“Protests Don’t Work”: Student Provokes Turmoil on TV

Wolfson student and Telegraph columnist Milo Yiannopoulos caused a ‘shit storm’ on Twitter last week after speaking out against student protests on TV.

On Channel 4 show 10 O’Clock Live on Thursday night, Yiannopoulos said: “Protests actually don’t work,” arguing that the Government’s recent U-turn on selling forests wasn’t due to protesting.

During a TV debate on the student protests, he said England has had only “one exception where protesting has worked, and that has been the poll tax.”

He told protesters: “the best way you can express your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what a political party is doing is at the ballot box.”

Yiannopoulos appearing on the show

But viewers and the audience were angered by Yiannopoulos’ views, and many took to Twitter to voice their outrage.

‘OliDuggan’ wrote: “Milo Yiannopoulos is a twat. I’ve never gone from never having heard of someone to hating them in such a short time,” while ‘LarkinBob’ tweeted: “Milo Yiannopoulos, what an annoying, pompous, arrogant twat.”

The backlash was so intense that Yiannopoulos began ‘trending’ in the UK, meaning he was one of the most popular subjects tweeted about.

Twitterer ‘skattyadz’ summed up the content of most posts, tweeting: “so it turns out that most people think that Milo Yiannopoulos is a prick.”

Yiannopoulos, who use to be The Tab‘s theatre editor, appeared as a guest on the Channel 4 comedy news show, along with protestor Tamsin Omond and author Ed Howker. The debate was chaired by comedian and Cambridge’s Best Bloke, David Mitchell.

Howker, Omond, and the audience all sided with the protesters. Omond even received a round of applause from the audience for criticising Yiannopoulos’ opinion.

But despite the back-lash, Yiannopoulos stood by his comments on the show. The Tab approached Yiannopoulos, who said: “I don’t think anything I said is extreme or controversial.

“There was always going to be a shit storm on Twitter. I went on knowing it was going to be a tough crowd, basically populated by young lefties who belligerently follow any ideas put forward by a comedian.

“It’s flattering to be trending on Twitter, but all it really proves is the left’s inability to accept any dissenting views and their obsession with their own echo chamber.”

Yiannopoulos is no stranger to Twitter controversy. Last year, Stephen Fry called him a “cynical ignorant fucker” via Twitter after Yiannopoulos called Fry “somewhat opportunistic” for offering to foot the legal costs of a man who lost his job due to a joke on Twitter.