Milo Yiannopoulos’ U.C. Berkeley Event Canceled After Riot

Image by Getty Images

By Daniel J. Solomon February 2, 2017

Milo Yiannopoulos, the Breitbart editor and far-right provocateur, was prevented from speaking at U.C. Berkeley Wednesday night, after protests turned violent and prompted security threats that led to the event’s cancellation.

“Don’t give up. They cannot win. They will not win,” he wrote on his Facebook page after the campus authorities canceled the talk. According to university officials, hundreds of masked agitator who did not attend the school converged there for the demonstration, breaking windows at the student union building, throwing Molotov cocktails at the police and starting fires.

The episode was picked up in the national press, leading President Donald Trump to respond on Twitter.

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view – NO FEDERAL FUNDS?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

Yiannopoulos, a Trump super-fan and fellow traveler of the “alt-right,” was slated to appear at Berkeley as part of his “Dangerous Faggot” tour of American university campuses. A talk last month at U.C. Davis was nixed after similar violent protests.

He has a track record of making offensive statements about women and minorities, including equating feminism with cancer and criticizing Jews in media as “thick as pig-shit.”

The British-born writer is openly gay and also technically Jewish, due to having a maternal Jewish grandmother. His memoir, called “Dangerous,” will be released by Simon & Schuster in March.

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO