The Remarkably Rambunctious Milo Yiannopoulos

By Olivia Pierson
[First published on Incite 5/3/19]

Edited: This article was written on 26/2/19 before Milo was fascistically banned from Australia by its government.  

Because there is nobody on God’s green earth quite like Milo Yiannopoulos – and because, next to President Trump, he is considered by the media to be the most vile personality ever to have walked it (they’d be likely to rate Ted Bundy with higher moral standing), I think he warrants some more, much-deserved attention.

The flamboyant and devastatingly witty Milo was always a target for the de-platforming escapades of the dull-witted and colourless leftists who found him offensive, outrageous and unbeatable. To his credit he will always be all of those things.  But his swift soar to mainstream media heights did not survive the puritanical condemnations from the right, most notably spearheaded by the smugly sanctimonious Matt Schlapp, a two-bit commentator on Fox News, also the Chairman of the American Conservative Union, who managed to get Milo’s invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2017 rescinded.  

The reason given for this was a very public and spurious claim that Milo “condoned paedophilia” because of an off-the-cuff, indecorous quip he made about an incident regarding his own sexual exploitation by a Catholic priest, Father Michael, which happened to Milo when he was 13. Milo also made some noises about the age of consent denoting a rather arbitrary line in the sand – a point which is worth the making when one considers that over the last 150 years it has been set somewhere between the age of 11 -20, depending on laws enacted in various countries. In Japan the official age of consent is still 13, while in the Philippines it is 12.  Most Western countries now place the age of consent at either 16 or 18.

Despite the strong feelings of revulsion people have around this topic, the point which Milo was trying to make was that age of consent laws are quite arbitrary, yet it is one of those topics that nobody can discuss with any honesty, let alone any humour, because people find the conversation just too dangerous to even be touched on; as Milo abruptly found out.  As a point of fact, here in New Zealand the age of consent is 16. When I was growing up in the sexually loose 80s, one of my girlfriends consensually lost her virginity at 11, another at 13 and nearly all my high-school friends had their cherries popped by age 15, or so they claimed. 

After Milo’s dramatic, and to his enemies, chop-licking fall from grace over this taboo discussion, and after being de-platformed from nearly every microphone known to man, he apologised (hopefully it’s the only apology he’ll ever make) and made a public statement: “I do not support pedophilia. Period. It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst. There are selectively edited videos doing the rounds, as part of a co-ordinated effort to discredit me from establishment Republicans, that suggest I am soft on the subject.”

He then went on to write a book titled Diabolical – how Pope Francis betrayed clerical abuse victims like me – and why he has to go. In every respect Milo has always called himself a Catholic and the Church, with all its history, art, pomp and splendour, remains an institution very dear to his heart. However the left-wing takeover of it, the ‘Lavender Mafia’ of actual paedophiles, is something which he fiercely calls for to be quickly cleaned up, along with their equally disgusting open love-affair with jihadist Islam. Milo fears that, rather than standing for something moral, artistic, high-minded and inspiring, the Catholic Church is going to go the same way as the Methodist Church did; relegating it to the status of little more than a nice bridge club.

The Christian American author and radio host, Eric Metaxas, conducted a most enjoyable, in-depth interview with Milo in January of this year where they discussed all things Milo-related.  Here’s a snippet:

"If you have been inattentive to my college talks and things that I have written, you might have made the mistake of believing that I was a sort of comedic nihilist who just wanted to see the world burn… and was just hell-raising for the sake of it.. but if you look back at my college talks… I was talking about eternal, unchanging values of the type that we believe in Christianity.  One of the reasons I got so heavily attacked by the left is that I was speaking, in a fashion during my college talks that you would no doubt be horrified by, in defence of freedom, capitalism, beauty, objective truth and Christianity and why current American popular culture has become so sick, elevating the ugly."

​Although Milo has always been seriously brilliant even when he’s not being serious, this interview shows that he has developed a strong gravitas that will only get better with time.  Anybody can be a spiritless, soporific pundit such as Matt Schlapp (plus most of the others), who drone on about setting an “acceptable tone for discourse” etc, yet I remember how much his ilk (including his wife) derided Trump as the worst candidate every time he broke the so-called rules in the run-up to the 2016 election. To be able to inform and entertain with the abundant flair, deft humour, well-spoken intelligence and natural sense of glam that Milo effortlessly brings to any discussion is supernova star-quality of which, alas, the world faces a tragic dearth.  

I, for one, am pleased to see Milo still up to his notorious antics on his YouTube channel: dressing up, acting up, singing songs, indulging in satire and conducting entertaining interviews with heavyweights like Pamela Geller, Katie Hopkins, Monika Crowley and Gavin McInnes; though how long it’ll be before YouTube finds an excuse to shut him down is anyone’s conjecture.  But take heart! For I remember a whole other kerfuffle in Milo’s world over the release of his book Dangerous which was slammed by… well everybody.  When I bought it and opened its first few pages these were the words which begun its introduction: 

“You didn’t really think I was going anywhere, did you? I am far too hot, popular, and quick-witted to be disappeared by outraged op-eds appearing in every major news publication in the world. Darlings, it’s Milo we’re talking about… the only thing that can stop me is a well-placed mirror.”

And it appears that he meant it.
​
Salute Milo!

It’s only fair to share! :-)