A document titled “The Official Anti-MILO Toolkit” was provided to Breitbart News earlier this week. It was compiled by a number of left-wing university professors seeking to silence MILO on college campuses.
Professors that have attributed their names to the document are Amanda Armstrong of the University of Michigan and Sarah Cowan a graduate student at UC Berkeley. Other contributors listed are Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, Elizabeth de Martelly and Julia Havard, all professors at UC Berkeley, as well as two graduate students, Juliet Kunkel and Miyuki Baker.
The document contains an alternate explanation of the meaning of free speech, coursework and syllabus for professors to provide their students, sample letters to provide college admin relating to MILO and anti MILO sticker and banner templates.
The toolkit begins by mischaracterizing MILO as a member of the alt-right, “Milo Yiannopoulos is a Breitbart journalist and member of the so-called alt-right, a loosely affiliated group mobilized largely through internet platforms with far-right ideologies tied to white nationalism, Islamophobia, anti-feminism, homophobia, transphobia, and anti-Semitism.” the toolkit reads.
The toolkit further claims that MILO’s Dangerous Faggot tour, “brands itself on much of the same sensationalism that fueled the rise of Donald Trump: inflammatory rhetoric couched in aggressive racism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and Islamophobia.”
The article then completely incorrectly claims that MILO’s article arguing for the removal of the letter “T” from the “LGBTQ” term is “incitement of physical violence against transgender women,” and stats that MILO, “has named Black Lives Matter, a group that calls attention to the disproportionate number of Black Americans killed by law enforcement, a “terrorist organization,” and has called feminism a “cancer” that must be obliterated.”
Referencing MILO’s college events the toolkit states, without any evidence whatsoever, “In mid-January of 2017, Milo’s talk was shut down by activists at UC Davis, but not before large groups of neo-nazis and white supremacists from around the state of California gathered to network with one another at the event, creating a potentially violent and extremely unsafe situation for the queer, gender-nonconforming and transgender students in the crowd”
The toolkit claims that it’s acceptable to shut down MILO’s college events there are other places where he’s allowed to speak, “The argument that Milo Yiannopoulos is being singled out and denied access to free speech not only erases the many avenues he already has for circulating his ideologies.”
The toolkit also attacks the United States constitution and its protections on free speech, arguing that the document was written to only apply to white men and as a result is racist and a tool of white oppression.
The Naturalization Act of 1790 extended citizenship to ‘free white men with property’ — meaning that citizens were required to have these social positions in order to be incorporated under the Constitution of the United States. For those of us outside of that frame, neither our speech nor our bodies were free. Black bodies and communities were enslaved to support the speech and interests of white capitalists; preoccupation with the free speech of landed whites occurred simultaneously with, and relied on, the subjugation of Black bodies — because we were not considered people.
Freedom of speech, then, is not a universal, constant idea which has existed throughout history; it is deployed differently depending on time frame, and bestowed unequally based on social position. Understanding these discrepancies, we cannot ‘defend free speech’ without examining by whom and for whom speech is free. Instead, let us ask: how does this idea defend the interests of the powerful and silence the oppressed?
The toolkit labels MILO as a racist and white supremacist, providing worksheets for professors to give to their students asking them to explain MILO’s alleged racism. “Milo Yiannopoulos continuously derails conversations around privilege, oppression, and violence by religious appeals to free speech that lack any sort of context. What are some of the rhetorical strategies he engages in in order to make his position of white supremacy and extreme misogyny appear to be one that is under attack and in need of protection? What’s missing from his framework?”
The attached sample protest letters to be sent to campus administration urges colleges to, “please stand up for us and against institutional support for white supremacy and violence.” despite the fact that the majority of violence seen at MILO’s recent protests has been from far left anarchist groups.
The toolkit then provides a number of images for leftists to print out and place around their campus, almost like an anti MILO sticker book!
MILO is accused of being on the first rung of the “Pyramid of Hate” which, according to the toolkit, is one of the foundations for being Literally Hitler.
Some of the images read like they’re actively promoting MILO and his views.
The toolkit further encourages workers and lecturers on campus to file grievance complaints with the university, “If your campus is unionized, urge student workers and lecturers to file a grievance stating that Milo’s hate speech and incitement to violence creates an unsafe work environment for you and your students.”
Read the full Anti-MILO toolkit here,
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article referred to a different Sarah K. Cowan, an assistant professor at NYU, who is not associated with the anti-MILO toolkit. This has been amended
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