Dozens of destinations into Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Dangerous Faggot Tour,” livid feminist protesters have learned how to make the most of what little time they get with the notorious provocateur. The dozens of protesters—including at least two professors—stood outside spitting at Yiannopoulos as he entered the Broad Art Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Yiannopoulos, accompanied by his usual Twitter entourage (including @bakedalaska), waved at the protesters. Certainty getting threatened with violence at DePaul last week must have desensitized Yiannopoulos from being too shocked by the protesters’ signs and spit.
When I spoke to the protesters before the event, they seemed divided as to what exactly they were trying to accomplish.
Freshman Liam Murphy, a political science major at UCLA, said that although he was opposed to Yiannopoulos’s ideas on the grounds of his own feminist beliefs, open discourse and exchange of ideas was the solution to his disagreements. “The conservatives on this campus, they have a right to express their opinions, too,” Murphy said. “I disagree with almost everything the guy has to say, but I think it’s incumbent to myself as a student to hear what he has to say and consider his point of view before I form my opinions and judgments of him.”
By contrast, Professors Rebeca Mendez and Jennifer Bolande, both from the art department, had no intention of seeing the speech. When asked whether they had read Yiannopoulos’s writing or listened to any of his other talks, Mendez and Bolande said no.
“I don’t even know what time [the speech] is. We’re teaching, we have finals, we have responsibilities,” Mendez told Heat Street. “It’s simply that even when you have the provocative idea of ‘feminism is cancer,’ you’re already provoking a lot, so you’re kind of asking someone to respond.”
Other student protesters expressed outright fury, with UCLA art student Henry Anchor telling Heat Street, “Milo is a Nazi. This is how Nazis exist.” Anchor also alleged that the head of Bruin Republicans was “going to masturbate to this tape of us.”
Although the event, organized by Bruin Republicans at UCLA, was scheduled to begin at 7 p.m., protesters blockaded the doors to the 400-plus-person lecture hall. During an hour-long delay, two more groups of protesters emerged.
First, beside the base of the stairs where the protesters spat at Yiannopoulos, a new batch of protesters showed up. They had taped their own mouths—despite the fact that no one was actually silencing them—donning signs claiming that speech by people like Yiannopoulos “silences” others. As one sign put it: “When you use your FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT to spread hate and exclusion, you are silencing people and communities, not promoting ‘freedom of speech.’” Then, another group broke out a banner declaring: “Bruins against hate.”
In comparison to the madness at DePaul, UCLA’s “Dangerous Faggot” tour saw limited disruptions after the talk finally began around 8:15 p.m.. Fifteen minutes into the talk, Yiannopoulos discussed the rationale behind his celebration of Peter Thiel’s clandestine takedown of Gawker.
“Gawker more than any other publication made people scared to make jokes. Ordinary citizens were scared that Gawker would pick something up and ruin their lives because they made a joke about AIDS. That’s the sort of tune that’s coming to an end,” Yiannopoulos said. “And the people who benefit from that sort of tyranny — the mediocre, the lazy, the hateful, the fat, the facially pierced, the blue haired, the people for whom being black is their only marketable skill …”
“You are spreading hate!” two audience members stood up and screaming. They were met with laughs, and eventually chants of “Build the wall”—a reference to Donald Trump’s wall on the Mexican border. Campus security led the disruptive audience members to the back of the room, where they were allowed to remain until they disrupted the speech again 15 minutes later.
“I published a column, ‘How to Beat Me!’ I wrote it down. I literally gave them an instruction book! But they’re so f—ing self-involved, stupid and lazy that they don’t read it and they don’t listen. No position is insurmountable except perhaps for the rugged defense of free speech and liberty,” Yiannopoulos said. “If you don’t like what I said about feminism, come to me with facts, with reason, with logic. And just as importantly, wait your f—ing turn.”
“I don’t want to beat you,” one of the protesters exclaimed. “I hate you!”
Once again, the pro-Yiannopoulos audience broke out with their own chant, turning a favorite phrase of Social Justice Warriors against the SJWs: “Hate speech!”
For the remaining half-hour, the event proceeded without interruption, save for a few fans crying out, “Milo for Press Secretary” or “10 feet higher” (another reference to Trump’s wall).
“They’ve got to learn how to play fairly in the open marketplace of ideas or they are going to move to the fringes of society and create things like Trump,” Yiannopoulos said.
“To those protesters outside, thank them, because they are what’s going to put Trump in the White House,” he said.
