Following a spectacular fall from grace,
flamboyant mega-troll Milo Yiannopoulos just announced he’ll return to UC Berkeley this fall,
to hold a week of free-speech rallies.
In February, Yiannopoulos was invited to speak at the university’s campus,
but never did, after a seething mob of opponents, hurling rocks and molotov cocktails,
forced the university to cancel the event.
The same greeting awaited an appearance by Ann Coulter planned for today,
leading Berkeley to cancel her speech as well.
But that’s the exact reaction right-wing provocateurs thrive on,
and now, Milo’s seizing the moment to return to relevance… or try.
Michael Moynihan visited him outside Miami.
— I think we should do Berkeley, but I think we should do it in May.
And I think that we should stage a big march.
And you can do press conferences once every couple of years, and I used mine up this year.
— At that press conference, Yiannopoulos would apologize for the recently-surfaced recording,
in which he defended relationships between adults and “younger boys”:
— Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men,
those sort-of coming-of-age relationships,
the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are...
— And with that, it all came crashing down.
CPAC, the annual gathering of the conservative elite,
withdrew an invitation to speak.
A quarter-million-dollar book contract was canceled.
He resigned from Breitbart.
And then, Milo went quiet.
— Fuck you! You’re not safe here!
— But the character of “Milo” needs controversy to survive, and isn’t easily dispatched.
It was forged by a troubled childhood in England:
— Are your parents still alive?
— Unfortunately.
— Can’t really ask for a better answer than that.
— No, I just find them really boring.
And it’s this sort-of thing, where you’re supposed to respect and love your parents,
and I’m like, “Okay, fine, I will.”
— C’mon, you’re a conservative.
— Exactly, exactly.
So I have all this pressure on me to be nice to my mom and dad,
when, actually, they’re just really boring and my mom is a complete cunt.
So... who cares?
My mom’s new husband, who beat me up—
— He beat you up?
— Well, a little bit.
— A little bit?
— I had to make excuses for black-eyes, from time to time.
I liked to set fire to stuff, and I was a little shit—
— I probably deserved it. — You set fire to things...?
— Microwaved the cat once.
— You… literally just explained everything about yourself in one very short sentence.
— No, but I felt like the cat was getting more attention than me.
— I’m sorry—you felt like the cat was getting more attention,
so you put it in the microwave?
— Is that true? — Yeah.
— But I was young, and I was damaged.
— You microwaved a fucking cat...
— No, it didn’t die. I only did it for a few seconds.
— Fortified by a half-dozen flutes of champagne,
Yiannopoulos put the sunglasses on, and the bomb-throwing character emerged.
— Do you regret apologizing?
— No, I think it was worthwhile doing, because I’ve given a lot of interviews in the past,
where I’ve said, “I don’t say anything I don’t believe,” and I don’t.
— You’ve said similar things a number of times, right?
— I think the mistake I made, and the reason I apologized, is I…
you know, I think I got carried away into saying something I would not want to defend.
And I think it is a smaller man, I think it is a petty person,
I think it is somebody without integrity, who refuses to apologize...
— Milo, you’ve done one in your entire career. — ...even when they’ve misspoken.
— But... one time, you’ve done this? — And I believe that I have misspoken once.
And that one time that I have misspoken, I have apologized for.
— Okay, well... that’s a certain level of confidence that I have to give a grudging respect to.
— You’re welcome to provide other examples, if you can think of—
— Ugh, it’s too exhausting. — No, no, no, that’s not good enough.
No, no, no, I’m going to push you on this.
— That’s not good enough. — Let’s do it. Let’s do it.
— You’re challenging the wrong guy.
“I’m as troubled by violence towards innocent children as the next sociopath,”
“but those kids”—in Syria, who were killed in the gas attack—
“are only growing up to be oppressors of women and murderers of homosexuals, anyway.”
— Isn’t that funny? Don’t you find that funny?
— Defend it. — It’s funny!
— I’m mystified by the punchline of this one,
we’re talking about kids who have been gassed, in a sarin gas attack.
But you stand by it?
— Yes, of course I do.
— Now, defend it on its merits,
because you can make a joke about anything, but that actually has—
— But that was a joke. — Yes, but it has a political content too.
— Defend it. — Yeah, of course it has political content,
I defend it—as a gay man, I find Islam to be an existential threat to my existence.
And if I want to make a joke along those lines,
being like, “You know, I don’t know why we’re all so worried about Syrian kids,”
“they’re only gonna grow up to be people who want to kill us and oppress our mothers anyway”—
Totally fine.
Totally stand by it, absolutely fine.
— It’s sort-of a genocidal point, though.
“Kill the children, because they might grow up to be something terrible.”
— This is this is what the left does,
this is, taking the content of throwaway remarks and jokes like—
— Clown nose on, clown nose off.
Sometimes, I don’t know if you’re being funny or if you’re being serious.
— Well, you should always assume I’m being funny.
You should always assume I’m being funny.
— As a joke, what do I take away from that comment?
— You take away from that...
well, I dunno, do you have to take something away from it?
— Why make it, then?
— Because it’s funny!
Everyone in the room laughed when I said it.
— All of these things that happened to you... — Mhmm.
— They’re just grist for the mills, sweetheart. — They’ve made you stronger?
— Well, what does not kill me makes me all fabulous.
Look—unless you literally leave me in a coffin, unless I am dead on a battlefield—
like, with spears in my back, with my head pounded into the dust—
I’m going nowhere.
And nothing and no one can take me out.
Least of all, the fucking media.