Milo Yiannopoulos’s enablers deserve contempt – and must be confronted | Owen Jones
The poster boy of the alt-right has lost his book deal after speaking in defence of suggested sexual relationships between older men and younger boys, but his lucrative bigotry was left unchecked for far too long
They were fine with his bigotry, his in-your-face, two-fingers-up transphobia, Islamophobia and misogyny. It took his defence of relationships between “older men” and “younger boys” for their queasiness to set in. The case of Milo Yiannopoulos is indeed a parable of our time. But who do I mean by “they”? In this case, both his associates and his enablers. His associates are the ascendant racist and neo-fascist movements of our time. He was a means to repackage their hatred for a certain demographic: as edgy, trendy, cool. Performative fascism, if you like. That’s why they call themselves the “alt-right”, after all: allowing them to cloak themselves not as a renaissance of fascist movements that have produced only human carnage in their previous incarnations, but as a sexy in-group and subculture that all the new cool kids are part of.
Related: Milo Yiannopoulos book deal cancelled following outrage over child abuse comments
Related: Milo Yiannopoulos peddles hate. It’s not censorship to refuse to publish it | Sam Sedgman
