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aristarchus [soylentnews.org] writes:

Well, it finally has not happened. The "Free Speech" Week [aljazeera.com] promoted by alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has largely been called off. [huffingtonpost.com]

From the Huffpo:

It was supposed to be his Woodstock. But on Saturday morning, a day before Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Free Speech Week” rally at the University of California, Berkeley, was scheduled to start, the alt-right provocateur alerted his followers that he would be holding an “emergency” press conference on Facebook Live.

The blame, it seems, is with the conservative students who opted to call off the entire ruckus.

Hours earlier, the conservative student co-organizers of the rally told the university they had canceled the four-day shindig, citing what they claimed to be unfair treatment by UC Berkeley administration.

In the video, Yiannopoulos explained that without a student sponsor, he couldn’t hold an official university event. So he announced that he’d be holding an “unofficial” rally at the campus on Sunday.

Sounds almost identical to the Ann Coulter non-incident of some months ago, where Ann also threatened to hold an "unofficial" event. [washingtonpost.com]

The question on everyone's mind, however, is whether all this "strum und Drang" is a suppression of free speech, which raises the question of whether the cancellation may have been the goal all along.

Many have suspected that Yiannopoulos never wanted the event to go off in the first place. Instead, the theory goes, he wanted once again to claim the mantle of the martyred conservative man of ideas, suppressed by the liberal jackboots of the ivory tower.

Even if this is the case, it seems the University has been doing it's best to accomodate the "Dangerous Faggot".

“Claims that this is somehow the outcome desired by the campus are without basis in fact,” Dan Mogulof, spokesman for UC Berkeley, said in a statement Saturday. “The University was prepared to do whatever was necessary to support the First Amendment rights of the student organization.”

In the weeks leading up to the “Free Speech Week” rally, Yiannopoulos and the Berkeley Patriot missed multiple deadlines to secure campus venues and to confirm a guest list, the university said. Despite these alleged missteps, UC Berkeley had said as late as Friday that it was still preparing for the rally. On Wednesday, the university published a full “Free Speech Week” schedule, complete with times and locations.

  But now, it is all not to be, except for Milo showing up on campus Sunday. And there may be violence.

Yiannopoulos, for his part, is telling his supporters to be prepared for Antifa tomorrow.

“If you’re planning on coming to Sproul Plaza tomorrow, there might be a few ANTIFA goons there,” he wrote in a Facebook post, linking to a Milo Inc. guide to the Antifa. “But don’t worry: We’ve got you covered. The ANTIFA HANDBOOK is your how-to guide to understanding, disrupting, and defeating this dangerous, but strangely pathetic, association of rejects from more upscale terrorist organizations.”

"Dangerous, but strangely pathetic" ? When one has to work this hard to create an opposition for yourself in order to be taken seriously, one has to wonder.

Other sources:
  WaPo [washingtonpost.com]
Fox News [washingtonpost.com]
ABC News [go.com]

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