THE University of Berkeley, California, cancelled a speech by the far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos on Wednesday night, after furious protests from students.
Riot police used tear gas in a bid to disperse some the hundreds who had taken to the campus to protest.
Yiannopoulos, who was there to publicise his new college grant for white males, said it showed the left were scared of “free speech”.
Donald Trump then waded into the fracas taking to Twitter and threatening to remove Berkeley’s federal funds, as the university “does not allow free speech”.
University spokesman Dan Moulof said the protest had been hijacked by a small number of masked agitators.
“What’s really unfortunate tonight is that the violent actions of a very few interfered with the desires of the many to participate in legal and lawful protest,” Moulof said.
Yiannopoulos was invited by the Berkeley College Republicans, leading to more than 100 lecturers and academics calling on university Chancellor Nicholas Dirks to cancel.
WHO IS MILO?
Born in Greece, raised in Kent, Milo was, at first, a technology journalist and columnist for the Catholic Herald. One of his first media appearances was on Channel 4’s 10 O’clock Show. There the slightly nervous, quiet writer debated gay marriage with Boy George. He was, as both a Catholic and a gay man, against it.
It’s remarkable how much Milo has changed between then and now, and like so much of the alt-right, he was radicalised by the Gamergate scandal, that argument supposedly about video game journalism, but more about alienation, women, and people of colour.
That seemed to push him further towards his current position as a professional troll and spokesman for the broad alt-right.
Last year he mercilessly bullied Lesley Jones, a black actor who had appeared in the re-booted Ghostbusters film. He wrote a review criticising Jones’s “flat-as-a-pancake black stylings” and describing her as “a black character worthy of a minstrel show”. Some of his 380,000 followers then started attacking Jones on Twitter with Yiannopoulos cheering them on.
This week he launched a college grant programme for “white men who wish to pursue their post-secondary education on equal footing with their female, queer and ethnic minority classmates.”
He’s just not a very nice person.
WHY IS TRUMP INVOLVED?
The connection between Yiannopoulos and Trump is provided by Steve Bannon.
Trump’s senior adviser used to be the boss at Breitbart News Network, the right-wing media empire who employ Yiannopoulos. He was a keen supporter of Trump during the election campaign, creepily referring to the billionaire as “Daddy”.
WHAT NEXT?
Yiannopoulos thrives on the attention, and now, with Trump acknowledging him, he’s likely about to move on to a much bigger stage.
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