Andrew Bolt: Political showman Milo Yiannopoulos has exposed the Left during his Australian visit

I FACED the whooping crowd at the first stop of Milo Yiannopoulos’s tour, which violent protesters are trying to stop.

“You believe in free speech,” I cried. They cheered.

“You believe in civilisation.” They cheered again.

But then, having introduced Milo, I listened by the side of the Adelaide stage and felt sicker and sicker. Civilisation? I saw Milo, the US-based conservative provocateur, screen a picture of Clementine Ford, the Australian feminist provocateur, and call her “unf--able”. I heard him call former Prime Minister Julia Gillard a “pr — k”. I heard him say Muslim asylum seekers were skilled at raping women. As it went on I rang my wife in a panic: “What do I do?”

US-based conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has exposed the Left.

How could I be associated with something so counter to what I consider civilisation? How could I let free speech seem nothing more than a licence to be savage?

Should I walk out, or go back on stage for my planned Q & A with Milo and reprimand him to his face? Which I did. Friends, I have been on a journey with Milo and it has not been easy.

I first heard of Milo Yiannopoulos because Leftists tried to shut down his Dangerous Faggot tour of American universities, punching and screaming and even burning. And I agreed to MC the first two events of his Australian tour — in Adelaide and Perth — be- cause WA Premier Mark McGowan declared Milo “not welcome” in his state.

That’s how Milo’s haters have created him. The thugs who now attack his audiences in Sydney and Melbourne are precisely why so many people flock to his defence and come to his shows.

Police in riot gear cordon off protesters outside Milo Yiannopoulos’s show in Melbourne. Protesters clash with Victorian Police outside Yiannopoulos’s show.

Some 14,000 people have bought tickets to his Australian tour — a huge result for a visiting 33-year-old political spruiker vilified by almost every media organisation.

But more than give Milo publicity, those rioters have demonstrated exactly what he most preaches against — the frightening shutting down of debate. How I hate that and for me it’s personal. I had a book launch in Melbourne cancelled after serious threats of violence from the Left and I was physically attacked by masked Antifa protesters when about to launch an academic’s book on Donald Trump.

I’ve seen commentators denounce Milo as a “neo-Nazi” and heard haters outside his Sydney show scream “racist, sexist, anti-queer, Milo is not welcome here”.

Milo’s fans know they lie. In fact, Milo has Jewish ancestry, is flamboyantly gay and says his husband is black.

He is exactly what the Left should love in this age of identity politics.

They love how the reaction of his haters exposes them as utter, utter hypocrites.

That is what Milo’s fans pay good money to see — someone poking the feral Leftist bear and exposing it as tatty and toothless. How they laugh.

I now look again at what Milo said in his show that most shocked me and compare it with the abuse the Left dishes out without ever being disowned by the institutions now trashing this one gay guy from the Right. And we see this violence of the Left — a vicious rage against one man who dares fight back with its own weapons. Who wouldn’t pay for such a show?

Thanks for exposing the Left, Milo. It’s been — mostly — a pleasure.

Andrew Bolt is a News Corp columnist