The riots last night at UC Berkeley, while shocking, are just the logical escalation of Milo Yiannopoulos’ “Dangerous Faggot Tour.” The tour is by design a cycle, where Milo says outrageous things, pisses off liberals, they try to censor him, then he becomes a champion of free speech by means of being a jackass.
At Berkeley, the censorship step grew into acts of violence. Hundreds came out to protest Milo, many with the express purpose of stopping him from speaking in front of a medium-sized crowd of college Republicans and other young right-leaning people. Without the protests or the violence or the large fire burning in the middle of Berkeley, the talk would be covered by no media outlet save for Breitbart Tech, where despite being the head editor, Milo’s byline seldom appears.
That’s what liberals, time and time again, fail to understand. Their over-the-top reaction to Milo only makes him stronger. Every event they cancel only makes him more and more of a martyr to the right wing. His book is coming out in March and the anarchist who pepper-sprayed the young woman in the Make Bitcoin Great Again hat during the Berkeley rioting only helped Milo sell more copies. Every time the provocateur provokes, his reach and influence only expand.
And there’s proof. On Amazon pre-orders for his book Dangerous shot up dramatically in the charts. Those protests really taught him a lesson…
If you know anything about Milo, you’d know that he’d soon get bored and give up if the tour were uneventful and peaceful. If he were simply traveling from state to state, giving his stump speech in front of a bunch of dorks in MAGA hats in fluorescent lit, dingy auditoriums, he would not continue. You can defeat Milo by not giving him any attention.
The oddest part about the whole debate is that no one really gives a shit what he has to say. Those on the left call him a Nazi and a white supremacist—though they have only vague notions of who he is and what he stands for. Most of the people protesting have probably never read one of his articles or listened to a speech, but are simply swept up by the idea that it is intolerable for him to be allowed to speak at all.
Most of those on the right, meanwhile, simply defend Milo for his right to have a platform. He’s a useful canary in the coal mine for liberal campuses’ intolerance of conservative ideas.
But the truth is, Milo talks are boring. The purpose of the tour is paradoxically the least interesting part. I’ve seen a few Milo speeches online and am not impressed.
They’re just a string of poorly sourced claims meant to offend, intermixed with gratuitous mentions of how much he loves black cock to show his audience that he’s not their grandfather’s conservative—he’s hip and edgy. And he just can’t help taking some needlessly cruel digs at lesbians every chance he gets.
He hasn’t had new ideas in years or great journalistic scoops since Gamergate. All his talks hit on the same stale topics of political correctness, Islam and feminism without finding particularly fresh angles. Milo’s ideas aren’t dangerous, they’re tedious.
He does have some entertainment value. He’s charming and provocative and at times clever when it comes to public stunts. But the university talks are probably the weakest element of his schtick.
The liberal backlash is literally what is fueling his careering.
But it is important to note that Milo does not advocate violence. Many defend the protesters, some of whom certainly were violent, by claiming they are fighting against “Nazis who advocate genocide.” But what they are actually fighting are references to black penises and unfunny shock humor.
I’ll defend Milo’s right to go around making his speeches, just as I defend my right to call them bland and uninspiring.
So carry on leftists and anti-fascists, giving attention to someone who feeds off it. But every time you put him in the headlines by throwing tantrums at his rallies, just know you are growing both his bank account and his fanbase.