A campus conservative was assaulted by a student at the University of California, Berkeley, on Tuesday for protesting hate crime hoaxes.
According to video taken of the incident, the student threatened to shoot Hayden Williams, who was tabling with Berkeley Turning Point USA, before knocking his phone out of his hand and punching him in the face.
The incident occurred during the course of an argument over Berkeley Turning Point USA’s posters, which referenced growing reports that “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett engineered a fake hate crime attack against himself.
Throughout the day, six to seven students harassed the campus conservative and the Turning Point members he was tabling with.
Williams had designed two signs, one reading, “This is MAGA Country,” and the other, “Hate Crime Hoaxes Hurt Real Victims,” the former in reference to the likely false claim Smollett made to the press that his assailants were supporters of President Trump.
“I made the signs because I read about the Jussie Smollett debacle, and I felt that he was belittling real victims of actual hate in order to slander Trump supporters,” Williams, a resident of Louisville, Kentucky, told me.
Two students got in a heated argument with Williams over the signs. When the two students began getting physical with conservative students at the table, one of the club members and the victim both took out their phones and began filming the confrontation.
“I’m just going to video it for my own safety, because you seem really erratic,” Williams told one of the students.
“You are f—ing encouraging violence,” one of the students yelled before a second student knocked the victim’s phone out of his hand and onto the ground. As he went to pick up his phone, the second student began pushing him, repeatedly calling him a “motherf—er” and at one point said, “You want to hit me? I’ll shoot your ass, bitch.”
The second student subsequently called the victim a “racist inbred little bitch” and punched him in his left eye.
Williams believes the term “inbred” was a slur against him, a resident of Kentucky.
The incident took place on the university’s historic Sproul Plaza, the epicenter of the 1960s Free Speech Movement. In more recent years, the university has again become a lightning rod for controversy concerning speakers invited by conservative groups on campus, including the Berkeley College Republicans.
Williams thinks the unprovoked attack and Smollett’s likely hoax are not just a sign that the Free Speech Movement has long since died at the university but that it is also a clear instance of bigotry and intolerance against conservatives.
“I condemn all forms of violence, but hate crime hoaxes need to come with social costs, because they will always be used to slander conservatives. Liberals are not committed to truth or consistency, so it is by no means a two-way street,” Williams said.
More than a dozen hate crime hoaxes have been exposed since the beginning of Trump’s presidency.
Williams, who was left with a blackened eye, spitting blood, and temporarily unable to swallow, filed a police report after the incident and is awaiting a response from the campus police department. The two offending students have not yet been identified. The victim, who did not want to be identified, could not be reached for comment.
Ultimately, Williams said he wasn’t surprised by the incident at all.
“No conservative on this campus was surprised that a welcome guest would be met with violence for sharing a message that’s unifying, and even bipartisan,” he said. “Conservatives are seen as political enemies and are treated as such; there is no ‘good faith’ discourse in the public square here.”
Correction: This piece previously relied on faulty information given to the author that a different person, not Hayden Williams, was the source of the quotes, photos, and signs. The other person was not involved in the incident.
Troy Worden is a recent graduate in English and philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was president of the Berkeley College Republicans in 2017.
