Protesting Milo Yiannopoulos only makes him stronger.
The flamboyant conservative provocateur makes his living by being ridiculous and brash, describing himself on Facebook as “the most fabulous super villain in the world.” He refers to President Donald Trump as “daddy” and has offended almost every group of people imaginable. The Pro-Trump cheerleader keeps growing in popularity despite those on the left labeling him a racist Nazi. Yiannopoulos dismisses these claims because he is a comedian after all. In his eyes he can’t be homophobic, because he’s gay. Oh, and he can’t be racist, because he is attracted to black men.
But Yiannopoulos is a excellent speaker and debater and has a young, loyal following that continues to grow everyday. For these reasons he is often invited to college campuses by college Republican groups. Yiannopoulos represents a rare type of speaker who can actually articulate conservative opinions and be funny while doing it.
Unfortunately, Yiannopoulos was the most disinvited speaker of 2016 on U.S. college campuses.
Whether you find him funny or not, and whether his politics disgust you or not, Yiannopoulos has the right to speak. Still, many counter that colleges shouldn’t be giving him a platform, and continue to falsely label him a white nationalist, among other things. Yiannopoulos is not a white nationalist. If young, open-minded people want to laugh at his jokes and consider his point of view, let him speak.
In 1997, Senator Eleanor Holmes Norton stated, “You seldom get to defend the First Amendment by defending people you like … You don’t know whether the First Amendment is alive and well until it is tested by people with despicable ideas.”
Liberals have every right to protest Yiannopoulos speaking on campus. But by doing so, they’re playing right into his narrative. Last July, Yiannopoulos told CNN he was being silenced because he is a “gay conservative.” Liberals have made it easy for Yiannopoulos to frame it like they are the hateful ones.
This narrative only strengthens when students are arrested and put in jail overnight for handing out pocket constitutions on campus.
Yiannopoulos recently had to cancel a speech at UC Davis because the protests against his appearance were making it too difficult for him to speak. This resulted in a whole lot of media attention, the exact type of attention Yiannopoulos wants. These attempts to silence Yiannopoulos’ voice only help him pick up steam. The LA Times put it eloquently: “Oh sure, Yiannopoulos was silenced at UC Davis. All the way to the bank.”
Yiannopoulos signed a $250,000 book contract with publishing house Simon & Schuster in January, and as you can imagine the cries from the left came immediately. Once again people took issues with Yiannopoulos being given a platform, as though the right to free speech and the right to having a platform to speak are different things. Politics should never play a role in what books publishers choose to publish. Signing Yiannopolous was a smart move: his book was #1 on Amazon the day after it was announced.
Yiannopoulos has even been questionably banned from Twitter after he poked fun at Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones, after which his followers tweeted racists images at Jones. Twitter has taken it upon itself to regulate free speech on its website, shadow banning the accounts of members of the Alt-Right. Yiannopoulos faces a ban from Twitter for life, while people like ISIS recruiter and hard-Sharia law believer Anjem Choudary still have accounts to this day.
As Yiannopoulos has proven time and again, attempts to silence him only backfire on his accusers. If the Democrats claim to be the party of diversity and tolerance, they cannot afford to maintain their ineffective policy of censoring those with different political views.
