Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart's pet 4chan troll, got forcibly ousted from UC Berkeley last night after a bunch of anarchists more or less set fire to the campus in protest. Should we care?
There's an old truism in journalism - if you see a headline ending with a question, the answer is usually "no."
I'm really not concerned with his trolling on behalf of the alt-right. Plenty of people have already talked about that, but nobody realizes that the only way to deal with a troll is to not feed them. Let's be honest here, Milo is a complete dipshit that thrives on attention - there's literally no such thing as bad publicity when it comes to him, as it allows him to keep building his audience. Hell, even this article is going to aid that tangentially, which annoys me.
But other than that, I don't care about Milo Yiannopoulos - beyond spelling his name correctly. Which is a pain in the ass. And I really don't care that he chased off campus like Frankenstein's Monster by a group of fire-and-pitchfork-wielding lunatics.
Really. I know people are shouting about "oh my god freedom of speech" but seriously now. The US Constitution's 1st Amendment only protects the speech of individuals from being curtailed by the federal government. Private citizens can still do whatever the fuck they want when they hear something they don't like. That includes starting a goddamn riot.
"But oh my god they used VIOLENCE!"
Yeah, so what? You talk shit, you get hit. It's like when everyone started screaming when Richard Spencer got punched on television. Dude is literally a Neo-Nazi shithead but people are arguing about the morality of punching him.
Give me a fucking break. Why do we need to care if a Nazi gets punched? Isn't that their primary function, to be punched in the face?
"But they broke the LAW!!"
I break the law every day. So do you. Go one mile over the speed limit and you're technically a criminal. Yeah there are differences in severity - I'll grant you that destruction of property is pretty shitty, as someone's got to clean that up and then repair the damage done. But there are worse things you can do besides breaking windows and lighting trash cans on fire. Like, you know, letting someone who spews hate speech get their time in the spotlight.
"But violence isn't the answer! You've got to listen to the other side!"
No, you don't. Not when the other side is spewing utter fucking nonsense. That's a logical fallacy called "false equivalency" and it's why we've got clearly insane people, people who think 97% of the world's scientists are lying about climate change because they're conspiring to destroy the fossil fuel industry by pushing clean, renewable energy instead, getting equal air time on the 24 hour news cycle.
"But you're advocating VIOLENCE!!!111!"
Don't be a fucking idiot. Of course I'm not advocating violence. Am I telling you to go make some Molotov cocktails and bomb your local Golden Corral? No. I'm simply saying that I don't really care about whether violence is used against certain people.
Yes, blah blah blah, sanctity of life, every sperm is sacred, whatever. Seriously there's fuckety-billion people on this planet. People have violence perpetrated against them every day because of the whims of selfish, mindless, cruel, and uncaring people. My own government has been not-so covertly bombing the fuck out of civilians for forever and a half. There are piles of charred bodies around the world thanks to extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the US government since the Washington administration and you think I need to give a shit if a couple of alt-right trolls get abused?
You can care about what happens to schmucks like Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer if you want. Personally, I couldn't care less.