Milo Yiannopoulos speech at UC Berkeley canceled after campus protests

Milo as “Ivana Wall,” speaking at Louisiana State University on Sep. 21, 2016. Say the name out loud and you’ll get the joke. “Right about now your dick is probably confused,” read one of the slides on stage during the performance. Image: Reddit.

Pro-Trump and extremist right wing/white supremacist personality Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to deliver a speech at U.C. Berkeley, but his appearance was canceled by university officials tonight after big protests on campus that got out of hand with some people setting some objects on fire. No arrests or injuries reported.

Yiannopoulos is doing a speaking tour on college campuses to promote his male “Privilege” scholarship fund.

Milo in younger years.

The university made the cancellation announcement on Twitter around 9:15 PM local time, after the rowdy but peaceful demonstration had been going on in a nearby area of campus for an hour or so.

You may recall that Mr. Yiannopoulos was “permanently suspended” from Twitter for directing his racist fans to attack “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones, who was mocked in a targeted harassment attack that included trolls sending her images of herself as an ape.

Photo: Milo speaking in drag at LSU on Sep. 21, 2016, via Reddit

UC Berkeley campus police hyperbolically described the Wednesday night demonstrations as “major protest attacks” and warned to avoid the area. The protests continued, even after police orders to disperse.

More at the New York Times:

On Facebook, Mr. Yiannopoulos said he had been evacuated from the campus after “violent left-wing protesters tore down barricades, lit fires, threw rocks and Roman candles at the windows and breached the ground floor of the building.”

He added, “One thing we do know for sure: The Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.”

A portable high-intensity light, the kind used on construction sites, was set afire, according to an image on Twitter.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Witnesses said some windows were broken at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, where Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at an event hosted by the Berkeley College Republicans.

This marks the second time in two weeks that rowdy protests have forced the cancellation of a Yiannopoulos speech. The same thing happened last month at UC Davis, prompting a debate about free speech protections and how universities should respond to so-called hate speech.