‘Australia’s lagging way behind’: Milo Yiannopoulos says he expected more opposition

A RIGHT-WING personality and former Trump advocate says he’s “almost embarrassed to have such little opposition” ahead of his Troll Academy Tour.

THE man dubbed a “right-wing troll” and “internet supervillain” says he is disappointed in the mild opposition to him ahead of his Australian tour.

Former Trump advocate and anti-feminist Milo Yiannopoulos was disdainful of a petition to stop him entering the country and reports Peter Dutton’s office was considering denying him a visa.

“Very lacklustre and disappointing and ineffective,” he told news.com.au. “Six hundred people — I’m almost embarrassed to have such little opposition.

“It’s another example of the press reporting the reality they wish was true ... Australia is lagging way behind America.”

Yiannopoulos, who has already managed to infuriate David Koch on Sunrise this morning, was forced to resign as senior editor at alt-right news site Breitbart in February after saying sex between adults and children was sometimes “not that big of a deal” and describing victims as “whingeing selfish brats”.

The ‘right-wing troll’ sparked riots with his appearance at the University of California, Berkeley — but says he’s been disappointed by the lacklustre opposition to him in Australia. Picture: AFP Photo/Josh Edelson

He said older men could help young boys “discover who they are” when they couldn’t speak to their parents. and offered “coming of age relationships”. He later denied supporting paedophilia.

The 32-year-old gay man — who has been called a racist, misogynist and even a homophobe — told news.com.au it was “important to have people who blow open the fire doors” and “someone who doesn’t give a stuff.”

The anti-feminist and anti-Islam provocateur said he is a “free speech activist” who simply objects to the way the US has “practically criminalised” provocative language and opinions. “It’s the Left — feminists, journalists, college professors — who are the people with power over us and the ability to destroy lives with state permission,” he said. “I’m interested in people being able to say and do what they like. That’s now a conservative position, isn’t that remarkable?”

He claims he has been “mischaracterised” as far-right and “nutty”, and his New York Times bestselling book, Dangerous, is evidence of his rationality. “I’m right-wing and effective,” he said. “Neo-Nazis hate me just as much as I hate them.”

But some of Yiannopoulos’s behaviour seems darker than he claims. Video released by Buzzfeed this month shows him singing America the Beautiful at a karaoke bar and smiling while audience members including white supremacist Richard Spencer give Nazi salutes.

In the accompanying expose, the website published emails that show Yiannopoulos regularly solicited input for his Breitbart work from white nationalists. They included Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer from neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer — who would later ask his fans to disrupt the funeral of a Charlottesville victim — and blogger Vox Day, who believes women shouldn’t vote and mass killer Anders Breivik is a hero.

Yiannopoulos, who calls feminism a cancer and regularly refers to himself in the third-person during our conversation, told news.com.au he has no relationship with Spencer and that the Daily Stormer was in “a holy crusade against me.”

In a statement to Buzzfeed, he said he simply liked “breaking taboos” and as someone of Jewish descent, he condemned racism and had stopped making jokes on these matters to avoid “confusion”.

The media has questioned the popularity of his book, but the ex-tech editor for the UK Telegraph says journalists are “dishonest” enemies of free speech, along with think-tanks and Hollywood producers. “That’s where I aim my cannon,” he added.

Yiannopoulos says he has revised his anti-gay marriage position since he “married a black guy” this month, but believes churches should have the right to refuse to perform the ceremony. He told Bloomberg last year that he generally didn’t employ “gays” because “I don’t trust them. They don’t show up on time. They don’t do the work. They get all queeny with drama.”

As for the Las Vegas shooting, the British-born provocateur said he thought Donald Trump’s response — and his derided efforts at condemned white supremacists in Charlottesville — had been “perfectly good”.

He added: “No gun law will stop somebody crazy, people say a gun can do more damage than a knife or car, they don’t have the same efficiency, but that’s not true. The Las Vegas shooter killed 58 but a truck killed 89 in Nice.

The 32-year-old has said paedophilia isn’t always wrong, he doesn’t trust gay employees and that feminism is a cancer. Picture: Supplied

“Trump has been very clever in not endlessly banging on the way his detractors want him to — I hate this, I hate that. I’m happy with Trump.

“The problem with the press is this lack of curiosity. They were captivated at the start that it was a white male and that was all they needed to know.”

Yiannopoulos, who calls himself “the most controversial man in the world”, is due to speak in Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and the Gold Coast in December on his Troll Academy Tour.

He says Australia is his biggest fanbase after the US because “Australians have good taste.”

His “Dangerous Faggot” college tour culminated in riots at the University of California, Berkeley, causing Mr Trump to tweet to that if the university did not allow “free speech”, he would withdraw its several hundred million dollars of annual funding.

Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter for orchestrating a trolling campaign against African-American Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones and had a book deal withdrawn after his comments about adult-child relationships. But he remains the protege of controversial alt-right Breitbart executive chairman and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Yiannopoulos’s tour is being brought to Australia by Penthouse magazine, whose publisher Damien Costas compared the right-wing agitator to Martin Luther King and the freedom riders of the 1960s.

Originally published as ‘Australia’s lagging way behind’: Milo Yiannopoulos says he expected more opposition