WATCH: Mark Meckler at UC Berkeley

Grassroots leader and Convention of States President Mark Meckler recently spoke at the University of California, Berkeley, widely recognized as one of the most liberal schools in America. He later blasted the pervasive college campus culture in America, which he compared to an “aggressive cancer,” for devolving into a hotbed of vicious anti-Semitism, terrorism, and anti-Israel protests.

“What I want to do,” he said, “is… see if I can have legitimate, reasonable conversations with the students at UC Berkeley. And I’m happy to tell you—and, hopefully, I give you a little hope in telling you this—that you can, and I did.”

Despite trying to form meaningful connections with the student body, however, Mark said he “unabashedly” identified as a “radically pro-life,” “Bible-thumping… gun-toting” “right-winger.”

“The kids in the audience [didn’t] like that very much,” he noted.

According to one poll, a mere three percent of Berkely students identify as politically conservative. As The Washington Post reported, “Being a conservative student on the liberal public school campus in the Bay Area has long been a challenge…. Classmates spit on you and make obscene gestures. Your signs get ripped up. The label ‘fascist’ follows wherever you go.”

Nevertheless, Mark explained it is possible to disagree vehemently with our political opponents without “hating each other.” Moreover, he described his positive experience interacting with students who disagreed with him on the Berkeley campus.

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“We had a bunch of liberal students come up and say, ‘Thank you for coming,’” he recounted on Sunday's BattleCry. “‘We never hear anything like this. I’ve never heard anything like this in my entire life…. I don’t agree with a lot of what you said, but it was really interesting, and it was great to hear someone respectfully talk about this stuff.’”

“I tell you this,” he added, “to tell you that even [in] the darkest place in the United States of America—one of the darkest places—right there at UC Berkeley, where we think it’s nothing but crazy leftists, that the kids are smart. A lot of them are ignorant—they’ve been taught one thing, one side, one perspective their entire lives…. But they’re smart enough to know when they hear something logical. It makes them think…. I opened a dialogue in a way that allowed them to think about things differently than how they thought about things before, and that should give you hope.”

In stark contrast, he condemned many of the pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas protestors on college campuses, arguing that they rightfully deserved to be labeled “terrorists” for refusing to engage in respectful conversations with opponents and instead relying on tactics of intimidation and bullying.

“I want to be really precise and really accurate in my use of language,” he said. “I’m not using the word ‘terrorist’ on college campuses to be inflammatory. It is inflammatory, by its very nature, to call somebody a terrorist. But they are terrorists because what they are doing is… intentionally using their ‘protests’ to terrorize other students, to block them from coming on campus, to threaten their lives, literally, to threaten Jews on campus.”  

Additionally, he pointed out that the same line of attack leveled against the Jews and Israel is also being wielded against white Americans and the United States more broadly.

“This is an attack on the West,” he warned.    

Ultimately, these two contrasting approaches to political debate and disagreement highlight a crucial American crossroads—the choice between respectful civil discourse, exemplified by men like Mark Meckler, and a violent system that discourages political debate, promulgated by pro-Hamas extremists.

To learn more about Mark’s thoughts on these important cultural topics, watch the entire episode the BattleCry below!