Milo Yiannopoulos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_Yiannopoulos

Milo Yiannopoulos (/jəˈnɒpᵿləs/; born Milo Hanrahan; 18 October 1984) is a British journalist, author, entrepreneur, public speaker, and former senior editor for Breitbart News. He wrote previously using the pseudonym Milo Andreas Wagner. He has become a symbol of the No Platform movement of banning controversial speakers, and is regarded as a provocateur.

Yiannopoulos co-founded The Kernel, an online tabloid magazine about technology, which he sold to Daily Dot Media in 2014. He wrote about the Gamergate controversy. As a self-proclaimed "cultural libertarian" and "free speech fundamentalist", he is a vocal critic of fourth-wave feminism, Islam, social justice, political correctness, and other movements and ideologies he deems authoritarian or belonging to the "regressive left". Yiannopoulos considers himself a reporter of and "occasional fellow traveller" with the alt-right movement.

He was permanently banned from Twitter in July 2016 for what the company cited as "inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others". He resigned from Breitbart after a video of him allegedly defending sexual relationships between boys as young as 13 and gay men in their 20s resurfaced.

Career

Yiannopoulos originally intended to write theatre criticism, but became interested in technology journalism whilst investigating women in computing for The Daily Telegraph in 2009. He also appeared on Sky News discussing social media, and on BBC Breakfast discussing Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United Kingdom.

As a gay Catholic, Yiannopoulos has debated gay marriage on Newsnight, and on Channel 4's 10 O'Clock Live with Boy George. He opposed the provision of "Soho masses".

In November 2013, he debated with singer Will Young on Newsnight about the use of the word "gay" in the playground, and with rapper Tinchy Stryder on the same programme in May 2014, about copyright infringement and music piracy. In March 2015, he appeared on The Big Questions, discussing topics relating to feminism and discrimination against men in the United Kingdom.

Yiannopoulos organized a method of ranking the most promising technology start-ups in Europe, The Telegraph Tech Start-Up 100, in 2011. It operated through an events company called Wrong Agency, started by Yiannopoulos and David Rosenberg, his friend from Cambridge University. The company was dissolved shortly after the ceremony that awarded the top start-up. Mike Butcher of TechCrunch said the main prize had been given to music streaming service Spotify, even though his casting vote had gone to the controversial payday loan company Wonga, because the Telegraph considered Wonga's reputation objectionable. Butcher wrote that Yiannopoulos "was put in an incredibly invidious position [because] the legitimacy of the methodology behind the judging process ... was sat on, unceremoniously. I don't think he should take the blame for this at all. He could only do what he could do under the circumstances given [the] overt pressure from his backer. I reached out to him about all this but he's declined to comment—perhaps understandably."

The Kernel

Together with university friends David Rosenberg and David Haywood Smith, journalist Stephen Pritchard and former Telegraph employee Adrian McShane, Yiannopoulos launched The Kernel in November 2011 to "fix European technology journalism." The Kernel was at that time owned by Sentinel Media.

In 2012, the online magazine became embroiled in a legal dispute with one of its contributors after he said it failed to pay money owed to him. The Kernel closed in March 2013, with thousands of pounds owed to former contributor Jason Hesse when he won a summary judgement from an employment tribunal against parent company Sentinel Media. Margot Huysman, whom Yiannopoulos had appointed associate editor and was one of the people seeking payment, said that many working for the site had been "screwed over" personally and financially. Yiannopoulos also threatened, via email, to release embarrassing details and photographs of a Kernel contributor who sought payment for their work for the site and he also accused the contributor of being behind the "majority of damage to The Kernel". The unnamed contributor told the Guardian that the emails had been referred to the police.

German venture capital vehicle BERLIN42 acquired The Kernel's assets in early 2013. The website displayed plans for a relaunch in August 2013 with fresh investment and Yiannopoulos reinstated as editor-in-chief. BERLIN42 founding partner Aydogan Ali Schosswald would join its newly formed publishing company, Kernel Media, as chief executive. Yiannopoulos personally paid six former contributors money that the defunct company was unable to pay. Parent company Sentinel Media Ltd was eventually dissolved on 18 February 2014 after being struck off by Companies House.

The Independent on Sunday reported that the relaunched publication, based between London and Berlin, would focus on "modern warfare, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, pornography and space travel" from August, but newsletter The Nutshell would not return. In 2014, The Kernel was acquired by the parent company of The Daily Dot, Daily Dot Media. After the acquisition by Daily Dot Media, Yiannopoulos stepped down as Editor-in-Chief though he remained an advisor to the company.

Gamergate

Yiannopoulos played a role in early news coverage of the Gamergate controversy, criticising what he saw as the politicization of video game culture by "an army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers." In December 2014, he announced he was working on a book about Gamergate.

As part of his coverage of Gamergate, he published correspondence from GameJournoPros, a private mailing list used by video game journalists to discuss industry related topics. Yiannopoulos said that the list was evidence that journalists were colluding to offer negative coverage of Gamergate. Kyle Orland, the creator of the list, responded to the leak on Ars Technica. Orland disputed the claim that the list suggested collusion among journalists, but said that he had written a message saying several things that he "soon came to regret". Carter Dotson of pocketgamer.biz said that the list was indicative of an echo chamber effect in the gaming press.

Ryan Cooper of The Week noted that Yiannopoulos "had little but sneering contempt for gamers" beforehand, highlighting Yiannopoulos' comments describing gamers as "pungent beta male bollock-scratchers and twelve-year-olds" and "a bit sad".

During the controversy, Yiannopoulos said that he received a syringe filled with an unknown substance through the post, as well as a dead animal.

In May 2015, a meetup in Washington D.C. for supporters of Gamergate arranged by Yiannopoulos and Christina Hoff Sommers was targeted by a bomb threat made over Twitter, according to the local police responding to information supplied by the FBI. Similarly, three months later, an event with Society of Professional Journalists in August 2015 was also targeted by bomb threats, forcing the evacuation of an event with Yiannopoulos and Sommers.

Breitbart Tech

In October 2015, the Breitbart News Network placed Yiannopoulos in charge of its new "Breitbart Tech" section, which he said will "be free speech central—and we'll talk about stuff people really care about: Freedom, free speech, love, sex, death, money and porn." The site has six full-time staff, including an eSports specialist.

Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant

In January 2016, Yiannopoulos co-founded the Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant with Margaret MacLennan, “a scholarship exclusively available to white men who wish to pursue their post-secondary education on equal footing with their female, queer and ethnic minority classmates.” The grant plans to disburse 50 grants of $2,500 to disadvantaged young men to assist them with their tertiary expenses, starting in the 2016–17 academic year. 100 grants of the same amount will be dispersed in the second year, and 200 in the third. The Privilege Grant's official website was temporarily taken down due to DDoS attacks. Addressing his attackers on Twitter, Yiannopoulos stated "I started a charity to help poor kids get to college. Response from progressives was to call me a racist, DDoS the site. They’re wonderful." As of August 2016, the grant scheme had not paid out any money or filed paperwork to become a charity in the United States.

Margaret McLennan, formerly bursary manager of the grant, posted criticism of it on social media in August 2016, saying it was mismanaged and that she had stopped managing the grant the previous March because she hadn't been paid and that the movement had ceased. Yiannopoulos apologised for mismanaging the grant and admitted that he had missed a deadline for turning donations into bursaries. He denied speculation he had spent the money and blamed a busy schedule. He appointed a new fund administrator, and a pilot grant had been scheduled to begin the following spring, with full disbursement in the 2017/18 academic year.

Twitter controversies

In December 2015, Twitter briefly suspended Yiannopoulos' account after he changed his profile to describe himself as Buzzfeed's "social justice editor". His Twitter account's blue "verification" checkmark was removed by the site the following month. Twitter refused to give any explanation for the reason of the removal of verification, saying that they do not comment on individual cases. Some news outlets speculated that Yiannopoulos had violated its speech and harassment codes, as with an instance where he told another user that they "deserved to be harassed". in response to being asked "Milo could you tell your creepy weirdo misogynist followers to maybe take a shower and get a life instead of harass me online?" Others worried that Twitter was targeting conservatives.

In March 2016, Yiannopoulos acquired accreditation for a White House press briefing for the first time. Prompted by his recent de-verification by Twitter, Yiannopoulos asked Josh Earnest to comment on the free-speech stance of prominent social media platforms, arguing in one case, that "Conservative commentators and journalists are being punished, being suspended, having their tweets deleted by Twitter."

For his criticism of Islam after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, a terrorist attack on a gay nightclub, his Twitter account was briefly suspended in June 2016. His account was later restored.

In July 2016, Yiannopoulos panned the Ghostbusters reboot as "a movie to help lonely middle-aged women feel better about being left on the shelf." After the film's release, Twitter trolls attacked African American actress Leslie Jones with racist slurs and bigoted commentary. Yiannopoulos wrote three public tweets about Jones, saying "Ghostbusters is doing so badly they've deployed [Leslie Jones] to play the victim on Twitter", before describing her reply to him as "Barely literate" and then calling her a "black dude". Multiple media outlets have described Yiannopoulos' tweets as encouraging the abuse directed at Jones.

Yiannopoulos was then permanently banned by Twitter, which released a statement saying that "no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others ... We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter. We agree."

Yiannopoulos stated that he was banned because of his conservative beliefs. In an interview with CNBC, he denounced the abusive tweets sent by others at Jones, and said he was not responsible for them. After his suspension from Twitter, the hashtag "#FreeMilo" began trending on the site by those who opposed Twitter's decision to ban him. In an interview at the 2016 Republican National Convention, Yiannopoulos thanked Twitter for banning him because he believed it made him more famous.

Resignation from Breitbart over statements on age-of-consent laws

In February 2017, it was announced that Yiannopoulos would address the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). A conservative website, Reagan Battalion, then posted a video of clips of a YouTube interview. In the interview in a January 2016 episode of the podcast Drunken Peasants, Yiannopoulos allegedly stated that sexual relationships between 13-year-old boys and adults can be "consensual," because some 13-year-olds are, in his view, sexually and emotionally mature enough to consent to sex with adults. He used his own experience as an example, saying he was mature enough to be capable of giving consent at a young age. He also stated that "pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old, who is sexually mature" but rather that "pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty". However, he also stated in the video that the age of consent in the United States[clarification needed] is "about right".

Media personalities on the right and the left condemned these comments, and interpreted them as an endorsement of pedophilia; the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) withdrew Yiannopoulos's invitation to speak at their annual event because he "condoned pedophilia." Defending himself, Yiannopoulos has described his comments as the "usual blend of British sarcasm, provocation and gallows humour" and denied he ever endorsed pedophilia, expressing abhorrence at it. He also claimed the video has been edited to give a misleading impression.

Editorials in conservative media, including National Review, The Blaze, Townhall, and The American Conservative have characterized his comments as supportive of pedophilia or pederasty. Commentators such as Matthew Rozsa of Salon.com and Margaret Hartmann of New York magazine wrote that in making this statement, Yiannopoulos is technically correct in distinguishing between pedophilia, hebephilia, and ephebophilia, but the authors also note that "pedophilia" is typically used to denounce relationships of the sort allegedly promoted by Yiannopoulos (those between 13-year-olds and adults). Yiannopoulos stated that: "I will not apologize for dealing with my life experiences in the best way that I can, which is humor. No one can tell me or anyone else who has lived through sexual abuse how to deal with those emotions. But I am sorry to other abuse victims if my own personal way of dealing with what happened to me has hurt you." CPAC, however, stated that the apology wasn't enough and asked him to further address the comments.

Media outlets reported on February 20 that Breitbart was considering terminating Yiannopoulos, also because of the views he expressed on sex with minors. In response to the controversy, Simon and Schuster cancelled its plans to publish his autobiography in June 2017. As a result of this incident, Yiannopoulos resigned from Breitbart on February 21 after half a dozen employees threatened to leave.

Media coverage

Yiannopoulos was twice featured in Wired UK's yearly top 100 most influential people in Britain's digital economy: at 84 in 2011 and at 98 in 2012. In 2012, he was called the "pit bull of tech media" by Ben Dowell of The Observer.

Other activities

Yiannopoulos hosted the Young Rewired State competition in 2010, an initiative to showcase the technological talents of 15–18-year-olds, and organized The London Nude Tech Calendar, a calendar featuring members of the London technology scene to raise money for Take Heart India.

Controversies related to feminism

In October 2015, Yiannopoulos and feminist Julie Bindel were scheduled to participate in the University of Manchester Free Speech and Secular Society's debate ′From liberation to censorship: does modern feminism have a problem with free speech?′, but the Students' Union banned Bindel, then later also Yiannopoulos. The Union cited Bindel's comments on transgender women and Yiannopoulos' opinions on rape culture, which they stated were both in breach of The Union's safe space policy.

In November 2015, Yiannopoulos was scheduled to give a talk at Bristol University. After protesters attempted to have Yiannopoulos banned from the university, the event was turned into a debate between Yiannopoulos and The Daily Telegraph blogger and feminist Rebecca Reid.

The Dangerous Faggot Tour

In late 2015, Yiannopoulos began a campus speaking tour called “The Dangerous Faggot Tour,” encompassing universities in the United States and Great Britain. A number of his scheduled speeches in Great Britain were cancelled. Although most of his American speeches were not cancelled, some were met with notable protest ranging from vocal disruptions to cancellation via the heckler's veto.

Rutgers University

On February 9, Yiannopoulos spoke at Rutgers University. At the start of his speech, female protestors suddenly stood up among the crowd and began smearing red paint on their faces before chanting “Black lives matter.” The mostly pro-Yiannopoulos crowd responded by chanting “Trump” over and over again until the protestors left, allowing Yiannopoulos to continue his speech.

University of Minnesota

On February 17, a student-run conservative magazine at the University of Minnesota hosted Yiannopolous and Christina Hoff Sommers in February, and the event was also met by protesters. Roughly 40 protestors outside repeatedly chanted "Yiannopoulos, out of Minneapolis," while about five protestors made it inside the event, shouting and sounding noisemakers, before being escorted out by security. In response to these protests, members of the university faculty began pushing for more robust free speech protections at Minnesota.

DePaul University

On May 24, 2016 Yiannopoulos’s speech at DePaul University was interrupted about 15 minutes in by two Black Lives Matter protestors who rushed the stage: DePaul alumnus and pastor Edward Ward, and student Kayla Johnson. Ward repeatedly blew on a whistle whenever Yiannopoulos or the moderators tried to speak, while Johnson took the moderator’s microphone, swung a fist at Yiannopoulos’s face, and danced onstage. The crowd overwhelmingly began booing the protestors, at one point chanting “Get a job.” Additionally, the campus security team that university administrators required the College Republicans to hire the day before (at an extra cost of $1000, part of which was paid by Yiannopoulos himself), stood by and did not make an effort to remove the protestors, even after the crowd directed their anger at them and started chanting “Do your job.” Yiannopoulos initially tried to avert the onstage distraction by walking down into the crowd and taking selfies with those in attendance, but Ward eventually took the other microphone and began blowing his whistle into the microphone. Yiannopoulos and his supporters then walked out of the venue and marched to the president’s office in protest. This was in addition to further protests outside the event venue both before and after the event, which featured students reacting violently to Yiannopoulos’s supporters.

In the aftermath of the incident, university president Dennis H. Holtschneider issued a statement reaffirming the value of free speech and apologizing for the harm caused by Yiannopolous's appearance on the campus, and also criticized the student protesters for disrupting the event. Attendees of the talk, organized by DePaul's College Republican's Chapter, criticized university police and event security for not removing the protesters. Yiannopoulos later stated that he and the College Republicans wanted a refund of the money that was paid to the security team that ultimately did nothing. The university later agreed to reimburse the College Republicans for the costs of event security. Within three days, the university’s ratings on Facebook became overwhelmingly dominated by 1-star reviews. This ultimately accumulated over 16,000 1-star reviews that brought the university’s average to 1.1, before the page’s rating system was closed indefinitely.

UCLA

Yiannopoulos spoke at the University of California, Los Angeles on May 31, 2016 where the event featured an interview-style presentation alongside Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report. Prior to the start of the event, protestors formed human chains to block the front door to the theater where the event was scheduled to take place. In response, those who wanted to attend the event were forced to sneak in through the back door, although the protestors also found out about that entrance and attempted to block it as well, subsequently leading to several attendees shoving their way through the crowd to get in. The Los Angeles Police Department officers on duty then had to prevent protestors from entering while letting attendees pass through, thus delaying the event for about an hour until the room could fill to capacity. Twice during the speech, Yiannopoulos was interrupted by a female protestor who shouted “You’re spreading hate,” and was subsequently booed by the audience; despite seeming to leave after the first outburst, she returned to heckle him again before finally being escorted out of the venue. The next day, it was revealed that the LAPD had come in as the event was ending and told all those still in the theater that they had to be evacuated due to a bomb threat.