film student who self-identifies as a libertarian, and a "Shitlord."
After Medlar double-booked us, we sat watching and began livestreaming (with permission from Al Jazeera) to build an audience. The producers ran him through the standard staging, asked the standard questions, then sent him walking down a long sidewalk with their anchor for that TV news look.
When Medlar wrapped up, some of our audience said John looked dehydrated-- so I offered to buy him a lunch. He declined, but took a bottle of water. We sat down in the shade of a tree on Boston Common, and I told him right off the bat that we would not take the MSM approach-- and to just feel relaxed. There would be no time constraints or limits on topics.
Some of the first words out of his mouth were that the rally's founder was a child-- "Steve," he says, “a minor.”
We went on to talk about his YouTube channel, and his Terminator meme, in which Trump was superimposed on Arnold's head and blows the crap out of everyone with a machine gun. Then he explained that what he does developed out of 4Chan, and the group sprung up around "shit-posters." He is a self-described "Shit Lord." This means he, “posts shit,” or in his words, "talks shit on the internet."
Medlar told me that, "many Pepes gave their lives in the meme wars of 2016 and 2017," and "I'm really into the Kekestany thing." He described the previous event as, "4Chan in real life."
When I asked him about the racism on 4Chan, he acknowledge that was true. He said that many of the people there were just "shit-posters, just trying to get a reaction-- having been liberated to share their inner deeper thoughts."
"Why take it from the internet and make it real life?" I asked.
He said, "when you've got the ADL targeting Pepe-- powerful institutions targeting these things, where will they stop?"
"Free speech is not just a thing of the constitution, its a cultural principle, on of the things that keep our society functioning despite how different we are."
He was open to liberal activists coming to speak, but had not offered the invitation of anyone of note until that morning.
I asked if he would give a mic to BLM if they showed up. He replied, "I would consider it. The thing is, there also has to be an element of trust there."
I said, "why don't you just let them speak freely?"
“With free speech comes the freedom of association"-- a fancy way of saying they can chose who speaks at their event. He went on to say, "this is not a get up and say anything you want event."
On the original invite list was Augustus Invictus, a Holocaust denier, Gavin McInnes, who created the video, "Ten Things I Hate About the Jews," and Kyle Based Stickman who is known for attacking protesters at a Berkeley event. Stickman is still speaking.
Medlar also said he considered Richard Spencer, but concluded that he was a neo nazi. Additionally, he saw no problem with the way Donald Trump has conducted himself regarding the reaction to Charlottesville.
On a slightly positive note, Medlar did offer that he was okay with inter-racial dating-- but it was hard to tell where he was coming from with all the other inconsistencies.
The original interview, including the intro with Al Jazeera is two and a half hours long, and can be found on my Facebook,
Part 1
Luckily, a 14 minute condensed version is on
YouTube.
I hope that tomorrow's event is peaceful.