As a left-leaning individual myself, I despise Antifa. They are honestly the best allies that the right-wing has right now, because they drive everybody who isn't a radical Socialist (or to the left of Socialism) away from the Left. They also seem to have no ability to learn, as evidence by what happened at King's College of London when they "shut down" a Sargon of Akkad event.
First, let's talk about who they shut down. Sargon is an English YouTuber and a Liberal in the English sense of the word Liberal. In the US he would basically be a moderate on our political spectrum. Before this controversy, he had a little over 755k subscribers. He is now nearing 770k due to publicity from this event. I have disagreements with Sargon - I am certainly to his Left, but he has some good criticisms of SJWs, modern Feminism, and radical groups like Antifa. He is a strong supporter of Free Speech. The event also featured Yaron Brook, a Jewish Israeli-American objectivist who heads the Ayn Rand Institute (another group I certainly have disagreements with). His Jewish background is relevant because Antifa tried to claime that Sargon, who again is moderate in his politics, was a Fascist/Part of the antisemitic Alt-Right. I don't know any Nazis for Fascists, but I don't believe they have a history of teaming up with Jews to work towards the same goals.
So what happened? As Sargon and Yaron were about to begin their talk, Antifa members pulled the fire alarm at the event and rushed the stage. Fighting broke out almost immediately, with one member of Antifa getting injured after he was punched in the head and hit several other times after he laid hands on an attendee at the event. Another Antifa member laid hands on Sargon, but was quickly pulled off. Neither speaker sustained any injuries from this. Other Antifa members had been stopped by security and thrown back. Those who did make it in were removed within one minute. Ultimately, Sargon's supporters grabbed an Antifa flag away from the violent protestors. Sargon now mounts the flag on his wall as a trophy. See the video below for proof of all of this:
These complete and utter fools at Antifa somehow interpreted this as a victory. Or at least that is what they posted publicly on Facebook. I personally suspect they know that they failed and are simply desperately trying to spin this story. The post, which can be found below, is dominated by those defending Sargon, both in the comments and in the reactions. Laugh reactions are by far the most popular, and angry reactions are close to being in third. Likes are in a distant second. So you all know what to do! Let's all go there and get angry reactions up to third (or even second, ideally) to show the world on Antifa's own page that they are a joke and just piss people off.
But that gets me to the point of this article. This was the most counter-productive thing Antifa could have done. Sargon has, so far, gained over 13k new subscribers. That is in less than two full days. I suspect, with the momentum he now has and given that he is soon to upload the speech he was able to end up giving, that he will end up getting anywhere from 20-30k new subscribers from this. Antifa's "Deplatforming" has given Sargon the largest platform of his life. On top of that, Sargon was able to give his speech to those who came at a different nearby venue, so he was not even deplatformed for that day. In addition, dozens of Conservative sites, and around 100 YouTubers, have covered this story so far. There is an even larger platform for Sargon. The story is now also beginning to make the rounds on Conservative Reddit. Antifa apparently is not smart enough to realize that all of the Conservative media is ready to respond whenever something like this happens. Antifa is so predictable that Conservatives can basically just turn on the auto-pilot to defeat them and amplify the Conservative message. So you shut down one talk (kind of), but then you get thousands, or even more, people talking about this who would never have heard of it before. How much more counter-productive could this have been?
I do want to be clear that, although Left-leaning, I strongly support Freedom of Speech myself, and disagree with what Antifa does on idealistic and ethical grounds, in addition to pragmatic considerations. I have some criticisms of him on the issues and some of his beliefs, but now, thanks to Antifa, I feel a need to solely defend him. Instead of an intelligent debate about the flaws in a few of Sargon's arguments, we now are focusing on Antifa's stupidity. Again, totally counter-productive.
All in all, I would like to congratulate Sargon on his win, and further disavow the idiotic, counter-productive, immature, and generally despicable movement known as Antifa.