Let’s (not) talk about Milo
By: Ryan Brown, World News Editor
I saw Milo Yiannopolous on a recent episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher,” and the entire thing was incredibly interesting to me. Yiannopolous is gay, Jewish, yet somehow Catholic, alt-right Trump supporter and former editor of Breitbart News. He also has recently been accused of defending pedophilia after a tape surfaced of him, well, defending pedophilia.
First off, I detest the fact that this is now somehow one of the leaders of the Republican Party. This used to be the party of Reagan and real conservatism. Now there is a large faction of this party that are nationalists and provocateurs. I do not like this. Yes, I still consider myself a Republican, but not that kind. What Yiannopolous is doing is sick and should be denounced by everyone regardless of party status. There is no place for that in our world.
That being said, I do not think this guy believes everything he says. Now I’ve never met him and he very well might believe everything he says, but I really do not think he does. Watching the episode of “Real Time” he was on proved to me that he just says things to get people riled up. I think he’s trying to make a point that we live in a country that values free speech.
Do his comments about pedophilia cross a line? Yes! Absolutely. I am in no way trying to support those comments. However, when it comes to his comments in general, I think the less reaction the better. This man has a vested financial interest in making waves and causing controversy. How do we stop this from happening? Stop talking about it.
If someone was making the comments that Milo makes on a street corner, you would think that person is crazy and you would immediately dismiss the comments. Why not do the same for this guy? Just because he appears on television does not mean somehow he is someone we should be giving all of this attention to. It just means he got what he wanted. This guy’s whole goal in life is to just get as much attention as possible, let’s not give it to him! The more and more people try to stop him from speaking on college campuses will just feed into exactly what he wants to happen. If you think he was disappointed he wasn’t allowed to speak at UC Berkeley, I think you’re mistaken. That is the best thing that could have happened to him. Think about it, if he wasn’t chased out of there after riots, you might not know his name.
Again, his comments about pedophilia need to be denounced because they are the epitome of awful. But my advice to those who are disgusted by this man is, don’t take the bait. He will not stop baiting us all unless we stop taking it. In order to silence some people, you need to let them speak. Because eventually they will say something as bad as defending pedophilia, and silence themselves.
