What in the world happened at the University of California, Berkeley on February 1st, 2017 is something that you may be asking yourself today. In short, a speaker was supposed to be giving a presentation on campus and he has views of the world that are the complete opposite of those that attend the university. The protest at first was peaceful though plenty of obscenities and signs could be heard and seen. Then, everything took quite a turn as a peaceful/meaningful protest turned into a violent one that lost credibility and lost it's message. In the next part of this article you can find out what happened in a more detailed explanation.
Milo Yiannopoulos was invited by the Berkeley College Republicans to speak at their campus on February 1st... Well that sentence right there will be the best piece of foreshadowing you will ever witness (I'm not just saying that because I am writing this... Okay I am.) because of the complete and total opposite ends of the political ideology spectrum that those characters are on. First of all, Republican and Berkeley should never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever be in the same sentence. UC Berkeley is perhaps the most liberal university in the entire country. If you go to Berkeley and are a Republican more power to you. Secondly, Milo is a journalist with the alt-right website Breitbart News Network and his work has been viewed by many as incredibly conservative. Where some conservatives say he is just presenting facts, liberals will come right back and say that he isn't presenting ALL of the facts. He has been quoted on CNN saying "I will continue to be as offensive as possible." He is as offensive as he is because he believes that it is the only way to get people to listen. HOWEVER, he does not condone violence though with the recent protests you could make the case that he welcomes it, if it is the left that is doing it and it make them look even worse.
The protest began as a peaceful one... though I guess it depends on your definition of peaceful. I define it as no violence being involved and for the most part it was. So everything was fine and dandy and then, "The violence was instigated by a group of about 150 masked agitators who came onto campus and interrupted an otherwise non-violent protest," UC Berkeley said in a statement to NBC News. Now, they may or may not have been students at UC Berkeley and we will never know the identities. What we do know is this, fires were set, including one caused by a firebomb that ignited a generator-powered spotlight, and commercial-grade fireworks were thrown at police (NBC News). The event ended up being cancelled around 6 p.m. "amid violence, destruction of property and out of concern for public safety," and there were an estimated 1,500 people outside the venue where Milo was supposed to be speaking. It got to the point where the campus had to issue a lockdown... yet the protests continued anyways with no disregard for the university or others for that matter. A couple of conservative supporters were beat up during the Milo protests for no good reason.
As for those who wanted to hear Milo speak, mainly the Berkeley College Republicans, had this statement, a "groupthink phenomenon" has taken hold at the California university that silences conservative speech, and while it doesn't agree with everything Yiannopoulos has said or done "we saw the chance to host Milo as an opportunity that was too good to pass up... He is somebody who stands up for those who are too afraid or intimidated to speak out on campus, and he voraciously defends speech from all sides of the political spectrum," After everything had cooled down and the violence had died down they released this statement, "The Free Speech Movement is dead. Today, the Berkeley College Republicans' constitutional right to free speech was silenced by criminals and thugs seeking to cancel Milo Yiannopoulos' tour."
UC Berkeley denied calls to cancel the event and citing free speech for the reason. After the protest the university had this to say, "We regret that the threats and unlawful actions of a few have interfered with the exercise of First Amendment rights on a campus that is proud of its history and legacy as home of the Free Speech Movement."
I believe you could say that the goal of the protests on Wednesday night were to stop Milow from saying "hateful, false, bigot like material" Well... They were successful to a point. Where he would have been speaking to a few hundred on campus, after the protests broke out, he instead was asked to come onto Fox News and talk about the protests that were going on outside the venue where he was supposed to be speaking. So instead of speaking to a small audience, the protests gave him the opportunity to speak to millions of people about how the left were displaying themselves as un-organized, violent, disruptive and made them seem hypocritical.
Protests from liberals have been breaking out across the country even before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. Though now more than ever they seem to be picking up more news coverage. From the "muslim ban" protests, to protesting this conservative speaker at an event that he was INVITED to by other classmates, to boycotting Uber for doing what any reasonable company would, make money, for trying to profit off a cab protest while the 'muslim ban' was taking place. All over, more than probably 90m percent of these protests have been peaceful but its when the ten percent happen like of Wednesday night that really put the left in a tight spot, because there is no way that these actions can be deemed appropriate. You want to protest the conservatives, the ignorant, the current administration for having no regard of others lives, yet you set fire, damaged YOUR OWN UNIVERSITY and beat up two innocent people for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Just as the rest of the world thought you were taking a step forward in the right direction... On Wednesday night you took three gigantic steps backwards.
