[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHpvI8oGsuQ&w=1280&h=720]
I should start by saying that Milo is definitely now on the list of those who no one acceptable socially should ever speak to, which I suppose is one of the reasons why I’m talking to him. I want to know what happened to him over the last few years, in his words, and I don’t really give a damn if that’s politically incorrect. I also plan to post clips directly from this discussion on Facebook this week. We’ll all see (all who are interested) what happens when that occurs.
Milo’s a hard man to categorize. Part journalist, part performance artist, part agent provocateur, part comedian and wit, Yiannopoulos is a man of immense and complex self contradiction. He’s half-Greek and half-Irish, but is know as an Englishman to the Americans with whom he has communicated extensively. He’s gay, and Jewish by descent. He married to his long-term boyfriend, an African-American man, in Hawaii, in 2017, but faces frequent accusations of racism. He is—or was—strangely attractive to young American Republicans, and completed a successful and controversy-ridden tour of US universities in 2016-2017. For at least two years, he was one of the most well-known internet celebrities, let’s say, on the political front, and caused more uproar than any other single person that I can think of.
In my view, for what it’s worth, Milo was such a figure of inner contradiction and outer controversy that I believed his time was numbered. Nonetheless, the circumstances of his demise were unpredictable, I would say (and that’s in keeping with his apparent destiny). After revealing details of his early sexual experiences at the hands of a decades older priest, whom he refused to name, he stated that he was an active participant in the events, and that such occurrences were far more common (and far more consensual) than people were willing to admit. I don’t think he ever recovered from the controversy that those comments generated.
In case it has to be said, and no doubt it does, I believe that what happened to him was absolutely unforgivable, and it would seem that he has come to share that opinion. Our conversation centered mostly around these issues, which I believe to be of wide general relevance. Hence the video.