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Milo
Yiannopoulos, once the darling of the conservative movement, has
been escorted out of the building, But it wasn’t because of his
relentless harassment of black women like Leslie Jones, his sexism,
antisemitism, Islamophobia or homophobia. Talk of pedophilia is what
finally did him in.
The
gay white supremacist troll, Trump supporter and mascot of the
alt-right movement has met his expiration date, and now it’s
time to throw him in the garbage. He’s had a bad week. It all
went downhill when he made his appearance on HBO’s Real Time
With Bill Maher, and guests Larry
Wilmore and Malcolm Nance told him to “go f*ck yourself”
after he questioned their I.Q. Thinking you can go up against either
of these two men was a fatal lapse in judgment, but even that was not
his fall from grace, if you can call it that.
Ultimately,
a 2016 video surfaced in which Yiannopoulos approved of adults having
sex with children as young as 13. As a result, he was disinvited to
speak at the upcoming CPAC
conference. He resigned from his editor position at the white
nationalist Breitbart.com,
and Simon & Schuster cancelled his $250,000 book deal.
African
American author Roxane
Gay cancelled her own upcoming book--How to Be Heard-- with the
publisher to protest their decision to publish Yiannopoulos’
book, Dangerous. “Simon & Schuster realized it would cost
them more money to do business with Milo than he could earn for
them,” Gay wrote. “They were fine with his racist and
xenophobic and sexist ideologies. They were fine with his
transphobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. They were fine with how
he encourages his followers to harass women and people of color and
transgender people online.”
Part-court
jester, part-cyberbully and flame thrower, Milo has
said and done a lot of bad things. He was banned
from Twitter for waging a campaign of abuse against actress and
comedian Leslie Jones of Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters,
eventually causing her to quit the social media platform. The
alt-right figure is an advocate of GamerGate, which sends offensive
images to women, and in the case of Jones, sent images portraying her
as an ape, and comparing her to Harambe.
“If
at first you don’t succeed (because your work is terrible),
play the victim. EVERYONE GETS HATE MAIL FFS,”
Yiannopoulos tweeted.
“Ghostbusters
is doing so badly they’ve deployed @Lesdoggg to
play the victim on Twitter. Very sad!” Yiannopoulos posted,
followed by tweets that read: “Barely literate. America needs
better schools!” and “rejected by yet another black
dude.”
On
Breitbart, Yiannopoulos penned such commentaries as “MILO
on why Cyberbullying Isn’t Real,” “Master
Baiters: The Leftists Keeping America’s Race War Alive,”
”10
Things Milo Hates About Islam,” and “How
To Make Women Happy: Uninvent The Washing Machine And The Pill”
Trump
and his advisers are yuuuge fans of Milo. Senior White House
adviser Steve Bannon made him a star at Brietbart. Former national
security adviser Michael Flynn called Milo “brave” and a
“phenomenal individual.” Moreover, Trump tweeted that he
would withhold federal funds from UC Berkeley after the university
cancelled Yiannopoulos’ speech—sponsored by the College
Republicans--amid protests
on campus.
Meanwhile,
this latest implosion of Milo Yiannopoulos is just as much an
indictment of conservatives and the Republican Party as it is a
repudiation of this pretty boy monster. Milo is a pervert, but the
movement for which he served as front man has been perverted for
quite some time. Just look at the madman they have in the White House
and the policies they are promoting. Look at the hate, the raw racism
and xenophobia, the cruelty and depravity. It took pedophilia--the
worst thing one can imagine--for the conservatives and white
nationalists to turn their backs on Milo. He is a sorry excuse for a
human being, but he has been that way for quite some time. Bullying
Leslie Jones was not enough to outrage conservatives. In fact, he was
their hero because he harassed the black woman.
Milo
Yiannopolous came down harder and faster than Bill Cosby, quicker
than Eddie Kane Jr. from the Five Heartbeats. With a record like his,
one wonders if Milo could land a job in the Trump administration.
This
commentary originally appeared in The Grio
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