A radical leftist student at Oberlin College casually called for political assassinations to continue in the wake of the targeted killing of political activist Charlie Kirk last week, according to an online post she made.
“We need to bring back political assassinations,” said Julia Xu in a social media post, where her handle is @bringbacktheguillotine.
“I don’t feel bad and I don’t think that everyone deserves the right to free speech. Some people should be afraid to express their opinion in public.”
Xu, who grew up in Connecticut, is a second year student at Oberlin College in Ohio majoring in politics and international affairs, according to an online college blog viewed by The Post, which has since been taken down.
Xu is on the advisory board of campus group the Gender, Sexuality and Attraction Initiatives, an office that supports queer, trans and women’s programming at the school. Xu, who uses they/them pronouns, is also a member of Students for a Free Palestine.
Xu said she made the comments about Kirk, who was assassinated during a student debate at Utah Valley University in Orem last week, after being given five minutes for “hot takes” during her “Revolution, Socialism and Reform in China” class.
She said her statement was influenced by her learnings about Chairman Mao, then went on to misguidedly (and perhaps inadvertently) praise the Chinese leader’s authoratarianism.
Xu explained how she’d learned that after the 1949 Chinese revolution Mao had decided “people deserve free speech, but there should not be free speech for reactionaries and imperialists and, like capitalists … because that would reverse the progress made [by the revolution].”
Perhaps Xu’s knowledge of Mao also doesn’t extend to his unecessary starving to death of tens of millions of Chinese citizens, his paranoid and irrational political purges of anyone he deemed a threat or his reputation as one of the worst despots of all time. Mao died in 1976.
In her video, Xu noted other students in the class were shocked by her position.
“The worst thing that was said in that class was that it was a shame that Charlie Kirk died because he was such a huge figure in the right wing movement and now, who will be left to debate?” said Xu.
“Now there’s no one left to have productive conversations with…Of course, everyone saying this, they were all male students. There were four or five male students … it just shows that white men will always empathize with the people who look like them.”
Xu backtracked on her post after being contacted by The Post, saying she apologizes and is “deeply remorseful” for her statements.
“I do not actually advocate for political assassinations … I did not receive agreement from my professor or other students with the opinions I expressed in class, and it was wrong to imply this in my post.
“I do not condone political violence, and my comments were tactless.”
Xu is also a student activist who has participated in anti-Israel protests at Oberlin, according to social media.
The university also issued a statement to The Post regarding the incident.
President Carmen Twillie Ambar said: Last week, in an open letter, I wrote ‘there is no place for political violence in the America that I love.’ It threatens our sense of safety and well-being and it violates the sanctity of the nation’s civil discourse.
“I want to emphasize that the views expressed in the student’s post do not reflect those of the faculty member who teaches the class referenced. Nor does the student’s post reflect the views of Oberlin College.”
The post Oberlin student says we ‘need to bring back political assassinations’ in wake of Charlie Kirk murder appeared first on New York Post.
