Real-world troll and alleged “writer” Milo Yiannopoulos had a speaking engagement at UC-Berkeley canceled back in February, after protests against his appearance turned violent with the arrival of some masked agitators who started throwing bricks, smashed windows, and even started a fire outside the student center where the event was to be held. A couple of far-right supporters got carried out by police for their own safety, and one woman was pepper-sprayed by an attacker while giving a TV interview. Given the presence of a large number of riot police, however, violence beyond property damage was kept to a minimum. Still, if you were that woman, or one of the other small number of people involved in an altercation, you might have a case to sue your attacker, right? That would make sense.
Instead, and happily for the rest of us, Milo Yiannopoulos’ fans have exactly as good a grasp on logic and common sense as he does. The Associated Press reports Kiara Robles has filed a lawsuit against the university for curtailing her rights by “subjecting her and other invitees to bodily harm because they were expressing a different viewpoint.” Okay, that’s a little muddled, Kiara, because if you were attacked then you should file a suit for failing to properly ensure safety, or some such, but we get it: The university has much deeper pockets than whoever attacked you. It’s like tripping on the sidewalk outside a Burger King and suing the fast-food chain for not safeguarding its property. The American way!
But because Robles is a proud American who wants to make our lawsuits great again, she wasn’t about to stop there. Also named in the lawsuit are House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Party chairman John Burton, progressive rich guy George Soros, and the mayor of Berkeley. There might be more—NBC references a “slew of others”—but frankly, we’re satisfied with this list. In response to being told it has harmed her First Amendment rights in some nebulous way, possibly through telepathically wrecking her ability to understand the law, the school said it was looking forward to “contesting this collection of false claims,” though we all would have understood if Berkeley had just released a statement consisting of the shrug emoji.