Milo Yiannopoulos talks “fake news” at Cal Poly
The protests were unexpectedly small but the man at the epicenter of the controversy, larger than life.
“I’m a gay Jewish immigrant with a black husband yet I’m called anti-Semitic, white nationalist, neo-Nazi. Utterly preposterous claims,” said Milo Yiannopoulos.
Love him or hate him, the brash, unfiltered conservative political commentator has a rabid fan base.
“I haven’t seen any evidence of him being distinctly racist, aside from things that are obvious jokes and I think part of the reason we need Milo is we’ve lost a sense of humor completely as a country,” said Jackson Ratkovich, Vice President of Turning Point USA. Turning Point USA is a youth organization that promotes the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.
Milo Yiannopoulos calls fake news, “political warfare.”
“It’s a particular and deliberate political strategy designed to marginalize any effective figure on the other side and pretend that they are extreme and impalpable in a way that would repel ordinary right thinking people,” said Yiannopouls.
A heavy police presence kept a small group of protestors at bay across the street from the Mott Athletic Complex. Six San Luis Obispo Police Department officers were assigned to campus for security concerns, and law enforcement from all 23 California State University schools was brought in. The university is said to have spent $55,000 dollars on security.
“To spend $55,000 dollars on security for someone to come to this campus that’s already very on edge and timid,” said Solena Aguilar, a Cal Poly student protestor.
Aguilar is referencing weeks of unrest at Cal Poly following a frat’s blackface incident.
“It’s not that big of a deal. It’s a college, people get boisterous, people get drunk, people make bad decisions,” said Yiannopouls.
While Milo says Kyler Watkins probably made a bad decision, it didn’t stop the fake news panel headliner from poking fun at the racially charged climate on campus on social media.
“I’m sure the guy who did it regrets it now, I’m sure If you were to speak to him, I don’t think that you would find hear some unreconstructed neo-Nazi, white nationalist, racist. I don’t think he wants black people hanging from trees, I don’t think he wants a white ethno-state, I think he was just an idiot one night,” said Yiannopouls.
The Conservative pundit rejects the Alt-Right label associated with his name and says the only regret he has in his career is not going far enough. The political provocateur says he’s never visited a college campus that is a “cesspool of systematic racism.”
“What I’m not going to do is what Republicans have done for generations in this country which is temper my beliefs and temper my phrasing so nobody calls me a racist, because I’m terrified of those allegations, I’m terrified of the name-calling, I’m not scared of the left,” said Yiannopouls.
Sponsored by the Cal Poly College Republicans, YouTube personalities Austen Fletcher, also known as “Fleccas,” and Carl Benjamin, aka “Sargon of Akkad” were also a part of the panel.
