Operating on the presumed assumption that going where people vocally don’t want him—i.e., everywhere—and saying the things people don’t want him to say—i.e., everything—has never worked out less than swimmingly for him in the past, political yapper Milo Yiannopoulos has pledged to speak tomorrow at UC Berkeley, even though the event he was supposed to be speaking at has already been canceled.
Yiannapoulos—and a coterie of fellow repositories of human delightfulness, including professional Twitter troll/Donald Trump-endorsed “journalist” Mike Cernovich—were scheduled to speak at a “Free Speech Week” event on the campus this week, but the event was ultimately canceled. (The organizing group says the university obstructed them; the administration says the organizers were late on deadlines and deceptive in their advertising, and that it’s pissed the group pulled the plug at the last minute after parking and security measures had already been put into place.) Nevertheless, Yiannapoulos and his traveling circus have said they still intend to be on campus to speak, because “free speech”—the good kind, anyway, the stuff that toes, foots, and occasionally fully legs the line of racism and xenophobia, as opposed to bad free speech like, say, quietly kneeling in protest at a football game—must be protected.
For his part, Yiannapoulos confirmed that he’ll be on campus on Sunday. “We are going to be hosting an event, come hell or high water,” he said, even though it’s unclear whether campus police are ready to provide security for the impromptu event. Yiannapoulos—who had a book deal scuppered earlier this year over comments he made about sexual relationships between older gay men and teenagers—had a speaking event canceled at the school in February, which led to incidents of violence breaking out on the school’s campus. Ann Coulter had a similar speech shut down over safety concerns back in April.