Hanna Grissel
In the past few days, much of the internet has watched the downfall of the alt-right’s inflammatory, white supremacist frontman Milo Yiannopoulos after he was outed for what is apparently the only depraved sentiment able to cause a negative reaction from conservatives: defending pedophilia.
Yiannopoulos, who has built in some way a platform on protecting children, has previously been outspoken against pedophiles. However, it seems his definition of pedophilia is only attributable to adults that pursue prepubescent children, which is an ideology his establishment conservative supporters at least disagree with.
On Feb. 19, the Reagan Battalion, an unofficial promotive platform for right-wing news outlets, released a damning video of Yiannopoulos speaking with the hosts of a podcast called Drunken Peasants. In the video, he defended himself for claiming on the “Joe Rogan Show” that he, at the age of 14 had a consenting sexual relationship with a young priest among other mid- to late-20s “gays” and “drag-queen trannies.”
When fielding questions by the podcasts shocked hosts, Yiannopoulos launched into a defense in which he said, “We’re talking about 13/25, 13/28, um, these things do happen, preferably consensually … what normally happens in schools, very often, is an older woman with a younger boy, and the boy is the predatory one in that situation …”
Essentially, Yiannopoulos exposed himself to hold what is sensibly agreed upon as the most violently abusive points of view that a person can, repeating rhetoric we’ve historically heard by pedophiles, who claim the children pursued them.
Many of his previous supporters agree that this is unacceptable and denounced him. After the release of the video, he was dropped as the keynote speaker from the Conservative Political Action Conference, Simon & Schuster canceled his book deal, and he resigned from Breitbart (assumably under pressure). Still, this hasn’t stopped his army from defending him.
Of course, the response from conservatives is positive, but that it took their finding out he at the least supports pedophilia before they were willing to cut ties with him is absurd, considering his track record.
It’s true that he is, and has admitted to being, a victim of sexual abuse, but this admission doesn’t excuse how egregiously violent his views on this subject are. Nor does it excuse that Yiannopoulos, with his far-reaching platform, told his adult fans that pursuing minors was and (likely with many of the discussions on his Facebook post centered on how he merely needs to do this to save face) is still acceptable.
With the responses from his fans ranging from “Shhh, Milo, you have to be careful” to “it’s all a conspiracy to ruin his career,” I’m not sure a single fan has learned anything from this event.
Unfortunately, they probably won’t, because Yiannopoulos hasn’t. After his recognition of “faults,” he said, “This is a cynical media witch hunt from people who don’t care about children. They care about destroying me, and my career, and by extension my allies.”
All this event has shown is that his supporters are just as violent as thought to be, and apparently, if you want to keep your book deal and job, don’t support pedophiles.