Man shot while protesting right-wing troll Milo Yiannopoulos’ event
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA – NOVEMBER 29: Milo Yiannopoulos reacts during a press conference on arrival at the Sydney International Airport on November 29, 2017 in Sydney, Australia. Yiannopoulos is in Australia for his Troll Academy Tour. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)
A man is fighting for his life in hospital after he was shot while protesting a Milo Yiannopoulos appearance in Seattle.
The 32-year-old is reportedly in a critical condition after he was shot in the abdomen on Friday at the University of Washington, according to Seattle PI.
The man was thought to be protesting the right-wing trolls appearance. A “person of interest” has been arrested after turning himself into university police.
A police official told the Seattle Times that the man who fired the gun said he had fired in self-defence and that the man he shot was “some type of white supremacist.”
The suspect was released without charges pending further investigation.
Yiannopoulos’ speech at the University was delayed after large crowds of people protested. It was thought that the event was over sold and ticket holders were prevented from entering the venue because of overcrowding issues.
The protest was peaceful for the most part, with protesters just holding anti-Yiannopoulos and anti-Trump signs. However, police said that a group of protesters who arrived after being at a downtown ally “began throwing bricks and paint toward police and others in the crowd”.
Despite the shooting Yiannapoulos carried on with the speech, and told the audience “if I stopped my event now, we are sending a clear message that they can stop our events by killing people. I am not prepared to do that.”
Mayor Ed Murray said: “Seattle has a long, proud tradition of speaking up and speaking out, but we will not tolerate violence of any kind, against any person. Thousands of Seattleites, including myself, will speak up and march peacefully throughout this weekend.”
The event was organised by the University of Washington College Republicans as part of Yiannopoulos’ “Dangerous Faggot Tour”.
It’s not the first time Yiannapoulos has been met with protests on the tour.
A talk the Breitbart editor had arranged at the University of California in Davis alongside pharma-bro Martin Shkreli was shut down by protesters who prevented people entering the event by forming a human chain around the auditorium.
The protest at UC Davis came after the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee allowed Yiannopoulos to speak at their university and bully a trans student on stage.
But despite repeated protests, university administrators decided that Yiannopoulos – who says he would ‘cure’ himself of being gay if he could and describes trans people as “mentally ill… gay men dressing up for attention” – should still be allowed to speak at the event that happened in December.
Yiannopoulos proceeded to use the event to single out and humiliate a transgender student who attends the university, exactly as protesters had warned he would.
In his speech – which was streamed on the internet by far-right news outlet Breitbart – Yiannopoulos singled out Milwaukee engineering student Adelaide Kramer, showing pictures of her on a PowerPoint presentation and mocking her as a “man in a dress” who “I’d almost still bang”.
The session continued for nearly two hours after the incident which saw Yiannopoulos attack the student over trans bathroom laws and her appearance.
