3583 Pepper-Sprayed At The UC Berkeley Anti-Milo Riot
The University of California at Berkeley was in flames on Wednesday after violent leftist rioters shut down the finale of Milo Yiannopoulos’s college lecture tour. Stefan Molyneux is joined by Kiara Robles who attempted to attend Milo's speech only to be pepper-sprayed by leftist rioters for wearing the "wrong" clothing. Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Tonight we're talking with Chiara Robles.
Now, you may not know her name, but I'm sure that you know her face if you've been following the horrifying footage coming out of the recent riots at UC Berkeley that shut down a speech to be given by Milo Yiannopoulos.
Now, She was the young woman in the...
It looked like a Make America Great Again hat.
It's actually a Make Bitcoin Great Again hat.
It looks similar.
She was giving an interview and someone slithered up next to her and jammed some pepper spray or some kind of homebrew chemical spray in her face, thus disabling her for quite some time.
She has the on-the-ground view of what happened that horrifying night and it's well worth hearing.
Here with Chiara Robles.
Now...
I made a catastrophic error in my description of the event.
I referred to a young lady who had been pepper sprayed because of a Donald Trump hat.
Now, to be fair, it looks a little bit like a Donald Trump hat.
However, it is not make America great again.
Chiara, please correct me just as about 10,000 people an hour did in the comments section.
What did your hat actually say?
Make Bitcoin great again.
All right.
Now, perhaps you'd just like to take people through, because we see the snippet, right?
You're being interviewed and some douche nozzle comes in with the pepper spray or whatever she did.
There are multiple douche nozzles involved.
So the journalist himself, the guy interviewing me, was already getting on my nerves.
For people who have or haven't seen the video, basically what's going on is that I'm talking to a journalist about the Berkeley protests, right?
They're still labeled as protests.
I wasn't even watching the media, but I just knew that's how they were going to spin it.
It's like, if you watch news once, you've seen it a thousand times.
And I was getting so annoyed with this gentleman who's telling me, he's like, so why are you here?
Why are you here?
It's like, well, I'm here to watch, you know, a speech.
I don't know what you're trying to insinuate.
Although, of course, you know, we all know what he's trying to insinuate.
So I'm starting to wrap up the conversation with him and I'm saying, okay, well...
Props to all the peaceful protesters here, but I think there are very few of them.
And thank God, my friends were watching out for me because I didn't even think to do this.
But, you know, they're watching from all sides.
They're, like, kind of protecting my back and whatnot.
Like, I have amazing, amazing friends.
Like, thank God for them.
And still, even with amazing friends, even with an amazing crew, you know, like, these people just come up and spray me with God knows what.
Like, honestly, I said it was pepper spray, but I don't really know that.
Like, it was something that burns your eyes.
It could be just some homebrew crap and who knows what the hell's in it, right?
Right, and that's even more scary.
So you mentioned this thing about Trump before and this truthful hypergamy.
It's like, okay, I say it's pepper spray, and then all these protesters come out and say, no, no, no, that wasn't pepper spray.
That was, you know, infinitely other terrible things.
Brand X eyeball shatterer.
I mean, what the hell are you supposed to do?
Now, at what point in the...
Evening the general degeneration into the Hellspawn Lord of the Flies situation that we saw from a distance.
At what point in the evening was this occurring?
And what was all that led up to it for you?
Right.
So I was out there really early.
So I bought like 10 tickets for this Milo event because I knew it was going to be hot, hot, hot.
And I was out there early in Berkeley, told all my friends to meet up with me at a cafe.
I was already getting flipped off for my Make Bitcoin Great Again hat there.
And I mean, it was, we were all waiting to go see this Milo show, right?
So we're waiting there.
It's like, okay, I think it's going to go on.
We think it's going to go on.
And that was about at around seven o'clock or something like that.
Cause that was essentially when they said initially that they were going to let people in.
I mean, I just, I think if it wasn't clear, cause the hat is kind of designed to confuse people, right?
It's like, are you pro Trump?
Are you not?
Who knows, but great for Bitcoin.
So either way, it's like I win.
And, um, People there were clearly just confused about it until I started to interview.
With the media.
So that happened at around 7 o'clock.
And five minutes later, five minutes later, I walk over.
And you guys had interviewed my friend Katrina as well.
So she kind of gave her perspective of the story.
It's like right after we walked away from that was the worst part of the attacks, right?
Because, you know, the pepper spray was one thing, but it was all caught on camera.
And they just destroyed their own movement.
They look terrible.
It's so idiotic to do that.
I don't understand any of it.
I don't see how that helps them at all.
But, you know, we get pushed up against these barricades and whatnot.
I'm not entirely convinced that they're very strategic thinkers for the long run.
That's just my particular perspective.
I think it's just like, let me vent some violence because of my chaotic and disgusting life.
But I don't think it's like, well, what benefits the movement optically in three months?
I don't think that's number one on their list.
Well, it's kind of how I think, I suppose.
So maybe that's why I'm mistaking the world for myself, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, so the worst of it was actually, like, once I finished that interview, and everyone had kind of seen what side I was on, if you want to think of it that way.
It's just...
I remember all these black marchers protesting by, just walking.
And I really did see it as a protest, even though they're dressed in all black and clearly were trying to hide their identities.
It's like, how naive was I? It's like, they start saying, no fascist USA, no fascist USA. And one of my close friends next to me, still with the naivety of us, is like, he's just telling me, he's like, oh look, we have some friends.
You know, it's like making jokes about it up until the end.
And it's like, all of a sudden, their protest begins to surround us And it's like, that's when I knew that it was just, it was just, it was just wrong.
And then before I had even time to recognize what was going on, this woman comes up to me and just like, like, with her flashlight in my camera, like, or not my camera, excuse me, my eyes.
I'm like, my vantage point.
It was just, Yeah, it just happened so, so, so quickly.
I hear people screaming.
And I'm sorry to interrupt, but I want to pause on this flashlight thing because I sort of want people to understand what though.
It's nighttime, it's chaotic.
Somebody's shining a flashlight in your face.
You don't know if it's so that you would be disoriented for the next physical attack.
You don't know if they're trying to basically blind you, right?
If you have any idea of like...
How to incite terror, that is how to do it.
It's because everything that they were doing, it's not like, I mean, I come from an MMA background, a kind of crypto-anarchist background.
If you want to fight, we're going to fight.
But that's not what they want.
I understand.
I'm particularly good at thumb wrestling, so I totally run with you.
Okay, go ahead.
Okay?
I'm not a pacifist, is what I'm saying.
It's like, I believe in self-defense, which means if someone's attacking you, then you have the right to defend yourself.
But the frustrating part about these types of riots is, they are purposefully treading the line of what violence is, right?
So online, they'll say, oh, well, it's a peaceful protest, or they'll say worse, shut it down, shut it down.
Well, what does shut it down mean?
Apparently, shut it down means, by whatever means necessary, beat people with flagpoles.
You know, it's like, they want to push you.
They want to push you.
If you've ever been to a bar or met an aggro gentleman ever in your life, it's like, they'll push your button and push your button until, boom, it's like, until you throw the first punch and you look crazy, which none of us did, you know, but obviously a light in your face at night.
Like you said, there were hundreds At least 150 people, you know, all dressed in black.
And my friends were like the only Trump and Milo supporters that I physically could identify because we were wearing the hats and, you know, they came with me and whatnot.
Yeah.
So, did it escalate quickly?
Was there a slow build or was it just like, as you say, protest and then suddenly it turns feral, like on a dime?
I mean, from my own personal perspective, you could look at it either way, right?
It was a slow build based on me being at this coffee shop.
I was being flipped off by old ladies for wearing my hat and whatnot.
But at the same time, at the riot or at the protest, whatever you want to call it, the speech, It seemed like it was violent the whole time.
I just didn't know how violent.
And it's really, okay, violence is happening five feet away from me, so I'm safe here.
Because generally, there were a lot of people with cameras who weren't being violent.
They were just watching, right?
And I felt safe at the time.
And then the next thing you know, it's like, no, once you're the target, it's violence.
And there's nothing you can do.
Like, you're surrounded.
And all these other, if there were any peaceful protesters there, it's like, they just watched and condone the whole damn thing.
And you see it publicly, too.
Everyone on the left, they just say, oh, well, you know, they call them hooligans.
Hooligans!
Breaking people's ribs, that makes you a hooligan now.
Well, or there's the blame the victim.
You know, well, Milo is provocative.
It's like, come on.
I mean, would you say that about a woman's short skirt if she got assaulted?
Of course not, all right?
I mean, we have the right to say things that upset other people.
I mean, that's kind of the whole point of free speech.
Like, there's no such thing as free speech for Teletubbies because who the hell cares what the Teletubbies say?
Free speech is specifically designed for the most annoying, aggravating, frustrating, incendiary speech that you can have short of, you know, fire in a crowded theater and overthrow this and overthrow that.
That's the whole point of free speech.
So saying, well, you have free speech unless you're upsetting people is exactly the same as saying you have no free speech at all.
Thank you.
I wish that were a question because that would make me look like a really good interviewer, but it's not.
It's just something I really want to reinforce to people.
I love the rants.
I love the rants and your passion around it.
It fuels me too because after something like that happens to you, it's like I can look at pictures online and I can see riots at Berkeley and I can get upset about it, but actually physically seeing, I talked about this somewhere else, it's like this guy had a shield with a heart spray painted on it.
And it's like You have no idea how confusing it is.
How much chaos is just that symbol can really just hit you.
It's like, why does the shield have the heart?
Obviously you're attacking, but you're attacking with love.
Maybe it's the opposite of the flower and the gun, right?
It's so strange.
Well, it's designed, you know, this whole love-trumps-hate thing, and we're all about the love, and it's a love revolution, and so on.
The whole point of that is to have you let your guard down.
I mean, it's nothing other than a strategy to say, oh, no, these are peaceful protesters, and so on.
That way I'm not going to come down with any defense, and I'm going to be optimistic.
And that's what I did!
And then they surround you.
It's like, wow, I mean...
Honestly, I'm very curious about how the people in the middle of the political spectrum can still be so convinced that these people are doing good.
You know, like the majority opinion, I think, I mean, maybe at least in California, certainly in California, where I'm from, that is the case.
Well, I think it's gotten to the point where people just recognize that to tame this is going to require some significant police presence.
It's going to require some significant aggression.
On the part of law enforcement, it's going to result in mass arrests.
There may be pitched battles.
People are just, you know, it's the old thing.
You know, the old idea that appeasement is going to just work out really, really well.
Or as Churchill said, appeasement is the hope that the crocodile eats you last.
And I think people are hoping that it, you know, it's the old thing.
Cross your fingers, hope it gets better, hope it goes away.
But of course it doesn't.
You know, when it seems to be that there were stand down orders or that there were direct don't arrest anyone orders, then you have a very dangerous and difficult situation because you're in a gun free zone.
You're not allowed to carry weapons.
You're relying on the police.
If the police are not doing their jobs, then you really have, I mean, you're being fed to the wolves.
I mean, you're being fed to the wolves with no intervention.
Right.
So it's like one of the things that I have to ask myself after this, and I've been thinking about this for years already, is how do I feel about the state, right?
Like, is the state designed to help you?
Is it designed to hurt you?
And naturally, it's both, right?
Like, there's this thin blue line that cops talk about, and there were some Trump supporters there, you know, like, shouting, like, oh, Blue Lives Matter or whatever, but they certainly didn't help us in that moment.
And, you know, on the other side of that, like, the protesters were no better.
We both equally hated the government, but at the same time, we hated each other.
It was It was such a strange thing.
I'm still trying to process it.
There's a dichotomy there that I know you probably go through on your show.
It's your support for Donald Trump and whatnot.
It's like, okay, maybe you're an anarchist.
When does it make sense to switch your position significantly?
Where's the lines?
Well, you know, I would argue that a lot of these people on the extreme left, they dislike the government because it's not big, violent, and lefty enough.
That's quite a bit different from the approach of smaller government to no government that is taken by, I think, more rational people.
Right, so you have a strategy when you think about this.
You say, okay, well, what's the approach 100 years down the line?
Okay, well, we need to have a culture that cultivates this kind of free speech.
How do we create that culture?
Obviously, the world's not ready for...
for bitcoin or the abolition of a state or whatever it's not they're not ready Well, and of course, the whole leftist fantasy that don't worry, after the massive totalitarian proletariat dictatorship, don't worry, the state's just going to wither away.
And it's like, I'd really like a few more details about that last part, if you don't mind, because that seems kind of important.
Give us all your rights, surrender all of your values, and don't worry, you'll get magic freedom later, somehow, magically.
I mean, it's just another example of the intellectual rigor of the left, where they call you a Nazi, bigoted, homophobe.
And it's like you didn't even Google it.
Like, oh, it makes me so mad.
Okay, so you're a gay Trump supporter who's going to see Milo, who is a gay Trump supporter, and you're getting attacked.
That's right.
Is the gay community coming out?
Are they stepping up?
Are they saying, you know, let's put a big rainbow coalition around one of our own?
I have something that I have not talked about before that is so funny to me.
Naturally, what you do after a riot is you go and you party.
Okay, so we're partying or whatever.
You've got to cool the adrenaline.
I mean, it's not going to leave on its own.
You've got to sneeze that out.
Maybe this isn't what you do.
This is what we were doing.
So we went out and we partied in the streets or whatever.
And I ended up getting separated from my group and I'm like, okay, well I have to get home.
I'm going to hop on the train.
And as I was walking, I passed one of the oldest gay bars in the city of Berkeley.
Possibly the whole state.
So it's called Whitehorse, whatever.
People know about it.
And These lesbians out front, this mass of lesbians are just like, oh my god, are you kidding me?
Because I'm still wearing a Trump beanie.
And they just aggressively surround me and they're like, oh, what are you doing?
What are you doing?
How do you support hate?
It's like all these sound bites that they hear.
It's like, ugh, really?
Okay.
So instead of walking to the train, I decided to go in there and have a drink by myself.
It's like, god, sometimes you wonder.
Maybe it's genetic.
I don't know why I put myself in these situations sometimes.
But no, the gay community is terrible.
I wouldn't recommend being gay if you can avoid it.
Well, certainly, if you're gay and on the left, well, if you're anyone on the left, you're okay.
We're down with that.
You're part of the oppressed class, but if you're gay or black or whatever, and you're on the right, well, too bad.
Sucks to be you.
You know, like we posted today about, with the last interviewee on the show, saying, well, here's a woman.
She got viciously attacked for her political beliefs.
Where are the feminists?
And of course, the feminists are like, well, she brought it on herself.
You know, like, because...
It's all about leftism.
It's not about what are called the sort of minorities or the women or protection of the rights of the oppressed and so on.
It's just about using people who have legitimately in the past been oppressed and are in some ways now, too.
It's using them to advance the leftist agenda, which I think is particularly reprehensible.
It's feasting on people's sympathy for the underdog in order to control the people.
And my big Latin phrase for that is...
Anyway, so...
I think we had a similar reaction there.
It's actually, it just reminded me of the gay bar.
I lived in Montreal for quite a while when I was doing theater school and undergraduate.
I went to a great bar.
Didn't notice, you know, it's kind of smoky in there.
This is back in the day.
A lot of guys in leather and so on.
And I went back out and looked at the sign and the bar was called K-O-X. And I'm like, huh.
Oh, well, I'm going in anyway because it was a great place to dance.
You have that crazy gene too then.
I don't know why we do that kind of shit.
It's kind of silly, you know.
Okay, so what happened?
Oh, it was a great time.
They had a drag show and it was a huge amount of fun.
I made some great friends.
And yeah, I mean, I'm in the theater world.
I mean, this is almost back then.
So it's not much of a hop, skip and a jump for my mindset.
So did you get any word that the speech was canceled?
Because the last lady I was talking to didn't have a clue.
Yeah, well, we did, but I honestly thought that it was probably some strategy.
Again, this is me thinking the left has a strategy.
I thought it was a strategy to say, oh no, this speech isn't going on.
We're flying Milo out of here on his helicopter or whatever.
And I just thought that it was a tactic of the left to say that it was shut down so that no one would show up.
Have you heard this theory?
Chiara, I can't...
It's amazing to me.
So this theory that's floating around, and this isn't floating around like some guy's crazy drunk cat's blog.
This is right there on the mainstream media.
The theory goes a little something like this, and as somebody who was on the ground, let me know if this...
Fits with your experience.
What happened, you see, was that the right were the ones who were dressed up like these crazy leftist ninjas.
Because, you know, they weren't students at Berkeley.
It's the right who was doing it.
It's a false flag operation designed to discredit the left.
And we suspect, some say, even Milo was in charge of this and hired these people and was running this to gain publicity.
And I'm like, wow, that is just astounding.
Okay, did you see Milo leading the charge anywhere?
Did you see people accepting, I don't know, right-wing bitcoins to perform these attacks?
I mean, did you have any indication of this on the ground?
It's actually, it's funny.
It's funny because their strategy is actually like a really stupid one.
Like, we don't organize like that.
The way that Milo gets to people is he has a tour called the Dangerous Faggot Tour.
And he's never promoted violence.
He doesn't say, oh, get that people.
Kill those people.
He's never been overtly dangerous.
But you're going to think he's dangerous because that's your narrative, right?
So it's like the strategy is three levels above whatever it is they're thinking, but it's nothing like that.
Was it...
Was it surprising to you to see the feral left up close and personal, was it?
I mean, I assume you went and were somewhat surprised at the escalation.
I think a lot of people knew that Berkeley was going to be bad.
I don't know if they thought it was going to be this bad or that bad.
But were you surprised at the lengths that it escalated to?
I mean, no.
I mean, I wasn't surprised.
I wish I had been more prepared.
It's like you don't really know exactly what violence looks like until you're in this situation.
You can think about it kind of in an intellectual way, but yes, I knew it would be violent because the left is violent, but I forgot how scary violence is.
I forgot how deeply it affects you.
It affects you at a biological level, at this Like, economic level, like, you know, this video goes public, I gave my name, and it's like, okay, so, you know, my job and whatnot.
And then, it's just, it affects you in so, so, so many ways.
Just this one violent incident.
Well, of course, as a biological species, we're designed to detect and avoid predators.
And this kind of aggression, they don't call it terrorism because it makes you feel good.
I mean, it does affect you top to bottom, back to front.
Well, Chiara, I just wanted to say thanks so much for all of the work that you're doing to get the information out about the ferocity and viciousness of what is going on there.
This is one of these crossroad times, people.
Sorry, left.
This is your team.
Oh, you can say, well, I'm on the moderate left.
Okay, great.
Then be on the moderate left and speak out against this kind of extremism.
Certainly, if there were people like this in the Donald Trump camp and they were attacking people and doing all this terrible stuff, the moderates would be all speaking out against it and working as hard as they could to make sure this stuff didn't spread.
So don't claim to me that you're on the moderate left and they don't represent you.
If you're on the left and you're not condemning it as hard as the people on the right, you're part of the problem.
I'm going to just conceptually put you in the same bag of assholes.
I'm afraid that's just the way it rolls for me.
It's time for the left to step up and tame these pets.
I don't know where they've grown from, what petri dish they've found to come forth and do what they're doing, but it is absolutely incumbent upon everyone to condemn this kind of violence.
People have the right to speak, especially as a public university, where they get half their damn funding from the federal government, a bunch of it comes from taxpayers.
This is a public right to have people come and peacefully speak about ideas.
I don't care if you find them challenging.
I don't care if you find them difficult.
Be an adult.
Come up with a counter-argument.
Put your damn fists away and grow the hell up.
And pull your pants up too.
And uncover your face as well.
Come on.
Anyway, that's just my little bit here.
But yeah, the people on the left got to step up and condemn this stuff because any kind of acceptance of this, any kind of justification with this, you're on the wrong side.
You're on the bad guy team.
You are part of the League of Maleficence.
So...
I just really wanted to point that out.
Thanks so much for putting yourself out there and getting this information out there.
