Today in Conservative Media: Milo Yiannopoulos, Free Speech Hero
A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
Conservative media slammed the Wednesday night protests against Breitbart editor and alt-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California–Berkeley. Yiannopoulos was supposed to speak on campus, but the university canceled the event after protesters broke windows and lit firecrackers, which resulted in a fire.
Breitbart went with blanket coverage of the protest. Some headlines: “ ‘Anti-Fascist’ Rioters Beat MILO Attendees With Flag Poles, Fists at UC Berkeley,” “MILO UC Berkeley Show Evacuated as Masked Anti-MILO Protesters Start Fires, Swarm Building,” “VICTIM BLAMING: MAYOR SMEARS MILO aS ‘WHITE NATIONALIST,’ ” “The Night Berkeley Betrayed the Free Speech Movement,” “UC Berkeley Administration Shares Blame for Anti-Free Speech Riot.” In another post, Breitbart wrote approvingly about President Donald Trump’s threat to strip Berkeley of its federal funding.
On her radio show, Laura Ingraham interviewed a UC–Berkeley College Republican who decried violence against the “ideological minority” at UC–Berkeley and said liberal activists and “so-called anti-fascist groups” are suppressing free speech with “violent means such as explosives and fireworks.” Laura Ingraham called such actions a “hate crime.”
National Review wrote: “A significant number of Americans, both on and off America’s college campuses do not believe in other people’s right to give speeches with perspectives and ideas they oppose. … Physically attacking people because they have different beliefs is about as un-American as it gets.”
The Daily Caller noted Trump’s threat to cut federal funding for the university, writing that the threatening tweet came “after a night of violent protests on the campus forced Yiannopoulos to cancel a book tour event that was, ironically, about free speech on campus.”
On conservative Facebook pages, support for an even more punitive measure was widespread: