OK you convinced me to spoil a little bit of the article.....

Everybody knows Robinson could have simply walked into the event and debated Kirk on the issues. The problem is Robinson knew that Kirk would absolutely annihilate him in front of the whole audience. (He'd probably seen Kirk destroy the same arguments Robinson would have made.)

So because he can't win the battle of words, Robinson decides to be a fucking coward who needs to stop the words in another way.

But the words aren't going to stop, and in fact they will start being repeated by more and more people who realize what time it is.