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1st LD Writethru: Radical speaker's speech called off amid protest at UC Berkeley

Xinhua, February 2, 2017 Adjust font size:

A speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a radical far-right political figure, was canceled Wednesday amid a violent protest at the University of California, Berkeley.

The protest started at about 4 p.m. local time (0000 GMT Thursday) and lasted for hours into the night.

While students tried to block the entrance to a building, where Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at 8 p.m., a group of masked protesters, apparently from outside the public university, turned violent trying to break down barricades and throw fireworks toward the venue.

Windows were smashed at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union building on the campus.

Deeming Yiannopoulos as part of, arguably a spokesperson for, the so-called alt-right movement that allegedly prompted Donald Trump into the White House, protesters chanted "No Milo, No Trump, No fascist USA!"

Yiannopoulos, 32, a Briton born in Greece, who was permanently banned by Twitter for abusive rhetoric, later posted on Facebook that he was evacuated from the campus after protesters breached the ground floor of the building. "My team and I are safe," he wrote.

While all UC Berkeley buildings were on lockdown, police deployed helicopters and other resources and issued repeated orders for immediate dispersal of the crowd.

After some 1,500 students turned away from the campus after 8 p.m., a group of about 200 people continued marching through Berkeley. Berkeley Police Department said up to four people were injured.

Known for his extreme views on feminism, Islam, social justice and political correctness, Yiannopoulos, an editor for the conservative Breitbart website, has been criticized for being racist and misogynistic.

Those who were against him at UC Berkeley argued that Yiannopoulos' hateful rhetoric has no place on a public university campus.

Labelled by mainstream media as a "political provocateur," Yiannopoulos began touring U.S. universities last year. On Jan. 20, the same day Trump was inaugurated, he spoke at the University of Washington and sparked large protests. A 34-year-old was shot at the event by a 29-year-old supporter of Trump, Yiannopoulos and the National Rifle Association, and is still in intensive care suffering from life-threatening injuries at a hospital in Seattle.

Steve Bannon, now chief strategist and senior adviser to Trump, is the former head of Breitbart. He has reportedly added two staffers from the news site to the White House staff.

Bannon, a Trump campaign manager, has described the news site as the platform of the alt-right, or alternative right, a loose group of people with far-right ideology who reject mainstream conservatism in the United States. Endi