Conservative Activist Assaulted with Drinks at Ohio University Speaks Out

Conservative activist Joel Patrick — who had drinks thrown into the window of his truck by a mob of students at Ohio University last week — told Breitbart News true proponents of free speech are those who are willing to protect speech they don’t like.

Patrick spoke to Breitbart News at the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on Thursday.

“We actually just showed up to the campus to talk about President’s Day, and within minutes of us being there, they started screaming and throwing things and chanting,” said Patrick of his experience on campus at Ohio University last week.

Patrick added that the students had thrown Spite and beer into his truck window while they were leaving.

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#Democrats embrace the mob mentality at an early age. pic.twitter.com/ZDJbpMugOY

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) February 18, 2020

“I guess that was their way of arguing with our points,” said Patrick. “They were banging on the side of the truck. They threw ice.”

“And it was just kind of funny, because they were calling us fascists,” he added, “but all of the behaviors that would have been equivalent to fascism were on their side. They were the ones shouting down their opponents, they were the ones using physical violence to meet a political end.”

Patrick continued:

If those kids were really proponents of free speech, and really understood the constitution, they’d understand that free speech means free speech for speech you don’t like. So, you don’t get to use violence against someone for speech, those are very communistic and socialistic ideas — to suppress your political opponent by use of violence.

The other thing is, there was no logical reason why that behavior should have escalated to that point. A logical person would have said, “I disagree with them, I will debate you. I will debate you calmly, I will not scream at you, I will not throw things at you, I will not cause damage to property.”

“Because that’s the behavior of an animal, not an intelligent human being who knows how to have a conversation,” he added.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.