Monday, 27 February 2017

The Milo Scandal

Milo Yiannopoulos is one of the loudest and most controversial household names to emerge in the last few years. I first heard of him through my interest in the men's rights movement and my own criticism of feminism, before he was a mainstream celebrity; see background links below. It is only during the Trump campaign that he shot to international stardom. He faced fierce opposition from the left, the right and almost all other sides. As a homosexual Jew who favours interracial sex, but who also has hard right wing views, he finds enemies virtually everywhere. He is often regarded as the public face of the emergent "Alt-right" movement, however not everybody in the Alt-right accepts him. He is more a fellow traveller. He is very eloquent, provocative, witty and intelligent which makes him difficult to ignore whether you love him or hate him. The issue he feels the strongest about is free speech. He was banned from Twitter a few months ago when he got in to an argument with the actress Leslie Jones after he gave her film Ghostbusters a very damning review. Internet bullies chimed in and subjected Jones, a black woman, to racist abuse. Milo was unfairly blamed for this and had his account permanently deleted. However much worse was to come. The scandal that broke out these last couple of weeks is far more serious and might even destroy him. Strangely enough the cause of all the outrage is comments Milo made during radio interviews over a year ago. He appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience in September 2015 and the Drunken Peasants podcast in January last year. During these broadcasts he spoke candidly about child abuse. He explains that when he was thirteen years old he had a sexual relationship with "Father Michael", a Catholic priest who he knew until he was sixteen. Even though he is Jewish his family converted to his father's Roman Catholicism. He regards the matter very nonchalantly and even jokes about it. He feels that he was able to enter into mature consensual sex with this man, who was twenty-nine when they met. Even more seriously, he claims to have attended Hollywood pool parties where "very young boys" performed sexual acts with the guests which included some very famous actors and film crew. This matches the testimony of the young movie stars Cory Feldman and Elijah Wood. When this story broke he had his invitation revoked to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He was forced to resign as editor of Breitbart News after the staff threatened to go on strike if he didn't. Also Simon and Schuster cancelled his book. They were due to publish his autobiography in June this year; a deal worth over a quarter of a million dollars for Milo. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGL5eRw7rXU and: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azC1nm85btY.

The timing of this revelation is clearly deliberate. When Milo uttered these words they passed over the radar without a blip; in fact I listened to the shows myself at the time and don't even remember the segments in question. It's obvious this is a coordinated premeditated attack on him by this very cross-party coalition-of-convenience that are his enemies. The response has been very mixed. If you put his name into Google you'll find almost everybody has commented and they all have a different opinion. Some are denouncing him as a paedophile apologist; others are appealing for calm. I personally think Milo should be treated compassionately. A lot of the condemnation he has received comes from people who don't understand how children respond to being sexually abused. The fact is: Milo has told us that he was a victim of sexual abuse as a young boy. This has been forgotten in the emotional furore. Such an ordeal affects different people in different ways. It's not uncommon for children to fall into denial about what has happened to them. Some of them blame themselves. It's also a psychological defensive tactic to simply brush it off or trivialize it. They can even develop Stockholm syndrome, feelings of love towards their abuser. This is similar to other traumatic experiences. An adult who was abused as a child is never the same again; it influences them for the rest of their lives. It is a testimony to the malice and ruthlessness of Milo's opponents that they have ignored this point. They've also revealed how selective and hypocritical they are. In the fallout from Milo's scandal it was revealed that the actor George Takei, best known for playing Mr Sulu in Star Trek, also had a sexual relationship with a man when he was a boy. Like Milo he was also thirteen. His lover was aged eighteen or nineteen and they met at a summer camp. The director Roman Polanski was actually a sexual abuser. He had sex with a fourteen year old girl in 1977, yet nobody minded when he was given an Oscar in 2010 and was applauded by the Hollywood greats. (I remain suspicious about the timing of his dishonour too, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/ghost-writer.html.) What I would urge Milo to do is name and shame the people he talked about when he related the story of the pool party. He has a duty to help put a stop to these crimes. I hope this is not the end for Milo. He has given a press conference about what happened, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABJo7w-efTA. His existing fame and respect should be enough fuel for a healthy comeback. He could easily self-publish his book and make it a success. Or maybe another publisher with more balls will put it out. I know that he has done things that nobody will ever forget; his perceptive and heartfelt opposition to feminism, his champion of abused men and boys, and women in Muslim theocracies whom the feminists ignore. I wish him all the best and will continue to support him.

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