Milo Yiannopoulos

"It’s easy to mock video gamers as dorky loners in yellowing underpants. Indeed, in previous columns, I’ve done it myself. Occasionally at length. But, the more you learn about the latest scandal in the games industry, the more you start to sympathise with the frustrated male stereotype. Because an army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers, are terrorising the entire community – lying, bullying and manipulating their way around the internet for profit and attention."

"It was perfectly consensual. When I was the 14, I was the predator."

"In the course of my Dangerous Faggot tour, I’ve had my fair share of bans… but here’s one I didn’t see coming. I’ve been banned from San Francisco! Me, the gayest person on the planet. Banned. From San Francisco, the queerest city in America. Apparently I’m just too dangerous of a faggot, even for a city that pumps AZT directly into the water."

"I call myself a Trump-sexual. I have a very antiwhite bedroom policy, but Trump is kind of like the exception to that rule."

"Muslims are allowed to get away with almost anything. They can shut down and intimidate prominent ex-Muslims. They’re allowed to engage in the most brazen anti-semitism, even as they run for office in European left-wing political parties. And, of course, politicians and the media routinely turn a blind eye to the kind of sexism and homophobia that would instantly end the career of a non-Muslim conservative — and perhaps get the latter arrested for hate speech when he dared to object."

"With a little effort, we can help fat people help themselves. But first we have to make sure that "fat acceptance", perhaps the most alarming and irresponsible idea to come out of leftist victimhood and grievancean politics, is given the heart attack it deserves."

"One-hundred percent of British Muslims, polled by Gallup... believe that homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle choice... and fifty-two percent of those Muslims believe that homosexuality, or homosexual sex rather should be made illegal; that I should go to prison, for my love life."

"I've been invited back to speak at my old high school, Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, which once upon a time expelled me for absolutely outrageous behavior (sic). The moral of the story is: success trumps everything!"

"My old high school has been bullied into canceling my talk on Tuesday by the counter-extremism unit at the U.K. Department of Education. Who even knew the DoE had a counter-extremism unit? And that it wasn't set up to combat terrorism but rather to punish gays with the wrong opinions? Perhaps if I'd called the speech 'MUSLIMS ARE AWESOME!' they'd have left us alone. Disgusted."

"I would say, that situation I am describing on Joe Rogan show I was very definitely a predator on both occasions. As offensive as some people would find that I don’t much care. That was certainly my experience. The law is probably about right, that’s probably roughly the right age. I think it’s probably about okay, but there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age, I certainly consider myself to be one of them. You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13-years-old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Pedophilia is attraction to people who don’t have functioning sex organs yet. Who have not gone through puberty. Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents. You don’t understand what pedophilia is if you are saying I’m defending it because I’m certainly not."

"I do not support pedophilia. Period. It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst. I did say that there are relationships between younger men and older men that can help a young gay man escape from a lack of support or understanding at home. That's perfectly true and every gay man knows it. But I was not talking about anything illegal and I was not referring to pre-pubescent boys. I said in the same "Drunken Peasants" podcast from which the footage is taken that I agree with the current age of consent. I shouldn't have used the word "boy" when I talked about those relationships between older men and younger gay men. (I was talking about my own relationship when I was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the UK is 16.) That was a mistake. Gay men often use the word "boy" when they refer to consenting adults. I understand that heterosexual people might not know that, so it was a sloppy choice of words that I regret."

"If Glasgow students want to break away from the snowflake stereotype - and I hope they do - then I'll gladly represent them, and push back against any member of the administration that tries to impose a culture of trigger warnings and safe spaces. My election would be a clear signal that, in Glasgow at least, this culture is coming to an end and that people come to university to be challenged and to grow."

"Something true most people won’t say: Steve Bannon sacrificed his whole life for his country. His life will never be the same again. He was called a white supremacist and neo-Nazi by the press because they recognized what a formidable adversary he was."

"I know everything you’re saying, and I’m just not there yet. And I don’t know if I’ll get there. Ultimately this is something I’ll have to continue to wrestle with. I know that’s a better way, and I know that’s the right thing. Give me another five or ten years, and then I’m in, alright? I’m working on it, and I will continue"

"Look at these beautiful souls, rid of their demons and cured of their sinful urges. Can’t you tell they’ve been saved? I can."

"When I used to kid that I only became gay to torment my mother, I wasn’t entirely joking. Of course, I was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle — Who is? Who could be? — and only leaned heavily into it in public because it drove liberals crazy to see a handsome, charismatic, intelligent gay man riotously celebrating conservative principles. That’s not to say I didn’t throw myself enthusiastically into degeneracy of all kinds in my private life. I suppose I felt that’s all I deserved. I’d love to say it was all an act, and I’ve been straight this whole time, but even I don’t have that kind of commitment to performance art. Talk about method acting."

"I’ve finally been persuaded out of retirement. But my skills are a bit rusty, so the best role I could land was an unpaid internship with a friend. Pray for me!"

"I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he’s missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can’t hang out with. I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abused the people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behavior comes back to bite you in the end."

"Every time you write one of your commentaries it gets 10,000 comments. It goes even broader than the Breitbart audience, all over. Steven Bannon to Milo Yiannopoulos"

"You want the truth, Milo? You are a hurt 13-year-old boy. I don't know what pain you had to go through to make you so cold and distant from any feelings of compassion and basic kindness, but causing hurt makes you into the monster you are running from."

"Milo's fan club avoids honest debate and truthful argument like the plague. It's a trick. They bite every hand that reaches out to them and then play the victim when one comes back as a fist in their face. You can't shove fingers into your ears and scream “la la la, I am not listening” like children when anyone attempts to speak with you and then turn around and ask for respectful discourse when we get tired of your bullshit."

"This monster right here that you're so afraid of, the face you in your nightmares, was created by social justice warrior assholes like you! Now you have this wonderful faggot, that's what happens."

"When his comments about pedophilia/pederasty came to light, Simon & Schuster realized it would cost them more money to do business with Milo than he could earn for them. They did not finally "do the right thing" and now we know where their threshold, pun intended, lies. 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. Let me assure you, as someone who endured a bit of that harassment, it is breathtaking in its scope, intensity, and cruelty but hey, we must protect the freedom of speech. Certainly, Simon & Schuster was not alone in what they were willing to tolerate. A great many people were perfectly comfortable with the targets of Milo's hateful attention until that attention hit too close to home."

"So I have an intern that was raped by a priest as a young teen, was gay, has offended everyone at some point, turned his life back to Jesus and Church, and changed his life"

"My basic gripe with Milo is that he strikes me as fairly insincere. I mean, he appears to be trolling all of humanity at this point and having a lot of fun doing it. And half of what he says about social justice warriors and political correctness and Islamophobia is very incisive and amusing. But he seems to approach everything as a performance, and this leads me wondering what he actually believes."

"At every turn, the right has lauded him as a free-speech hero, while disregarding his attacks on the most vulnerable of targets. Yiannopoulos invaded Leslie Jones' mentions to shut her down, lob misogynist insults and invite his followers to do the same. He has suggested that women should stop "screwing up the internet for men," and instead of speaking out about online harassment, "just log off." He endlessly fetishizes black men, reducing them to hypersexualized stereotypes, then doubles down with yet more stereotypes. "I lift young black men out of poverty every day." Yiannopoulos, proud troll by trade, wrote in one Facebook post last year. "Sure, the next morning my driver takes them right back there but whatever." Apparently, the only way conservatives can think of to assert their free speech rights is by dehumanizing people based on race and gender identity."

"The lesson of this whole disgusting debacle seems to be that for half this country to hit rock bottom, they have to dig past racism, xenophobia, misogyny and religious hatred, and then keep right on digging until they hit pedophilia. It's not surprising that a segment which believes boasting about pussy grabbing is no biggie would be fine with any horrific thing Yiannopoulos said as long as he kept it to those it resents—the non-white, non-Christian and non-male—for demanding equal treatment, an idea it disparages as "political correctness.""

"A large segment of this country wants women to shut up and black folks to sit down. If you're putting your very best efforts into making that happen, as Yiannopoulos was, there's a rich market demand for your services that includes corporate book sellers and right-wing media outlets."

"They were fine with his bigotry, his in-your-face, two-fingers-up transphobia, Islamophobia and misogyny. It took his defense of relationships between "older men" and "younger boys" for their queasiness to set in. The case of Milo Yiannopoulos is indeed a parable of our time."

"His associates are the ascendant racist and neo-fascist movements of our time. He was a means to repackage their hatred for a certain demographic: as edgy, trendy, cool. Performative fascism, if you like. That’s why they call themselves the "alt-right", after all: allowing them to cloak themselves not as a renaissance of fascist movements that have produced only human carnage in their previous incarnations, but as a sexy in-group and subculture that all the new cool kids are part of."

"His enablers deserve only contempt. It doesn’t matter whether they agree with his bigotry, because they almost certainly do not. But they are fine with it – more than fine, in fact, because it is lucrative. [...] He was "controversial", they would say with a glint in their eye. "Provocative", even. And then the very media outlets that facilitated his rise would provide a platform for chin-strokers to sagely ask: "Why is this phenomenon on the rise and who is to blame?""

"You remind me of a young, gay, alive Christopher Hitchens."

"What I think people saw was an emotionally needy Ann Coulter wannabe, trying to make a buck off of the left’s propensity for outrage."

"I have come to believe, in the course of our bizarro unfriendship, that Milo believes in almost nothing concrete—not even in free speech. The same is reportedly true of Trump, of people like Ann Coulter, of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage: They are pure antagonists unencumbered by any conviction apart from their personal entitlement to raw power and stacks of cash."

"He’s a trickster figure archetypally speaking. He’s a provocateur and a comedian. The funny thing about comedians is that they are like the jester in the king’s court. The jester was the only person who could tell the truth because he was beneath contempt."

"He's a trickster and trickster figures emerge in times of crisis and they point out what no one wants to see and they say things that no one will say."

"There's nothing the right wing loves more than a black person willing to say black people are the real racists or a queer person willing to say queer people are the real threat. If you're queer or a person of color and you're telegenic and articulate and willing to sell the rancid cum rag that passes for your soul, you'll never have to do an honest day's work again in your life."

"Shapiro has always been deeply conservative and does not pretend to be objective. But he says his market niche is giving cleareyed reads of current events, not purely partisan rants. He is often compared to his former colleague at , Milo Yiannopoulos. On the surface, they seem the same. Both speak on college campuses. Both draw protests. Both used to work for Mr. Bannon at Breitbart. Both are young. In fact, they are very different. Mr. Yiannopoulos, a protégé of Mr. Bannon, was good at shocking audiences, saying things like "feminism is cancer." But critics say that he was empty of ideas, a kind of nihilistic rodeo clown who was not even conservative. Mr. Shapiro broke with Mr. Bannon last year, saying Breitbart had become a propaganda tool for Mr. Trump."

"Yiannopolous makes nearly no arguments in his presentations. [...] No one will be educated on the reasoning of the Right by engaging with him."

"What they’ll find instead is demagoguery and Yiannopolous encouraging the audience to suppress dissent. When an attendee spoke out of turn to challenge him on the assertion that there is no gender pay gap, that person was ridiculed by Yiannopolous and then shouted down by the audience. Once that person was escorted out of the auditorium by security (the response to every disruption), Yiannopolous finally calmed the crowd. Then he asked, "Is anyone else here stupid enough to believe in the pay gap?", with the implication anyone answering in the affirmative would be subject to the same treatment."

"The Q&A provided no opportunities for give and take, either. Questions were provided to a moderator on note cards. If anything challenging was handed in, it wasn’t read. [...] This was not a forum for debate."