...When Yiannopoulos arrives on campus, there’s a potential for all hell to break loose. Many appearances are canceled because of student petitions. At others, protesters amass outside the auditorium. Women smear red paint on themselves. Attendees sound air horns to block out his voice.
In May, at DePaul University, activists stormed the stage where Yiannopoulos was being interviewed and snatched the microphone, threatening to punch him in the face while security stood idly by.
Once, he says, a man leaped from the audience, shouting “Go take a bath with a toaster!”
“That was really good. I was like, solid nine,” Yiannopoulos says.
A professional mischief maker and provocateur, he loves a grand entrance. Wherever Yiannopoulos goes, the Loki from London swoops in with rapid-fire talking points delivered in a playfulness so foreign—and intoxicating—to most journalists and Americans that they are left standing in the rubble, dumbfounded.
At universities across the country he has paraded into hissing crowds of students accompanied by a mariachi band and wearing a poncho while shaking maracas. He once ascended to the stage on a throne hoisted above the shoulders of a dozen young white men in Make America Great Again hats to chants of “USA! USA!” He sometimes dresses in a policeman stripper uniform.
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