Know it when you see it
Milo. Why do we keep having to talk about Milo? Milo is ridiculous and we should never have to talk about him.
A speech by the divisive right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, was canceled on Wednesday night after demonstrators set fires and threw objects at buildings to protest his appearance.
The university announced the cancellation on Twitter around 6 p.m. local time, about an hour after a section of the campus erupted in protest.
Look, he’s not “right-wing” – that’s not the right way to name him. He is right-wing, of course, but that by itself isn’t why people don’t want him giving speeches. “Divisive” doesn’t name him either – that’s a silly word, an empty euphemism for “sadistic” or similar.
The point about Yiannopoulos isn’t that he’s right-wing, much less conservative, it’s that he’s a nasty bully. It’s entirely possible to be conservative without being a nasty bully. Trump doesn’t have to be the loathsome bully he is, and the same applies to Yiannopoulos.
There are thousands of conservatives who could give good talks at universities, good talks appropriate for universities – reasoned, argued, informed. Milo is just a troll – a troll is all he is. Trolling is his one and only claim to fame. Universities should not be elevating trolls.
I don’t think he should be “no-platformed,” because there’s too much no-platforming about and most of it is way too mindless. But what I do think is that universities should refrain from inviting him to give speeches.
Conservative doesn’t mean belligerent or hateful or proudly sexist and racist. There’s no need to foster a range of views by welcoming belligerent sexists and racists to spew their sexism and racism at universities. There’s a difference between views and abuse. Universities should skip the abusive types.
That of course would include our shiny new president, sad to say.
And Trump has threatened to remove funding from UC Berkley as a result. Presumably due to Bannon’s wormtoungeing.
When I was in college in the late 70s, we used to have a seminar every spring in the Political Science Department. We would devote part of the week to liberal politicians, part to conservative, and part to libertarians. The conservatives were usually as thoughtful and articulate as the liberals, and you could ask them questions. They expounded their points using oratory, not name-calling.
In 1980, the seminar was devoted to the upcoming election. There was a shift that year, a shift that left me gaping and appalled. As a student, I was seeing the dawning of a new era, but I didn’t realize it then. This was the first time I saw someone engage in name calling, dumbed down rhetoric without any thought put into it, stupid cliches like “if it walks like a duck” – it was the conservative candidate for our US Senate seat. A few months later, he was elected and went in as a freshman Senator in the “Reagan Revolution”.
This president, this man who was so “nice” all the time, so “aw shucks”, pulled a lot of the nastiest players along with him, many of them remnants of the Nixon administration, but quite a few of them a new breed of ruthless, cunning, nasty, and, yes, infantile. A horrid combination. I suppose Trump was the inevitable outcome. I had no idea then that I was watching history in the making as all the students murmured (no one set fires or threw things) in disbelief and disgruntlement that this candidate was departing from the norms of good behavior. All the while dressed in a very nice suit with a power tie (I guess there were power ties already in 1980? Or did they come along in the 80s? History gets a little fuzzy on things I didn’t really give a damn about). He looked groomed, polite, and definitely in the better areas of society, but he spoke like a schoolyard bully. Sound familiar? I think I saw the prototype.
I rather liked Popehat’s article from about a week ago, and some of Ken’s comments below that…
https://www.popehat.com/2017/01/26/exceptionally-good-statement-on-campus-free-speech-by-chancellor-nicholas-dirks/
Especially “…self-infatuated huckster hairdo Milo Yiannopoulos…”
Rob: Oh, god, I read the actual comment thread…. I knew I should’ve bailed as soon as I saw the words “Virtue Signaling” used unironically.
Freemage, I dip in and out of Popehat every few weeks. The comment threads are easily the worst part of the experience. Ken I find interesting to read. At least he is lucid and clear in his reasoning – whether I agree with him or not (which I often don’t, at lest fully). He’s clearly a free speech absolutist, but at least he applies that in both directions. The average commentator there tends more toward asshat than popehat IMO.
Freemage, I saw that comment thread. I needed not to. Now I can’t unsee it. Sad.