An appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California-Davis was canceled last night by demonstrators protesting the gay gadfly.

Students formed a human chain around the auditorium, breaking through police barricades and shouting "Shut it down," prompting the campus College Republicans to cancel the event shortly before it was slated to start.

“The decision was made initially because the lives of the officers were threatened, the lives of the students were threatened as well as the property of the school,” executive director Andrew Mendoza said.

Yiannopoulos, who has been banned for life from Twitter, claimed on Facebook that the speech was canceled after “violence from left-wing protesters,” despite there being no reports of violence and no arrests.

“Left-wing thugs scared UC Davis into canceling my event last night by damaging property, hurling excrement at guests and starting fights," he wrote. "It was the university and campus PD who told us the event could not go ahead. Why is the university and its police force trying to pretend otherwise? Who are they trying to protect?”

Interim chancellor Ralph Hexter said he was “deeply disappointed” by the demonstrators, who were mostly UCD students.

“Our community is founded on principles of respect for all views, even those that we personally find repellent,” he said. “As I have stated repeatedly, a university is at its best when it listens to and critically engages opposing views, especially ones that many of us find upsetting or even offensive.”

Former pharmaceuticals executive Martin Shkreli was slated to join Yiannopoulos. Shkreli, the head of Turing Pharmaceuticals until he was charged with securities fraud, drew ire in 2015 for upmarking the price of a medication used by AIDS patients more than 5,000%.

More recently, he joined in a 4chan scam to perpetuate "cloversexual" as an alternate gender identity for pedophiles, and was suspended from Twitter for harassing a journalist.

Yiannopoulos recently signed a book deal with Simon and Schuster that netted him a $250,000 advance.