David Leyonhjelm: Milo Yiannopoulos needs a safe space
THE Greens have their organically farmed cotton knickers in a big twist over the “threat” to society imposed by the visiting Milo Yiannopoulos.
Opinion
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THE Australian Greens’ hypocrisy plumbed new depths this week over the issue of Milo Yiannopoulos. To say Yiannopoulos is a polarising young man might be a bit of an understatement.
Yiannopoulos’s views are invariably outrageous, often contradictory and — to the delicate sensibilities of the regressive left — highly offensive.
I happen to agree with a lot of what he has to say so when the opportunity arose to host Yiannopoulos in a Q&A at Parliament House, as a committed advocate of free speech I did not hesitate.
The Greens now have their 100 per cent organically farmed cotton knickers in a knot.
According to them, Yiannopoulos is such a threat to democratic society as we know it, they claim, he must be gagged in the interests of “open democracy”.
As South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young put it, a man who spouts views so clearly at odds with her own is “not welcome in our safe and respectful house of democracy”.
As she reasoned in her “Reply All” response to my invitation to attend: “Aren’t we building a fence around the building to keep dangerous people who spread hate and promote harm to others out?”
With due respect to Senator Hanson-Young, the fence is to stop terrorists, not a controversial commentator on a speaking tour. Just when did we reach the point where it is acceptable to use personal feelings and experiences to justify the restriction of the speech of others?
The Greens are not alone.
Labor MP Andrew Leigh said our democracy did not need to hear from Yiannopoulos because his views “are the antithesis of an open, multicultural, outward-looking Australia”. This from the bloke who wrote a book titled, without a hint of irony, Choosing Openness.
So much for keeping the conversation open.
Yiannopoulos is sometimes accused of being a Nazi sympathiser.
Yet as a gay Jewish man with a black husband, the white supremacist movement (which includes neo-Nazis) wholeheartedly despises him. In fact the neo-Nazi and white supremacists’ primary newsfeed, the DailyStormer, has declared a “Holy Crusade” against Yiannopoulos, declaring him “the single greatest threat our movement has at this time”.
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Then there are the accusations he is an apologist for, or even supporter of, paedophilia, following his clumsy attempt to explain his own experiences as a victim of child abuse by two men, one of whom was a trusted Catholic priest. Given recent social media campaigns such as #MeToo, this is gross hypocrisy.
It is outrageous for someone to be labelled a paedophilia apologist because he imperfectly framed his own victimisation.
The sad truth is that in Australia today, the opinions of people such as Yiannopoulos are too complex for those who want to keep the debate black, white and infantile.
Like the poor bleating sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the blinkered followers of the Alt-Left unquestioningly follow their self-appointed porcine leaders, chanting “PC good, Milo bad”.
Perhaps this is best summed up by a former darling of the left, the gay, witty and indomitable British actor and writer Stephen Fry.
After fighting hard against intolerance and discrimination himself, he was cast into the social media abyss after questioning the lack of diversity and tolerance among his own following.
“It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights,” said Fry.
“It’s actually nothing more than a whine. ‘I am offended by that’? Well, so f…ing what.”
David Leyonhjelm is a Liberal Democrats senator representing NSW