Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay, British writer for far-right news outlet Breitbart News, has made headlines over the past few years by provoking people, especially those on the left. But last weekend he received a lot more attention than usual after an old conversation surfaced where Yiannopoulos seemed to support pedophilia.
“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,” he said.
For some of his supporters, that was the breaking point. On Monday, he lost a book deal and a speaking gig at the Conservative Political Action Conference. And for the first time since he rose to fame as an internet rabble-rouser, he offered something of a public apology.
But this was far from the first time Yiannopoulos has attracted controversy. In fact, he has been around for a while, first gaining attention with his criticism of women in the gaming community during Gamergate in 2015. He once called himself “the most fabulous supervillain on the internet,” and many would agree that he’s lived up to the “villain” part of that description.
Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative columnist and internet personality, holds a press conference down the street from the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, June 15, 2016. Photo: Getty Images
He came under fire in June when he called comedian Leslie Jones “barely literate” and invited his supporters on Twitter to attack her. The move got him banned for life from the social network.
Yiannopoulos has said, “feminism is cancer,” and he’s encouraged Trump to “deport fat people.” An outspoken supporter of Donald Trump, he calls the president “Daddy.” He’s scheduled several university appearances, many of which have been canceled. He has also started a “privilege grant,” a scholarship for white men.
Below are a sampling of some of his statements that have also fired up his critics.
On appearance:
“Ugly people have always been the leaders of the progressive movement. Just look at the early Temperance Women! They tend to be sexless and joyless people, and nothing makes that kind of person happier than telling other people what they are allowed to do.”
“Given America’s obesity epidemic, the truth is that hot people are an endangered species. We are a marginalized group constantly punished by society’s unrealistically ugly beauty standards.”
On Islam:
“America has a Muslim problem… The terror attack on Saturday is an expression of mainstream Muslim values,” he said after the attack on an Orlando nightclub in June.
“We aren’t going to beat Islamic terror only with tanks and bombs. We’re going to beat it with ideology. We’re going to beat it with laughter — by showing the people who live in countries ruled by dictators and thugs that they will not make us afraid… By showing them that the West is best.”
On women:
You may have seen the headline of Yiannopoulos’ Breitbart piece, “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy,” but his supporting arguments twist the knife further. Birth control, Yiannopoulos wrote, makes women “fat”; it “makes your voice unsexy” and “makes you jiggle wrong”; and it makes you “a slut” with “cottage cheese thighs.” Not only that, but birth control affects men, too: It makes them “unmanly,” and it’s destroyed the institution of marriage, Yiannopoulos added.
“Women have huge competitive advantage when they go into tech because there aren’t many other women. They get coverage when they don’t deserve it, when they enter a room, people pay attention to them. Privately successful women will tell you this.”
On race:
“Black Lives Matter is the culmination of racial divide. They’re nothing more than the last socially acceptable hate group in America.”
“If White privilege is a thing, why are people working so hard to be black? All of the award shows and cultural events favor black culture.”
“If a white person gave Dr. King’s famous ‘I have a dream’ speech and said his line ‘I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,’ they’d face charges of hate speech from liberals too ignorant of history to even know it’s Dr. King’s line.”
On men’s rights:
“It’s as much a class war as it is a gender war. Much of it is perpetrated by white middle-class women who are the most privileged group in the history of our civilization, of our species. They are the most privileged people ever to have lived… sort of waging war on working-class men.”
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