Color of Law
Bullying Leslie Jones wasn’t enough to take down Milo Yiannopoulos
Executive Editor
The gay white supremacist troll, Trump supporter and mascot of the alt-right movement has met his expiration date, and now it’s time to throw him in the garbage.
February 23, 2017 3 min read Free to read
Milo Yiannopoulos, once the darling of the conservative movement, has been escorted out of the building, But it wasn’t because of his relentless harassment of black women like Leslie Jones, his sexism, antisemitism, Islamophobia or homophobia. Talk of pedophilia is what finally did him in.
The gay white supremacist troll, Trump supporter and mascot of the alt-right movement has 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, 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, he was disinvited to speak at the upcoming CPAC conference. He resigned from his editor position at the white nationalist Breitbart.com, and Simon & Schuster cancelled his $250,000 book deal.
African American author Roxane Gay cancelled her own upcoming book–How to Be Heard– with the publisher 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.
“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 yuuuge fans of Milo. Senior White House adviser Steve Bannon made him a star at Brietbart. 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.
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.
This commentary originally appeared in The Grio
© 2002–2026 BlackCommentator.com
Free to reprint with attribution and a link to our home page.
Join the conversation
Commenting is for Members
Reading is always free. Become a member to add your voice — comment on every column.