Tag: Milo Yiannopoulos

I can quote the SPLC again, so here’s David Neiwert saying Milo Yiannopoulos isn’t being “ironic” when he says he looks forward to seeing journalists slaughtered.

Yiannopoulos appears to be dead serious – that is, he sincerely believes that right-wing assassins should begin taking out targeted reporters. He’s been saying so on a number of forums, and it’s clear that he isn’t being simply “ironic” in the classic alt-right hall-of-mirrors fashion.

Yiannopoulos’ career has been in precipitous decline over the past year, following his sudden rise to media stardom as a leading figure in the alt-right, due largely to his influential role during the “Gamergate” controversy, then as an editor at Breitbart News. However, after an interview surfaced in February 2017 which he suggested sexual relations between adult men and young boys could be beneficial, he lost his sponsorship by the Mercer family, was dropped by his publisher, and resigned his position at Breitbart. Then in October, his close dalliances with white nationalists while at Breitbart (including an evening of karaoke with Richard Spencer) were exposed by Buzzfeed.

He’s not “just” a troll and never has been.

He’s also edged closer to making “ironic” signals in the direction of the racist alt-right, notably by donating $14.88 – an amount identical to the numbers used to signal the overt neo-Nazi faction of the alt-right – to a Jewish journalist who had pleaded for financial help in an online fundraiser.

His most recent venture has involved participating in a “soft coup” in his native England, a takeover of Nigel Farage’s floundering right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) by members of the “alt-lite” brigade. Along with Infowars reporter Paul Joseph Watson, YouTube personality “Count Dankula” (real name: Mark Meechan), and  Carl Benjamin, aka “Sargon of Akkad,” another YouTube personality, the faction wants to “Make Britain Great Again” by taking over the UKIP leadership and making the party a safe space for the like-minded.

When Guardian reporter Will Sommer asked Yiannopoulos about his decision to join UKIP, he responded by email that he “can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight!”

Since then, he has doubled down on his call for violence against journalists. On Instagram, he responded to a similar query from Mediaite reporter Amy Russo with a post that has since been removed.

“If journalists keep lying, deceiving and manipulating the public, then they will reap the same hatred they are sowing against Trump and his voters,” he wrote. “Truthfully I take no pleasure in the prospect; I’d rather beat you in a debate hall than a wrestling ring. But you did this to yourselves, and you deserve what’s coming.”

Saying he takes no pleasure in the prospect – now that’s trolling. Of course he does.

Violence has accompanied Yiannopoulos at a number of steps in his career, notably during his 2016-2017 “Dangerous Faggot” speaking tour. At the University of Washington in Seattle on the night of January 20, 2017 – the evening of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president – a man involved in protests outside a Milo speech was shot by a couple of angry alt-right activists; they are both still awaiting trial. A speech in Berkeley shortly afterward was canceled due to threats of violence from both sides, provoking threats from Trump on his Twitter account.

That’s one reason I say he’s not a troll. He does get giggles from it, yes, but he also means it.

Milo Yiannopoulos was wishing gun slaughter on journalists the other day, just in time to be ahead of the actual mass gun slaughter of journalists yesterday.

Milo Yiannopoulos encouraged vigilantes to start “gunning journalists down” just two days before a Maryland newspaper was targeted in a shooting that killed five people.

Yiannopoulos, the prominent right-wing figure who used to work as a senior editor at the far-right news website Breitbart, told the US news website Observer over text message: “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.”

He was responding to a request about a longer feature about a restaurant he is said to frequent, according to the outlet. When asked to elaborate by the Observer, Yiannopoulos said the statement was his “standard response to a request for comment.”

With his usual taste and generosity, he posted a picture of himself with a gun and a sneer.

#BREAKING: After encouraging “vigilante squads” to gun down reporters, Milo Yiannopoulos doubles down on comments, posting an image of him holding a gun and writing “I regret nothing I said.” pic.twitter.com/BbfDh8Rr85

— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) June 28, 2018

Oh look –  Milo Yiannopoulos sued Simon & Schuster for dropping his book, so S&S submitted the editor’s comments on the manuscript, so we get to read them.

The editor did not think it was a good book.

In July, Yiannopoulos set out to sue Simon & Schuster for $10m for breach of contract. As part of the case, Simon & Schuster have submitted documents that reveal the problems they had with the book. Among other criticisms, the publisher’s notes say Yiannopoulos needed a “stronger argument against feminism than saying that they are ugly and sexless and have cats” and that another chapter needs “a better central thesis than the notion that gay people should go back in the closet”.

In addition to the documents, a full copy of an early manuscript of the book, complete with the Simon & Schuster editor Mitchell Ivers’s notes, is available to download from the New York state courts’ website.

The tone is set in notes on the prologue to the manuscript. Ivers writes to Yiannopoulos: “Throughout the book, your best points seem to be lost in a sea of self-aggrandizement and scattershot thinking,” and adds: “Careful that the egotistical boasting … doesn’t make you seem juvenile.”

If only someone could convince Trump of that.

You have to wonder what Simon & Schuster was expecting, though. Boasting and scattershot thinking are all there is to Milo Yiannopoulos. Did they think he would write a well-argued book free of narcissism?

Ivers frequently calls on Yiannopoulos to back up his assertions in the text. In the first nine pages of chapter one, notes include: “Citations needed”, “Do you have proof of this?”, “Unsupportable charge” and “Cite examples”.

…The editor makes several notes asking the author to tone down racism in the text. “Delete irrelevant and superfluous ethnic joke,” Ivers writes of a passage about taxi drivers. “Let’s not call South Africa ‘white’” is another request, while elsewhere Yiannopoulos is reprimanded for using the phrase “dark continent” about Africa.

In a way it seems unfair to young Mr Y. The only reason he was invited to write a book was because of his notoriety as a Twitter asshole. (How do I know that? Because there is no other possible reason. That notoriety is all there is to him.) Since that’s why he was invited to write a book, it’s not surprising that that’s the kind of book he wrote; it would not have been unreasonable of him to have assumed that that’s what they wanted and expected. If they didn’t want and expect that, why invite him to write a book, when that’s the only thing he’s known for?

But that’s not to say I feel at all sorry for him.

Yiannopoulos is repeatedly warned his choice of words is undermining any argument he is attempting to make. “The use of phrases like ‘two-faced backstabbing bitches’ diminishes your overall point,” reads one comment. “Too important a point to end in a crude quip” is another. “Unclear, unfunny, delete,” reads another.

The early sections of a chapter on feminism prompt the note: “Don’t start chapter with accusation that feminists = fat. It destroys any seriousness of purpose.” Yiannopoulos goes on to criticise contemporary feminism as “merely a capitalist con-job – a money-grab designed to sell T-shirts to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé fans with asinine slogans”. “Um … like your MILO SWAG?” the editor responds.

Oh, burn.

Ivers’s evident exasperation becomes clear by page 84, where Yiannopoulos’s call for lesbians to be thrown out of academia altogether simply elicits the all-upper-case comment: “DELETE UGH.”

Ok well I’ll be saying that to everything from now on.

Milo is sad.

Sad news: The Daily Caller has caved to pressure and cancelled my weekly column after a day, claiming, falsely, they never planned to run weekly contributions from me. They were perfectly happy having my name and face on their site when we were paying for ads for my New York Times bestselling book, DANGEROUS. The Daily Caller is also throwing its opinion editor Rob Mariani under the bus: we are told he has just been fired. I’m disappointed, to put it mildly. Never mind book publishers — even right-wing media these days are spineless in the face of outrage mobs, Twitter protests and frothing establishment Republicans. Where will it end? So: no new MILO column for now. This sort of cowardice is why the Right in America loses and will keep losing the culture wars. 

I wonder what he thinks those screenshots establish. A midlevel editor wanted to make him a regular [but unpaid according to CNN] columnist but was overruled. Yes, and?

So it seems that Milo Yiannopoulos is too much even for the Daily Caller.

The Daily Caller on Saturday, facing backlash, fired its opinion editor and canceled a weekly column he had offered right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

“Sad news: The Daily Caller has caved to pressure and cancelled my weekly column after a day, claiming, falsely, they never planned to run weekly contributions from me,” Yiannopoulos wrote Saturday on Facebook, adding that he was “disappointed, to put it mildly.”

Just a day prior, the Daily Caller, a conservative news and opinion website, had published a column by Yiannopoulos on the topic of the sexual harassment allegations against actor Kevin Spacey.

The opinion editor offered him a regular weekly unpaid column; the editor in chief said Nope.

A note at the bottom of his Spacey column indicated it was the “first installment” in a “new weekly column.” The note is no longer attached to the column.

The news of a regular column from Yiannopoulos did not go over well.

The Daily Caller came under immediate fire on social media for giving platform to Yiannopoulos, a controversial figure associated with white nationalism who resigned from the right-wing Breitbart website earlier this year over comments he made about pederasty. Robert Mercer, the billionaire conservative donor, said earlier this week that he was “mistaken” to have supported Yiannopoulos and that he was severing ties.

Okay…any second thoughts about Trump?

Helen Lewis on Yiannopoulos and the populist right:

Alas, poor Milo Yiannopoulos, we hardly knew ye. Well, actually, that’s not true. I first encountered Yiannopolous in 2012, when he tried to slut-shame a friend of mine, sex blogger Zoe Margolis, after she criticised his tech site, the Kernel.  “We write about how tech is changing the world around us,” he tweeted. “You write about how many cocks you’ve sucked this week. Back off.”

It was a typical Milo performance. Flashy, provocative – and steeped in misogyny.

Misogyny was his chief claim to fame for years.

Helen’s take on the claims about his rise and fall is the same as mine.

What changed CPAC’s mind? On 18 February, the organisation had tweeted that “free speech includes hearing Milo’s important perspective”.

Milo’s important perspective on what was left unanswered, because it is unanswerable. Does anyone, really, think that Milo Yiannopoulos has deep and rigorously researched convictions? That his statements on feminism, on transgender people, or his criticisms of Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones, spring from some deep well of evidence and sincerity?

My point exactly. He has no important perspective, he has only the habits of a bully. The two are not the same. CPAC invited him to “speak” because it likes that kind of bullying.

For those on the left, the overwhelming reaction to all this has been: why now? Why these comments, not the ones about “preening poofs“, or lesbians faking hate crimes, or the danger of Muslims, or the harassment campaign against Leslie Jones which got him permanently banned from Twitter? (Do you know how consistently and publicly awful you have to be to get banned from Twitter???)

There’s only one answer to that, really: yesterday marked the moment when Milo Yiannopoulos ceased being an asset to the mainstream right, and became a liability.

Why yesterday and not before? Because, frankly, misogynist bullying just doesn’t count.

The strangest part of yesterday was seeing Milo Yiannopoulous’s increasingly sincere Facebook posts, as the awful realisation dawned on him – as it dawned on Nigel Farage during the referendum – that the sweet shelter of the mainstream right was being withdrawn from him. When he had attacked his female peers in the London tech scene, when he attacked transgender people for being “mentally ill”, when he attacked an actor for the temerity to be black, female and funny in a jumpsuit, he was given licence. He was provocative, starting a debate, exercising his free speech. But yesterday he found out that there is always a line. For the right, it’s child abuse – because children, uniquely among people who might be sexually abused, are deemed to be innocent. No one is going to buy that a 13-year-old shouldn’t have been out that late, or wearing that, or brought it on himself.

Unless maybe the 13-year-old is black and wearing a hoody.

I would not be surprised if this isn’t the end of Milo Yiannopoulos’s career, and I will watch with keen interest what strategies he will use for his rehabilitation. He’s still got his outlaw cachet, and there are still plenty of outlets where the very fact that people are objecting to a speaker is assumed to mean they have something that’s worth hearing. And there are plenty more ideas that some on the right would be happy to see pushed a little further into the mainstream – with plausible deniability, of course. If that’s the extreme, then the mainstream shifts imperceptibly with every new provocation. Because he’s not one of us, oh no. They’re not, either. But you see, they must be heard. And provocateurs are useful, until they’re not. But it’s not the left who decides when that is. Only the mainstream right can stop the extremists on their flanks.

Which is too bad, because most of them seem to have no intention of it.

Now Yiannopoulos has lost his book deal.

Publisher Simon & Schuster announced Monday it cancelled Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos’s book deal, the latest development in the growing backlash over resurfaced videos of the far-right provocateur criticizing age-of-consent laws.

A statement from the publishing house offered little explanation: “After careful consideration, Simon & Schuster and its Threshold Editions imprint have cancelled publication of ‘Dangerous’ by Milo Yiannopoulos.”

After careful consideration of what, one wonders. Not his notorious extended career as a Twitter bully, certainly, because that’s how he became pseudo-famous, and that’s why Simon and Schuster wanted his “book” in the first place. Not his provocations since then, for the same reason. Not the fact that he’s obviously a nasty shit. So, what, then?

I suppose the fact that the water got too hot once even CPAC disavowed him. Yesterday they thought he was worth a quarter of a million bucks, and today they decided he’s not, because oh gee gosh look, he’s not a nice guy. Who knew?!

Simon & Schuster faced a flurry of criticism from the literary worldlate last year when word got out that the publishing house paid Yiannopoulos a $250,000 advance for a forthcoming book.

Known for inflammatory comments about women and Muslims, Yiannopoulos is an openly gay and self-described “free-speech fundamentalist” who has declared that “feminism is cancer” and was blocked on Twitter after sending tweets targeting  “Saturday Night Live” cast member Leslie Jones, who is black.

“Free speech fundamentalist” my ass. He’s a professional troll, and nothing else. I blame the BBC for inviting him to talk on its news shows on the basis of nothing other than his history of trolling.

Now even Breitbart is edging away…which is pretty ridiculous, really.

By late Monday afternoon, there were ongoing discussions at Breitbart about Yiannopoulos’s future at the company, according to two people familiar with the organization who were not authorized to speak. Inside the newsroom, several staffers made clear to senior leadership that they felt uncomfortable and may decide to leave if he stays, the people said.

A bit late for that, I think.

In a Facebook update Monday, Yiannopoulos conceded responsibility for the way some have interpreted his comments.

“I’m partly to blame,” he wrote. “My own experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted to on this subject, no matter how outrageous. But I understand that my usual blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humor might have come across as flippancy, a lack of care for other victims or, worse, ‘advocacy.’ I deeply regret that. People deal with things from their past in different ways.”

Ha. He deeply regrets nothing. He likes drawing emotional blood. All he regrets is misjudging what his buddies would put up with.

More on Yiannopoulos:

Milo Yiannopoulos, the Breitbart senior editor and right-wing provocateur, has been profiting from a feedback loop of predictable outrage for some time now, and the alt-right’s takeover of the Republican Party has helped him take his trolling to an even bigger audience.

His trolling. Not his writing, not his ideas, not his thought – his trolling. He’s not a writer or thinker, he’s just a troll. He’s just a smartass who enjoys bullying people until they squeak, because that’s what trolls do. That’s all there is to him, and that’s why he’s not any kind of poster boy for free speech. Free trolling, yes, but then free trolling isn’t the same thing as free speech.

On Saturday, Yiannopoulos scored his biggest prize yet (aside from, perhaps, this Trump tweet): an invitation to speak at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. “An epidemic of speech suppression has taken over college campuses,” said CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp. “Milo has exposed their liberal thuggery and we think free speech includes hearing Milo’s important perspective.”

Utter bullshit. He has no “important perspective.” He’s a troll. That smelly kid in the back row who keeps throwing used kleenexes at people has no “important perspective” either; he’s just a bully. There’s no important principle or freedom at stake when it’s trolls or bullies. Trolls and bullies can be told to go away and not come back, and nothing of value is lost.

Then a couple of conservative groups started circulating videos of Yiannopoulos saying good things about sex with young boys. There was outrage. Outrage was merited, but there should have been outrage years ago. CPAC shouldn’t have invited a notorious trolling bully to “speak” in the first place. It’s revolting that overt public bullying is not enough reason to avoid him.

CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp was still standing by Yiannopoulos on Sunday night, though he did not address the videos directly. He said in an exchange with National Review’s Jonah Goldberg:

Jonah 1st amendment is dead on campus. Conservatives should fight back. As radioactive as milo is he is fighting back. https://t.co/grkdlGNBt3

— Matt Schlapp (@mschlapp) February 20, 2017

He is “fighting back” by bullying people. That doesn’t work out well.

Huh. It turns out that it is possible for Milo Yiannopoulos to say something that will motivate conservatives to de-platform him. Nothing to do with the public humiliation and bullying of women, of course, oh god no, that could never possibly be a reason to tell him to fuck right off.

Milo Yiannopoulos lost his keynote speaking slot at the Conservative Political Action Conference after tapes surfaced of the right wing provocateur and senior Breitbart editor advocating for sexual relationships between “younger boys and older men.”

“Due to the revelation of an offensive video in the past 24 hours condoning pedophilia, the American Conservative Union has decided to rescind the invitation,” said Matt Schlapp, chairman of the group which sponsors CPAC, in a statement Monday afternoon. The group called Yiannopoulos to “further address these disturbing comments,” but defended its original decision to invite him as a nod to “the free speech issue on college campuses.”

Ah yes, yes indeed – because when it’s a matter of bullying women off social media, that’s free speech, and the consequences to women are just way too trivial to notice. But then when it’s revealed that yes he really is a shit who does bad things to male people too – then the “nod to the free speech issue on college campuses” is no longer worth nodding.

The statement went on to declare that CPAC does not endorse “everything a speaker says or does.”

But it does make judgments about which things a speaker says and does constitute a reason to rescind an invitation. Relentless systematic harassment of women, no; advocacy of child sexual abuse, yes.

Some prominent conservatives seemed to suggest that CPAC had provoked the maelstrom by tying itself to such a controversial figure.

“The Milo Test,” wrote Charlie Sykes, a conservative former radio host who has written critically of the Republican Party since the rise of Trump. “Anti-Semitism, ok. Racism, ok. Alt Right, ok. Advocacy of pedophilia? Is THAT the bridge too far?”

Notice he doesn’t even mention the misogyny and harassment.

Yiannopoulos is aggrieved.

I do wish journalists would learn to stop portraying Milo Yiannopoulos as some sort of legit commentator or thinker or even forsooth fellow journalist. He’s a Twitter troll. That’s it. That’s all he is, that’s his only claim to fame, and it’s not something anyone should be taking seriously.

Despite a brief flare-up of controversy that preceded it, a conversation between Milo Yiannopoulos, the incendiary right-wing author and lecturer, and Bill Maher, the comedian and host of HBO’s “Real Time,” on that program Friday night was a largely docile, chummy affair. There was little conflict or cross-examination, as both men chided the political left for avoiding or drowning out Mr. Yiannopoulos’s views rather than engaging with them.

He’s not an author and lecturer. He’s a troll. He’s a verbal sadist who makes a career of bullying women. He is not any kind of substantive thinker. He doesn’t have “views”; he has a taste for bullying.

Introducing Mr. Yiannopoulos, 32, an openly gay editor at Breitbart News, Mr. Maher said: “I think you’re colossally wrong on a number of things. But if I banned everyone from my show who I thought was colossally wrong, I would be talking to myself.”

Blah blah blah they laughed when Beethoven sat down to play. Yes it would be foolish for Bill Maher to decide to talk only to people he thinks are right about everything, no it does not follow that he should talk to people whose only claim to fame is bullying women off the internet. That’s another thing I wish people would stop being so dense about. It’s generally good to interact with a wide range of ideas and people; that does not mean it’s generally good to seek out the worst, meanest, shallowest bullies on Twitter and interact with them.

Mr. Yiannopoulos began the interview by cracking jokes about gay people (whom he said he did not hire because they did not show up to work on time) and women, and telling Mr. Maher’s audience that they were “very easily triggered.”

“All I care about is free speech and free expression,” Mr. Yiannopoulos explained. “I want people to be able to be, do and say anything. These days, you’re right, that’s a conservative issue.”

Bullshit. Milo Yiannopoulos is not another Voltaire or Tom Paine or John Stuart Mill. Milo Yiannopoulos is another random shithead who gets his jollies from bullying women in public.

Describing himself as “a virtuous troll,” Mr. Yiannopolous said, “I hurt people for a reason.”

He said people “want to police humor” because “they can’t control it.”

“Because the one thing that authoritarians hate is the sound of laughter,” Mr. Yiannopolous said.

Milo Yiannopoulos is not Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator. Milo Yiannopoulos is a court jester for authoritarians.

Jesse Singal points out that Milo Yiannopoulos is not nearly as edgy and interesting as he pretends to be.

A lot of people fail to recognize this, but Milo Yiannopoulos, the Breitbart senior editor and right-wing provocateur, is much closer to being Sean Hannity than to being Adolf Hitler. It’s a bit of a secret, in part because Yiannopoulos devotes a great deal of time and effort to a form of ideological dress-up, pretending to be more edgy and out-there than he actually is. His college tour is called the “Dangerous Faggot” and his upcoming book is called Dangerous because Yiannopoulos wants to position himself as an incendiary liberal bête noire. He profits off of it — it’s his brand.

The uproar at Berkeley last night is just what he wants.

Yiannopoulos preened and joked and harassed his way into public-enemy-number-one status among some left-leaning folks despite the fact that his actual beliefs are, by the standards of mainstream reactionary conservatism, fairly boring and predictable. Just look around at his Breitbart author page: If you ignore the overheated headlines and constant references to his own greatness, it’s clear that Yiannopoulos is, for the most part, serving up microwaved portions of mass-market right-wing goonery.

Same goes for his college speeches. The transcript of one is headlined “MILO at Cal Poly State University: ‘No More Dead Babies.’” “Can you imagine, and I don’t think this is a stretch, the senior leaders of Planned Parenthood sitting in a conference room discussing the best timing for an abortion, to maximize their profits from the dead baby’s body?” he told his Cal Poly audience. “It’s horrifying, and it’s what feminists want more of.” It’s also the same argument you’ve heard on a Fox News segment.

That’s similar to what I’ve been saying, which is that he’s a big nothing, whose internet fame developed because of his passion for harassing people, not because he’s clever or interesting or informed. He’s random.

Yiannopoulos capitalizes on the fact that his youngest fans and detractors (and it’s not an accident his most ardent fans and detractors tend to be young) are typically only familiar and comfortable with a pretty narrow discourse — precisely what one finds on college campuses at the moment. Academic communities tend to be places where the bounds of acceptable expression and thought are significantly different than they are on, for example, right-wing AM radio. Ideas that are unfortunately commonplace in a nation of 350 million people, and especially among older demographics, seem more singular and uniquely dangerous (to use Yiannopoulos’s chosen term) on college campuses — especially when they’re coming from such a flamboyant, gleefully bellicose figure. The fact that Yiannopoulos has a tendency to harass people, both online and off-, only acts to further mask the staleness of his actual beliefs. His Leslie Jones tweets are the most famous examples, but there are plenty of others. During two of his recent talks, for example, he showed pictures of and denigrated members of the communities where he was speaking — one involving a sociology professor, whom he called a “Fat Faggot” onscreen, and the other a trans student — in a way that seems geared at inciting harassment. (Yiannopoulos is himself gay and once wrote an article giving his fans “permission” to call other people “fags.”)

Yiannopoulous’s fans also misconstrue his shtick as new or uniquely edgy, and from their point of view it’s a good thing. Since he first got famous stoking the anti-feminist fires of Gamergate, he has attracted an audience of resentful young people frustrated with “political correctness,” many of whom believe they aren’t “allowed” to say various offensive things. Now, it is plainly false that reactionary speech is severely restricted in the U.S.: Anyone who listens to the aforementioned talk-show hosts knows that there’s a huge market for misogynistic and racially dog-whistling language. This is a common conservative falsehood, that in a country that elected Donald Trump people are getting fired or blacklisted left and right simply for “tellin’ it like it is.” But again, if you’re a young person who hasn’t been exposed to that side of the discourse, and you’re suspicious of the liberal discourse that prevails on many campuses, Yiannopoulous is a shock to the system. He feels new and important, despite the fact that he isn’t.

But he’s making a nice living at it because people pay attention to him.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday:

UC Berkeley officials are warning the hosts of a Wednesday night event featuring right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos that his campus speech may be used to target individual students in the country without documentation.

“We are deeply concerned for all students’ safety and ability to pursue their education here at Cal beyond Milo’s speech,” the university’s Office of Student Affairs said in a letter Tuesday to the Berkeley College Republicans, the students hosting the event. “Milo’s event may be used to target individuals, either in the audience or by using their personal information in a way that causes them to become human targets to serve a political agenda.”

The letter expressed concerns that Yiannopoulos — a British writer for the right-wing opinion site Breitbart News — will use his appearance to kick off a campaign “targeting the undocumented student community on our campus,” and linked to an article published Tuesday on the site.

The article begins: “Milo and the (conservative think tank) David Horowitz Freedom Center have teamed up to take down the growing phenomenon of ‘sanctuary campuses’ that shelter illegal immigrants from being deported.”

I read the Breitbart article. It doesn’t talk about plans to target particular students. I’d like to think even Yiannopoulos isn’t a big enough shit to do that – but he really is an awful shit, so maybe he would have.

Milo. Why do we keep having to talk about Milo? Milo is ridiculous and we should never have to talk about him.

But we keep having to.

A speech by the divisive right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, was canceled on Wednesday night after demonstrators set fires and threw objects at buildings to protest his appearance.

The university announced the cancellation on Twitter around 6 p.m. local time, about an hour after a section of the campus erupted in protest.

Look, he’s not “right-wing” – that’s not the right way to name him. He is right-wing, of course, but that by itself isn’t why people don’t want him giving speeches. “Divisive” doesn’t name him either – that’s a silly word, an empty euphemism for “sadistic” or similar.

The point about Yiannopoulos isn’t that he’s right-wing, much less conservative, it’s that he’s a nasty bully. It’s entirely possible to be conservative without being a nasty bully. Trump doesn’t have to be the loathsome bully he is, and the same applies to Yiannopoulos.

There are thousands of conservatives who could give good talks at universities, good talks appropriate for universities – reasoned, argued, informed. Milo is just a troll – a troll is all he is. Trolling is his one and only claim to fame. Universities should not be elevating trolls.

I don’t think he should be “no-platformed,” because there’s too much no-platforming about and most of it is way too mindless. But what I do think is that universities should refrain from inviting him to give speeches.

Conservative doesn’t mean belligerent or hateful or proudly sexist and racist. There’s no need to foster a range of views by welcoming belligerent sexists and racists to spew their sexism and racism at universities. There’s a difference between views and abuse. Universities should skip the abusive types.

That of course would include our shiny new president, sad to say.

Oh look, Milo Yiannopoulos being oh so amusingly “provocative” at Breitbart a few weeks ago – women should have stayed home hawhaw, they were better off there hawhawhaw, having babies is all they’re good for hahahaha.

Feminist propaganda shoved in the faces of previously-content housewives told ladies they would be less happy if they weren’t working a gruelling job like their husbands were. This sort of thinking was designed to make women feel strong and empowered. But the fact is, women have become far more unhappy in the last 35 years.

…

The role of the housewife has been thoroughly and ritually humiliated by successive waves of feminism — as if raising well-adjusted children, keeping a beautiful home and marrying a loving husband is worthy of derision and ridicule. In fact, it’s one of the most important things a woman can do with her life and may be one of the only things women can actually do better than men.

No offense! I mean, sure, if men could bear children we’d have the process streamlined and pain-free by now, but for now, women are the only gender capable of bringing another life into existence. That is a genuinely beautiful thing that should be respected and celebrated, not looked down upon by menopausal, droopy-eyed office drones who spend their nights at home with a wine bottle, wondering where the stench of cat piss is coming from. (It’s coming from them.)

Isn’t he a card? I just love people who say vicious shit on purpose to annoy the people they say it about, don’t you? They’re such fun. Their hair may look like the icing on a party cake, but they’re fun fun fun.

Birth control makes you fat, and as we all know being fat is disgusting and should never be allowed in a civilised society. A 2009 study from the University of Texas found that women using DMPA gain an average of 11 pounds over three years, a 3-4 per cent increase. Ladies: are you really so desperate to get laid that you’d willingly fatten yourself up like a prize-winning sow?

Healthy, fertile women seek out men who are genetically different to them. Women on the Pill do the opposite, seeking out men who are closer to their own tribe. This perhaps is an explanation for the rise of feminized males, so desperate to get laid that they mimic the behaviour and mannerisms of women.

Now at the heart of the executive branch of the US government. Such drollery.