Bias Alert: Conservative – Ami Horowitz is a known conservative filmmaker.
Editor’s note: This is a dated video from 2015. It is being shared to show the foundation of the early beginnings of an American social movement which has extended to trying to abolish police departments and ‘cancel’ public figures, and likely has been part of the cause of riots across the nation. Versions of this video are currently going viral on TikTok and other platforms.
Back in 2015 there was a movement on the campus of the University of California Irvine to ban the American flag from flying. It was nearly successful.
A group of students under the guise of “inclusion” determined that the flag should be banned because it made some students feel uncomfortable or left out.
Documentary filmmaker and sometimes satirist Ami Horowitz was able to interview one of the student leaders of this movement, Matthew Guevara, who in the video is portrayed as the single student leading the movement. The original video only gained 59,033 views on YouTube when it was published, but has since been cropped and re-edited by various other outlets gaining likely hundreds of thousands of more views over the ensuring 7-year period.
Watch the Full Original Video Here:
This video and the small movement at UC Irvine are part of the very beginnings of the so called “inclusive” movement and the “cancel culture” movement. A movement which seeks to force gender pronouns on society as well as deems all Caucausian-Americans as racist simply for existing and which has seen countless intellectuals lose their positions for refusing to play along with the new rules it attempts to apply. It is for this reason, and the recent virality, we felt it was necessary to provide the video here.
In the video you can hear the disgust the student leader has for the United States and the vile way he discusses our country as equal to that of the Nazi regime in 1930s-1940s Germany. He even goes so far as to say he wants to use his education to tear down the country.
Here is one version of the video going viral on TikTok:
@unbelievable_truthh America having every communities of color to be able to work and be protected! #ucirvine #usflag #bans #unbelievable ♬ original sound – Unbelievable
According to an article by Insider Higher Ed, the students trying to ban that American flag had a little bit of success getting a ban to pass through the Legislative Council of the student government in a 6 to 4 vote which barred the flag from being shown in the lobby of their student building. The resolution which passed demanded “that the student government offices should be ‘inclusive,’ that some people don’t feel included by the U.S. flag” and included phrases such as:
- “the American flag has been flown in instances of colonialism and imperialism,”
- “freedom of speech, in a space that aims to be as inclusive as possible, can be interpreted as hate speech.”
The ban was quickly overturned in a veto by the Executive Cabinet of the Student Government, quashing the on-campus version of the movement.
The concept, however, of using the ideas of ‘inclusivity’ to ban what you hate or despise, spread like wildfire across California student social media and continued to catch on across the country over the ensuing years and during President Trump’s Presidency.
Ultimately, these ideas have been used to underpin other movements such as defunding the police, ‘Canceling’ public figures, renaming public buildings, banning users on Twitter, and tearing down statutes.
Whether or not the newer versions of this movement have merit is for you to decide.
