Milo Yiannopoulos, an editor of the right-wing website Breitbart, is a professional provocateur. He’s a gay man who goes around criticizing not only the student “offense culture,” which is a good thing to do, but also feminism, which is a bad thing to do. He doesn’t distinguish between different brands of feminism, but simply dismisses the whole enterprise as “a cancer,” as he did in a recent speech at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I disagree with that, and wouldn’t go to see him were he speaking on my campus. But if I did, I’d sit and listen quietly, and then discuss his views either on this site or during the Q&A period.

But Yiannopoulos is also savvy, and has embarked on a tour of American colleges. As his views are a flashpoint—a “trigger”—for authoritarian Leftist (AL) college students, their reaction is predictable. The conservative and sexist elements in his audience applaud him, but they’re drowned out by the noises, hoots, whistles, and demonstrations of the AL students, who repeatedly shout out to interrupt Yiannopoulos and create demonstrations that, in the end, do nothing but reinforce the stereotype of ALs as spoiled brats, increasing the opprobrium of people who might otherwise hear them out.

Here’s an video of Yiannopoulos speaking about “safe spaces” at Rutgers in New Jersey, whereupon a group of ALs shout, whistle, and finally smear themselves with fake blood while having a mass conniption. Who wouldn’t be turned off by such demonstration?

The whole canny psychology of this tour is described by New York Magazine. Its commentary is pretty accurate—save for one thing (I’ve put it in bold):

Here’s how it works: Yiannopoulos goes to a college. He says dumb and offensive trolly things. Students react with outrage and sadness, either during the talk itself or in gatherings afterward. Inevitably, some of them either freak out or burst into tears, because college students are college students. Breitbart and other right-wing outlets then trawl for student-paper coverage, footage of angry students, or both, and then cover these reactions as “proof” that everything Yiannopoulos says about colleges and modern society — something something free-speech SJWs feminazis lesbians — is true.

Here’s the part that’s troublesome: “because college students are college students.” That’s not necessarily true: college students are usually over 18, which means they’re adults. By that time they should have learned to sit quietly and listen to a speaker, and not suppress the speaker’s words through interruptions, demonstrations, and the like. They should have learned some civility. They should have learned that the best way to combat the ideas of such a speaker is by questioning them at question time, writing posts on their website or Facebook, and even demonstrating outside the venue. That is what we did when I was in college—a time of great ferment about civil rights, the Vietnam War, and so on. It’s simply a fact that the civil disobedience and nonviolent protests of the civil rights movement carried over to general student unrest, and most of us would have found it unthinkable to make such a ruckus during an opponent’s speech.

Let me tell you a story. At my graduation in 1971 from William & Mary, most students wanted a left-wing graduation speaker. Instead, the administration, almost to slap us down, chose Thomas Downing, a conservative and undistinguished member of the Virginia Legislature. (The administration was quite conservative then.) Did we go to graduation and shout during his speech? We didn’t even consider that. Those of us who were leftists wore black armbands over our graduation gowns, and some put peace symbols on their mortarboards. As valedictorian, I was called out from the stage to stand up and be recognized. I did, but made the “black power” fist when I stood up. (I’m not necessarily proud of that now, but that’s all I could do, and I got a lot of flack from the College for it.)

I say this not to demonstrate our left-wing credibility, but the fact that, at least among those leftist students I knew, the idea of disrupting such an event was unthinkable. Yes, it did happen sometimes, but it was a rarity. Instead of disrupting, we made a quiet protest, and later had a “counter-commencement” with our chosen speaker being Charles Evers, brother of murdered civil right leader Medgar Evers.

The lesson is this: if you want any respect for your ideas, you can’t act like spoiled brats. Protest in a civil, dignified, but passionate way, and if you must disobey the law, do so like the civil rights protestors did: civilly and without resistance. (This only works in a democracy, of course: civil disobedience of the Jews against the Nazis would have failed miserably.)

Students like the entitled whingers above only discredit their own leftist ideas—and some of those ideas are not only worth hearing, but worth adopting. When New York Magazine says “college students are college students”, it must be referring to the arrogant and self-absorbed Snowflake Students of the past five years. It is, in effect, trying to excuse the students’ behavior on the grounds of their youth.

But it’s not inevitable that students must behave in such a stupid way. I hope they realize that if they really want to spread their ideas, this is not the way to do it. You don’t win a debate like this by refusing to let the other side speak. When you do that, as AL students have been doing repeatedly—and not just in response to Yiannopoulos—they lose in the court of public opinion.

These students, deeply marinated in identity politics and virtue signaling, are playing right into Milo’s hands. They aren’t really trying to change minds, but trying to censor others while demonstrating their own moral purity. Their actions have an effect directly opposite to what they say then want: they let the conservatives, the sexists, and the Trump-ites win.