Unpacking cancel culture: Is it censorship, civil right or something else?

  There’s no shortage of passionate opinions about cancel culture.

  Depending on who you ask:

• Cancel culture is on the rise. Cancel culture isn’t real.
• Canceling has little to no effect on the canceled. Canceling ruins lives.
• Cancel culture is a threat to free speech. Cancel culture is just speech holding others accountable.

  There isn’t agreement on what “canceling” means.

Amy Crawford: White nationalists are targeting college campuses, and these students are fighting back

  In January, the night before alt-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at the University of California, Berkeley, two members of the white supremacist group American Renaissance got in a fistfight with other young men after they were caught plastering trees and buildings around campus with posters that proclaimed, “Embrace white identity!”

  In February, a spoofed faculty email address sent hundreds of University of Michigan students messages that threatened black and Jewish people, using the phrase “Heil Trump.” The emails, which the FBI is investigating, followed the appearance of racist flyers around campus the previous fall.

Sam Fulwood III: Milo’s fall from a hateful summit

  Until recently, I’d never heard of Milo Yiannopoulos. How I wish that blissful ignorance had remained intact.

  Over the past several years, Yiannopoulos has developed a fanatic following among a minority of Americans who’ve embraced his nasty bleating on Breitbart. Had he been confined exclusively to Breitbart, I might not have ever become aware of him. Alas, he crossed my path this month, turning up like a lightening bug smashing into my social media windshield.

  The bombastic provocateur accepted a headline speaking gig at the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. That didn’t sit too well with some of Yiannopoulos’ critics, of which I’ve learned there are legions. He seems to enjoy attracting controversy as a means to burnish his reputation and line his pocket. Yiannopoulos is an unlikely hero for the conservative political action group; he’s an openly gay man who delights in thumbing his nose at mainstream social conventions.

Gene Policinski: What is “free speech” on the web — in theory and in practice?

  Who can say what, on the Web?

  Twitter has raised questions anew with reports of a lifetime ban on tweets from conservative blogger Milo Yiannopoulos — reportedly after complaints that he engineered a wave of racist and sexist comments directed against comedian and actress Leslie Jones, who is co-starring in the latest “Ghostbusters” movie.

  Yiannopoulos is an editor on the conservative blog site Breitbart.com whose posts frequently create controversy on the web. He responded to the reported Twitter action by saying, “Anyone who cares about free speech has been sent a clear message: You’re not welcome on Twitter.” He also called the ban “cowardly.”