By Marcus Brown
Today would have been the day controversial Breitbart Technology Editor Milo Yiannopoulos would have held a public speaking engagement at the Iowa State University Memorial Union. Luckily, the event was canceled after an increase in security fees for reserving the room that exceeded the initial amount detailed to the ISU Students 4 Trump President Austin Giles. While the raise in price could have been entirely coincidental and revelatory upon ISU administration’s further analysis of the level of security necessary for such an event, I would hope it was intentional and premeditated.
For those unaware of who Yiannopoulos is, I would say you aren’t missing much. Yiannopoulos is an outspoken social critic, if it must be phrased in a polite manner, with ideology reflective of the so-called “alt-right.” In all actuality, Yiannopoulos is just one of many who have used the recent attempts to normalize white supremacy and Neo-Nazism in the public eye to catapult himself to popularity, and I for one am glad that ISU decided not to perpetuate what can only be described as a global regression of policy and ideology.
Advocates in favor of Yiannopoulos, the “alt-right,” and the Great Value brand messages of hate they spew will cite a nonexistent liberal, fascist agenda bent on eliminating freedom of speech by way of human decency and empathy as the cause for Yiannopoulos’ cancellation. However, the reality of the matter is that as an institution of higher learning indicative of a litany of different perspectives and ideologies, ISU will eventually find itself in a moment in which it must decide what principles and morals it will choose to represent. That fateful day in November marked the point in which we as a nation have moved beyond pretending to be impartial.
Make no mistake, now is the time in which true intentions will be revealed. Thankfully, ISU made the decision to stand on the right side of history, no pun intended. The danger of President-elect Trump’s reign will not come solely from his own ineptitude, but rather the doors opened for those who have been waiting for the opportunity to present ludicrous messages of hate that have no place in the modern world. While a mistake was made on a national level in terms of the presidential election, that does not mean we must sit back idly and allow the normalization of deplorable ideology.
Simply because we, and by we I do not mean myself, made a foolish choice in whom we allowed to reside in the White House does not mean we should make the same mistake in whom we allow into what is supposed to be a bastion for higher intellectual pursuits.
With the world effectively in shambles and only getting worse by the day, it is important to recognize the battles we cannot afford to lose. The plight we find ourselves in now did not happen overnight, and more troublesome than that is the fact that there are still many people milling about unaware of the implications of what has been set in motion. So much time has been spent framing the future of our country in conversations of the lesser of two evils that it would appear as though we as a nation have lost the ability to gauge what should and should not be acceptable regardless of the other choice. We may have lost the White House, but we don’t need to lose our schools, too. Once those are gone, we will truly have nothing left.