Milo Yiannopoulos in Sydney: Controversial speaker and team receive death threats
SEVEN people were arrested after Milo Yiannopoulos’ secret Sydney show, as the controversial speaker praised Pauline Hanson.
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SEVEN people have been arrested after clashing with police and fans outside the secret Sydney event of controversial British commentator Milo Yiannopoulos.
On Tuesday, the venue at Le Montage in Lilyfield was guarded by mounted police, riot squad officers and police vans. Organisers were forced to leave the location undisclosed until an hour before the event began.
Fans of the alt-right commentator were heckled by anti-fascist protesters chanting: “Muslims are welcome, Milo is not,” and “Nazi scum off our street”.
Several men were arrested hours before Yiannopoulos even arrived after they wrestled with police who tried to keep the growing number of activists off the road.
The protesters waved red flags and hurled abuse at the people who paid almost $1000 to attend the talk, chanting “racist, sexist, anti-queer, Milo is not welcome here”.
Four people were arrested for breaching the peace, one for assaulting a police officer, one for affray and one for not complying with direction. Inside the waterfront venue, thousands of supporters cheered as Yiannopoulos, in leopard print fur coat, stepped on stage to the sound of Madonna’s Vogue.
On stage he made crude jokes about feminism and praised Pauline Hanson, who he likened to US president Donald Trump. A man was reportedly evicted by security after he hurled a shoe at Yiannopoulos about 20 minutes into his talk.
It comes as right-wing activist Avi Yemini posted an eight-minute Facebook video detailing his view of what happened in Melbourne following clashes on Monday night.
Ahead of Tuesday’s event, Penthouse publisher and tour promoter Damien Costas exclusively told news.com.au that Yiannopoulos and his team “knew for a fact there is going to be a repeat incident” in Sydney.
A handful of protesters carrying signs deriding “Nazi Scum” and rainbow flags were moved on by officers earlier in the evening.
It comes after several hundred police officers, dozens in riot gear, were brought in to separate far left and right-wing protesters during the Melbourne melee, outside Yiannopoulos’s Troll Academy tour on Monday night.
Two protesters were arrested for “discharging missiles” — one from each side — with five officers suffering minor injuries, including one who was hit in the leg by a rock.
“There have been many death threats targeted at Milo, myself and others in the team,” Mr Costas told news.com.au on Tuesday.
“Safety is a major concern.
“We’re going to have armed guards and a much stronger police presence than last night.”
Some of the written death threats warned Yiannopoulos — a self-described “one-man wrecking crew” and “internet supervillain” — to “sleep with one eye open” and “we’re coming for you”.
Mr Costas said several activist groups had pledged to protest outside the event at Le Montage in Lilyfield, where about 2000 guests were expected to attend.
“There’s a group going to be dressed as Wolfenstein — they’re clearly psychotic,” Mr Costas said.
Location details were only released to the public in the last hour because of security concerns. Prior to that, ticket holders were told the event would be held “within 10 minutes of Sydney CBD”. They received updates and venue confirmation on email.
“There’s not going to be any risk inside the event because we’ll have so many armed guards,” Mr Costas said.
“We’ve been dealing with police at all levels.”
Melburnians who attended three of Yiannopoulos’ shows on Monday were also kept waiting to find out where to go after the venue was changed at the last minute.
“We had to hold it at a smaller venue and split it into three shows but it went off without a hitch,” Mr Costas said.
I have meet and greet ticket for Milo in Sydney tonight and no idea where the venue is! Promoter hasn’t emailed me yet. Any help @RossCameron4 @maxmarkson @PenthouseAU @RealMarkLatham ??
— Bae Shaphero (@baeshaphero) December 5, 2017
On Tuesday Yiannopoulos visited Parliament House in Canberra, where he was invited by a minor party senator, David Leyonhjelm, despite efforts by the Greens Party to ban him.
Parliament’s security officers were on standby but in a stark contrast to the violent showdown which took place outside the speaker’s Melbourne event the night before, the situation remained under control.
About 30-50 right-wing activists from groups including Reclaim Australia and the True Blue Crew and up to 500 left-wing protesters representing the likes of Campaign Against Racism and Fascism took part in the clash.
Convicted stalker and racial vilifier Neil Erikson and fellow right-wing activist Avi Yemeni were among the crowd.
Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Leane said the incident unfolded because of “Kardashian-style politics”, with groups using attention-grabbing behaviour to promote their causes.
“What we’re seeing in the whole world is if you don’t have a 30-second grab of something really exciting, then you’re not going to make the front page of the news,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
“Both these groups — the left and the right — will do everything they can to go and attack the police to get that one shot where it looks like the police are responding in an aggressive way.
“It looked like a battlefield from an aerial platform.”
Mr Leane said police have learnt how to outmanoeuvre protesters over recent years and were seeing a “diminishing” number of protests with a “reduced core” of activists.
Yiannopoulos blamed the “petulant babies” of the left for the clash. “There was a lot of kerfuffle out front, it was not as the newspapers reported ‘a clash between the far left and far right’ it was the left, showing up, being violent to stop freedom of speech,” he told Sydney radio 2GB.
“The left really showed us who they are ... they showed us they are petulant babies.”
Left-wing protester Ezekiel Ox told 3AW they were protesting against Yiannopoulos in a “peaceful fashion” and accused police of escalating the violence.
Yiannopoulos’ three speaking sessions on Monday each attracted about 1000 attendees at the Pavilion at Kensington which will be invoiced for the police presence, which tour organisers said would total $150,000.
Freight group Toll also responded to sightings of a right-wing protester wearing a company shirt, stating the man has never worked for the company and believed the move was an attempt to “damage our brand”.
Yiannopoulos, a conservative firebrand and staunch fan of US President Donald Trump, resigned from right-wing news site Breitbart in February amid a storm triggered by comments in which he suggested it was acceptable for older men to sleep with teenage boys.
Reviled by his critics as racist and misogynistic, Yiannopoulos casts himself as a gay crusader for free speech who is against “political correctness” in all its forms.
Yiannopoulos’s speeches on university campuses in the US have also sparked violent protests, and he was banned from Twitter last year amid a barrage of racist abuse directed at Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones.
But Yiannopoulos has maintained he was only fighting “fire with fire”.
“The last guy to do that is now sitting in the Oval Office,” he said. “When I talk about aggression I’m speaking about rhetoric. I don’t believe in violence as a solution to problems.”
— With AAP
megan.palin@news.com.au | @Megan_Palin
Originally published as Milo Yiannopoulos in Sydney: Controversial speaker and team receive death threats