Former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, once the darling of the conservative movement, met his downfall this week, but it wasn’t because of his relentless harassment of black women like Leslie Jones, his sexism, antisemitism, Islamophobia or homophobia.
It was actually his support for pedophilia that finally did him in.
The openly gay white supremacist troll, Trump supporter and mascot of the alt-right movement has finally 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, and he should’ve asked somebody, 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 As a result, his invitation to speak at the upcoming CPAC conference was rescinded. He resigned from his editor position at Breitbart.com, and Simon & Schuster cancelled his $250,000 book deal.
African-American author Roxane Gay cancelled her own upcoming book with the publisher — How to Be Heard —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, the gorilla who was killed at Cincinnati Zoo in May 2016:
I just don’t understand pic.twitter.com/N9xWoXPttu
— Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) July 18, 2016
“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 HUGE fans of Milo. Senior White House adviser Steve Bannon made him a star at Breitbart. 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.
If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view – NO FEDERAL FUNDS?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017
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 frontman 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 black women. So what does that say about them?
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.
Follow David A. Love on Twitter at @davidalove.