When Milo Yiannopoulos last visited U.C. Berkeley, in February, he was met with a spectacular protest straight out of a conservative fever dream. The students of the university, famous for its left-wing activists, set up blockades in front of the hall where the controversial far-right figure was supposed to speak. Black-masked antifa protesters, including many non-Berkeley students from Oakland, swept through the plaza with rocks and Molotov cocktails, and left a trail of destruction in their wake: smashed windows, toppled police towers, and injured students. While in the end Yiannopoulos wasn’t permitted to speak, the event was nevertheless deemed a decisive media victory. Milo had provoked, and Berkeley had responded, as if precisely following a script. The university was shown to be a definitively illiberal institution. Even Donald Trump got in on the leftist bashing, tweeting a subtle threat: “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?” In the strange calculus of the current free speech war, Yiannopoulos had won by not being allowed to open his mouth.

But Yiannopoulos was hardly able to capitalize on this form of media-trolling glory. The following months, after all, were rather tumultuous. He was forced to resign from Breitbart after it was revealed that he uttered comments that seemed to condone pedophilia. In the wake of the scandal, Simon & Schuster dropped his book deal. (He would later self-publish his work, Dangerous.) He launched a multimedia venue called Milo Inc., with a purported investment of at least $10 million, and promised stunts that failed to meet the notoriety he promised.

But then, in August, he announced that he would return to the scene of his former triumph. At Berkeley he planned to hold a four day-long event called “Free Speech Week,” sponsored by Milo Inc., from September 24 to 27, which would be a celebration of conservative thought held at the epicenter of left-wing activism. The initial lineup appeared impressive, including appearances by conservative megastars such as Ann Coulter and Steve Bannon. “‘This is going to be our Woodstock,’ ” Mike Cernovich, the Infowars host and Twitter activist, recalled Yiannopoulos telling him. (Yiannopoulos declined to comment for this story.)

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The university quickly promised that it would do everything it could to facilitate the event, to the chagrin of many in the Berkeley community. “I don’t want Berkeley being used as a punching bag,” Berkeley mayor Jesse Arreguin told the San Francisco Chronicle, calling for the event to be canceled. “I am concerned about these groups using large protests to create mayhem.”

Less than two weeks before the event was to begin, however, a more complicated reality began to emerge. Prominent personalities listed on the schedule—academics like Charles Murray and Heather MacDonald; pundit Michael Malice; and former Google engineer James Damore—said they had never been invited in the first place. Gateway Pundit’s Lucian Wintrich announced on Wednesday night that he was withdrawing from the event, citing both a packed schedule and “uncertainty surrounding the event on both sides.” Coulter silently disappeared from several iterations of the scheduled lineup. Bannon’s calendar suddenly became clogged with what several associates told me were previous commitments. (Neither Coulter nor Bannon’s representatives returned the Hive’s requests for comment.) And Cernovich, who was listed as a speaker on several schedules, told me that many other speakers were unsure whether they should come, too. “It’s very frustrating for everyone involved, myself included,” he said. “I know I’m scheduled to speak on the 27th. I plan on speaking on the 27th. But that’s all I know.”