Milo Yiannopolous, a nice warm mug of goodness me

It’s marvellous what a difference Milo makes, not least to one’s social media feed.

Milo Yiannopoulos polarises people left and right.

It’s marvellous what a difference Milo makes, not least to one’s social media feed. I generally stay away from politics and religion on Facebook and Twitter, much as I’d prefer to do in polite conversation.

But in the course of hoping to engage a few friends with the manner in which I am trying to engage a few readers of The Australian, in my capacity as engagement editor (no, I did not make that title up), I shared the latest iteration of my newish weekly Readers’ Comments column, in which I round up and highlight the best, and occasionally the egregiously worst, of what the paper’s paid-up subscribers had to say on the contentious issues of the day.

This week, the one article that ruled them all in terms of readers’ comments was a guest opinion piece contributed by self-proclaimed gay half-Jewish arch-conservative “internet supervillain” Milo Yiannopolous (Milo hereafter, for as columnist Janet Albrechtsen pointed out, he has been elevated into the pantheon of celebrities on first-name terms with the public in the manner of, say, Beyonce). His piece racked up 1115 comments, not to mention almost 500 more on a preview of his visit here written by Albrechtsen, and another 40 on the readers’ comments column, as we disappear down the rabbit hole.

Naturally, my column was served up with a heaped spoon or two of Milo, and laced with the acrid tang of his hectoring feminists reeking of “cat urine and disappointment”.

As Milo said: “The reason I describe all feminists as bitter single lesbians and left-wing journalists as soy-fed beta male cuckolds isn’t just because it’s true, it’s because they have been hurling out insults for three decades at the rest of us. Frankly, they can handle a taste of their own medicine.”

With his trademark blend of hyperbole, gratuitous “you read the room, bee-yotch” insults and trenchant brutal truths, he laid out his position in no uncertain terms: “Liberals have been calling conservatives racist for decades to shut down debate, but recently they have stepped up their assaults. They don’t call us racist any more. They call us white supremacists or neo-Nazis’ Hilariously, they even do it to me, despite the fact I have a black husband and have never uttered a racist sentence in my life.

“If you bring any of this up, you’ll be called a misogynist, a sexist, a racist and perhaps something worse. Calling people names has become a substitute for argument for the bossy left-wingers who tell us lies while lecturing us about how we should live. Instead of persuading us (which they can’t on the facts), they bully, manipulate and intimidate us into pretending we agree with them. Then they shriek in horror when we turn around and vote for Brexit or Donald Trump, just to spite them.”

My Facebook, where friends normally just get along, was alive with the sound of fury.

“I am so disappointed that The Australian gave oxygen to this. It is in the same vein as Trump retweeting a racist extremist from Britain First,” thundered one. “Milo is dangerous because he encourages hate speech and attacks.”

Insults flew … “bat crap crazy Islamophobe” … “GetUp! supporter!”.

“Initially and reflexively I disliked Milo. He seemed, mostly by association mind you, to be part of the utterly horrid alt-right brigade. However, upon closer inspection he has grown on me. He is highly intelligent and his ability to state things clearly and with humour have won me over,” one friend concluded.

Another said: “It’s a measure of how f ... ked up public debate has become that I … have a nuanced view on Milo but I absolutely lack the energy or time or willingness to put up with the inevitable ‘ton of bricks’ that would descend on me online for expressing it.”

You’ve got to hand it to the man. Milo is a magnet, polarising people, sending them scattering to the left and right wherever he goes. He is like some kind of effete flaming prophet for our age, or maybe a harbinger of the end times. As I tried to pour water on the bubbling oil of my feed, I began to think of Milo as Moses, holding aloft his gnarled staff, parting the seas of the body politic.

It’s marvellous what a difference Milo makes, all right. Next time, I’ll stick to Ovaltine.