Sam Kriss, writing in VICE UK, recently attended an event hosted by the Young White Men Obsessed with ‘Free Speech’:
The Young British Heritage Society is the latest half-formed thing to rise out of our increasingly stupid free speech wars. Its general secretary, Jamie Patel, used his brief speech to announce that “cultural Marxists have hijacked the country’s institutions.” […] Keynote speaker Milo Yiannopoulos remarked that “if you question feminism you can find yourself thrown out of university.” The impression from all sides was that we’re now living in a society under politically-correct totalitarianism, where any opinion that falls outside the academy’s liberal dogmas is ruthlessly silenced. […] If the PC police really are trying to shut down free speech, they’re not doing a very good job of it.
Free speech here doesn’t really mean free speech. These are, after all, people from the same alt-right milieu who in “ Gamergate” threw an extended tantrum over video-game journalists writing things they didn’t approve of, with the implicit prescription that these things should not be allowed to be written, and then another one over an all-women Ghostbusters film, with the implicit prescription that this film should not be allowed to have been made.
Today, Leslie Jones, one of the stars of the new Ghostbusters movie had her personal web site defaced by hackers who posted nude photos of her, as well as copies of her driver’s license and passport. Yiannopolous was banned from Twitter for inciting harassment against Jones a month ago.