Freedom of speech is as American as the image of Abraham Lincoln straddling a mammoth grizzly bear with an American flag saddle, holding an assault rifle in one hand and the Constitution in the other, whose recognition is a prerequisite for Young Metro’s trust, probably.
Upholding that right on college campuses is an integral element in ensuring the proper fostering of the brightest young minds America has to offer. Freedom of speech’s oppression, be it for political reasons or anything of the sort, massacres intellectual vitality that prevails where it’s allowed free reign.
Unfortunately, an existing faction on our campus and the larger community only support freedom of speech in a limited capacity, seemingly exclusively when it aligns with their views.
Harambe didn’t die for this.
Enter conservative pundit and apparent supervillain Milo Yiannopoulos, whose circumvention of that faction, The Dangerous Faggot Tour, hits campus today.
Yiannopoulos’ tour, which resumed last week, features stops at campuses across the United States including Alabama, Yale and Stanford before closing shop in February at UCLA.
If Donald Trump is the chairman of a new, ultraconservative wave, Yiannopoulos is certainly the CEO. As a leader of the alt-right, Yiannopoulos essentially combats political correctness in all of its forms by trolling progressives, liberals, feminists and the whole lot of mainstream leftist ideas that have emerged as threats to freedom of speech.
He’s been permanently banned from Twitter since July, after his troll army nearly 350,000 strong allegedly harassed actress Leslie Jones.
Milo is accused of being anti-LGBTQ — although he himself is a member of the community — along with every other term associated with bigotry. In actuality, he belongs in conversation with one of the most transcendent American heroes — Rocky Balboa in Rocky IV.
Here, I’ll break it down.
Rocky IV is a movie starring Sly Stallone as Rocky Balboa. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s Ivan Drago fights Apollo Creed, who enters the ring to James Brown’s “Living in America” wearing an American flag top hat and trunks. For all intents and purposes, Creed represents America, while Drago is this Leftist wave. Creed suffers a fatal defeat to Drago, and, in a fit of rage, the slurred-speeched Rocky agrees to fight the Soviet in a battle of seismic proportions. It’s a battle of good versus evil — physical versus metaphysical, if you will.
While Drago was hopped up on steroids with advanced equipment at his disposal, Rocky’s training was a montage of him chopping down trees, throwing logs and climbing a mountain. But Rocky fought the good fight and came out on top.
Yiannopoulos is our Rocky, fighting an uphill battle against political correctness, thus resisting freedom of speech’s repression.
Much of what befouls Yiannopoulos’ reputation stems from liberals’ absent sense of humor, miscomprehension of the art of trolling and blatant denial of facts that don’t fit their narrative.
For example, many will point to Yiannopoulos’ headlines on Breitbart, just as Hillary Clinton did in a speech about the alt-right, “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy” and “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?” as evidence of his unfathomable, next-level bigotry.
While that may seem like damning evidence, it easily stands out as a troll job to fellow trolls. The author of a feature on Yiannopoulos for Bloomberg, a markedly apolitical news service, conceded that his rebuttal “Milo to Hillary: You Did This” perseveres once you understand troll logic.
Whether you agree that Milo is a champion, the likes of Achilles combating “the cultural tyranny of the Left,” or you disagree with his cause to your core, there’s one thing we can all agree on — he has the right.
You don’t have to agree with everything he says — I by no means do — to support his presence on campus. He has something to offer everyone, whether your political orientation aligns with the alt-right, you simply support free speech or you appreciate Grade-A trolling.
Stop taking offense to everything for one night and enjoy a five-star troll fest. After all, it’s a right your forefathers afforded you.
And for the love of f***ing god, stand up for the national anthem.
Jacob Hamilton is a 21-year old political science senior from Slidell, Louisiana.