It’s okay to be White. Not okay to be a dick about it. 

STORRS, CT – A speech Tuesday night at the University of Connecticut titled “It’s Okay to Be White” sponsored by College Republicans ended with the speaker, Gateway Pundit writer and founder of Twinks 4 Trump Lucian Wintrich, being arrested after assaulting a student he accused of stealing his speech from the podium.

According to the Washington Post, the speech brought out 350 attendees who shouted and chanted down Wintrich for a half hour as he made inflammatory remarks such as accusing liberals of “wanting black people to dress like they did in Africa 300 years ago.” In a video of the speech a woman appeared to take a stack of papers from the podium, presumably Wintrich’s speech, and instead of alerting security and letting them handle the incident. Wintrich went into the audience and grabbed the woman. The crowd immediately pulled Wintrich off her and he was arrested by campus police and charged with breach of police before being released on $1000 bond.

Moments after Wintrich’s altercation and arrest, Sal Cipolla, a onetime prominent member of the neo-Fascist Proud Boys who accompanied Wintrich and documented his speech on video was also involved in an incident where police led him out of the hall. Cipolla over the past year has been arrested for assaulting reporters during an appearance at New York University of Proud Boy founder Gavin McInnes, again in Boston during a rally there, a month later for disrupting a performance of the Shakespeare play “Julius Ceaser” in Central Park and also was an attendee of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA, where he posed for pictures with White Supremacists David Duke and Mike “Enoch” Peinovich, even while McInnes declared the Proud Boys disavowed the “Unite the Right” rally and said they would not attend. Cipolla, who has stated months ago that he was no longer a Proud Boy, but has still promoted the organization particularly on his Twitter account, was not charged with any crime at UConn.

This is Salvatore Cipolla, someone who tagged along with Lucian Wintrich last night at UConn. This is just some of the blatant racism, transphobia, and misogyny he engages in. @UConn, please hold yourself accountable for the hateful rhetoric you allowed at your university. pic.twitter.com/W1yjbBz18i

— owen (@easybake_owen) November 29, 2017

Pro-Trump Art Show Oct. 8, 2016 from One People’s Project on Vimeo.

Wintrich considers himself a performance artist who started an outfit called Twinks4Trump, which fashioned itself as a pro-Trump LGBTQ organization. In October, 2016 he held an art show in New York City’s SoHo district who’s artists included those associated with the alt-right such as Milo Yiannopoulous, who did a stunt where be bathed himself in pig’s blood, and conservative propagandist James O’Keefe, who is currently under fire for attempting to bait the Washington Post into a fake news story implying a teen was impregnated by Alabama Senate Candidate Roy Moore. The Proud Boys, including McInnes and Cipolla, provided security for the event and assaulted someone protesting the event.

Wintrich went on to become a correspondent for the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing website that relies heavily on conspiracy theories the right promotes, and is supportive of the “alt-right”. Wintrich saw controversy in gaining credentials for the White House Press Corps representing the Gateway Pundit, which eventually resulted in a confrontation with Fox News reporter Jon Decker in which Wintrich said Decker assaulted him, even while others who were there deny there was a physical confrontation. Ironically, although the Gateway Pundit has been vocal against comedian Kathy Griffin when she posed in a tweeted picture of a severed head supposed to be that of Donald Trump, including crashing a press conference held by Griffin to address the matter, Wintrich still remains with the website, even though he once posted a tweet that has since been taken down of Trump as a plane crashing into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center which were to represent CNN.

Wintrich’s speaking engagement was controversial once it was announced, with UConn students urging college administrators to not allow it to take place, and those administrators siding with the Young Republicans in the name of free speech. The appearance Wintrich had at University of Massachusetts in Boston was in jeopardy before the UConn event after the student group hosting that event, Turning Point USA, stated they were “not comfortable” once he released publicity for the event and announced they postponed the talk until the spring saying they needed more time to plan.

In 2009, U Conn was one of a few campuses that recognized the now-defunct White Nationalist organization Youth for Western Civilization as a student group. YWC was a precursor to what is currently called the “alt-right” and included many figures that are involved in those circles today.