Newsweek seemed to celebrate the violent protests at MILO’s cancelled UC Berkeley talk last night with the headline “Milo Yiannopoulos Gets Schooled At Berkeley.”
The article notes how the campus is sometimes known as “Berzerkeley” and described music played by the rioters as creating “an impromptu dance party.” Author Alexander Nazaryan went on to describe the riots as “ferocious protests” and smear Breitbart News as “white-nationalist.”
MILO and Breitbart News have repeatedly denounced racism in all forms in the face of constant dishonest media attacks. Speaking at UC Colorado Springs in January, MILO said:
“White pride, white nationalism, white supremacy isn’t the way to go,” he continued. “The way to go is reminding them and yourselves that you should be aspiring to values and to ideas.”
“You should be focusing on what unites people and not what drives them apart,” MILO concluded. “You shouldn’t give a shit about skin color, a shit about sexuality… You shouldn’t give a shit about gender, and you should be deeply suspicious of the people who do.”
Not once in the article did Newsweek use the word “riot,” and in fact insisted that “the vast majority of the people in Sproul Plaza were not violent,” describing assaults as “small skirmishes,” despite account of
An excerpt clearly documenting some of the violence can be seen below:
The crowd—including Berkeley students, older radicals and anarchists clad in black—pushed against the doors of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union, in whose Pauley Ballroom the Yiannopoulos event was to take place. Disregarding the nonviolent resistance philosophy of the building’s namesake, some protesters broke windows in the ground-floor Amazon store in the Dr. King center. A light tower was destroyed and set on fire, to the cheers of onlookers. Later, the burned-out remains of the tower were tagged with a graffito that hinted at the real reason the crowd was so large, and so quick to anger: “Fuck Trump.”
Patrolling the second floor of the student-union building, police officers threatened on several occasions to enter the crowd—or to use a “chemical agent” like tear spray. “We’re counting on you to be stupid!” an older protester shouted at the officers. But despite several tense moments that included lit fireworks hurled at the officers, there was no significant confrontation between law enforcement and protesters there.
Newsweek suggested a justification for the violence, in that “hate speech is not free speech,” giving the example of when at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he called out a transgender student trying to use the women’s locker rooms. “That, many protesters suggested, disqualified him from enjoying the free speech protections of the First Amendment,” Newsweek noted.
Rioters vandalized businesses, set fires, and assaulted event goers and journalists alike. President Donald Trump has threatened to cancel UC Berkeley’s government funding following the riots.
Jack Hadfield is a student at the University of Warwick and a regular contributor to Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @ToryBastard_, on Gab @JH or email him at jack@yiannopoulos.net.
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