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Milo Yiannopoulos just arrived in Australia. Here's why his critics are protesting.

Milo Yiannopoulos, a British political commentator, author, provocateur and media personality, politically affiliated with the alt-right, arrived in Sydney on Wednesday, in his words, “ready to offend Australia”.

It seems he already has. On Monday night, protests erupted in Kensington, in Melbourne’s north-west, when the location of his secret show was leaked. Riot police intervened when a clash kicked off between Yiannopoulos’s detractors and his supporters.

There are reasons his critics are so unhappy that the proud right wing “troll” being given a platform to espouse his controversial views.

Protestors in Melbourne held up signs that read, "No Nazis". Images: Channel 9.

The 33-year-old, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump, is in the country to promote his new book, Dangerous. His speaking tour, titled The Troll Academy, is advertised as jacking "it up to 11" with Yiannopoulos discussing his white supremacist views, his hatred of feminism and the political left, as well as his aversion to 'political correctness'.

Yiannopoulos wants the "whole world to be like an internet comment section". His work has earned him the descriptors: misogynistic, racist, a fascist, xenophobic, ablest, homophobic and transphobic, and that's just the beginning.

Interestingly, the university drop-out is a gay, Jewish man, with a black husband.

"I am the living, breathing refutation of identity politics," he told the Inquirer"I really like the Bible and guns and free speech. They just don't know how to deal with this..."

Here are the five events that have defined Yiannopoulos' career, and earned him the title of the world's most powerful troll.

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1. Support of child sexual abuse.

In January, 2016, Yiannopoulos was interviewed on a podcast titled Drunken Peasants. 

In it, he says "we get hung up on this child abuse stuff," and argues that 13-year-olds are, in his view, able to give consent, and thus sexual relationships between young boys and adults can "happen perfectly consensually".

He says paedophilia is "not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old," but rather to a child who has not yet hit puberty. Yiannopoulos draws  on his own experience, saying he was able to give consent much younger than the legal age of 16.

Sexual exploration as a teenager, particularly with adults, "helps those young boys discover who they are," Yiannopoulos says.

The podcast excerpt made headlines worldwide when it resurfaced in early 2017.

Yiannopoulos was accused of defending paedophiles, and being a child sex abuse apologist.

He later addressed the comments in a Facebook post, writing, "I am a gay man, and a child abuse victim... My own experiences as a victim led me to believe I could say anything I wanted on this subject, no matter how outrageous...

I am certainly guilty of imprecise language, which I regret," he said.

Milo Yiannopoulos. Image via Getty.
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2. Abuse directed at Leslie Jones led him to be permanently banned from Twitter.

In mid 2016, following the release of Ghostbusters, Yiannopoulos tweeted that the female reboot was a, "movie to help lonely middle-aged women feel better about being left on the shelf."

Twitter trolls, likely galvanised by Yiannopoulos' commentary, then viciously attacked African American actress Leslie Jones.

He wrote of Jones, "Ghostbusters is doing so badly they've deployed [Leslie Jones] to play the victim on Twitter," and later described her as "barely literate," and "a black dude".

Twitter made the decision to permanently ban the provocateur from the platform, due to his efforts to incite abuse and harassment towards others.

 

3. His opposition to gay rights.

In October 2017, Yiannopoulos had one, clear message for Australians filling out their same-sex marriage survey; vote 'no'.

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Although Yiannopoulos is himself gay, he once wrote, "Gay rights have made us dumber, it's time to get back in the closet".

He says, "never trust lesbians," and the "lifestyle choice" to live as a gay person is "aberrant".

As a committed Christian, he believes homosexuality is a sin and is guaranteed to bring those who engage in same-sex relationships, "pain and unhappiness".

Working hard for my money

A post shared by MILO (@milo.yiannopoulos) on

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4. Those comments about feminism.

One of Yiannopoulos' most popular catch phrases is, "Feminism is cancer."

He writes about sexual abuse on college campuses, and how it is not actually an epidemic at all.

"Just because they can’t get any sex," Yiannopoulos says, referring to the feminists, " they want the rest of us to have deserts down there too."

One of his most infamous articles is titled, "Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Lazy," and he argues, by drawing on a number of studies, that the Pill makes women fat, gives them 'cottage cheese thighs', makes their voices unsexy and turns them into 'sluts'.

Yiannopoulos believes the solution to online harassment is as simple as women "logging off," and argues that no woman should be involved in the military.

 

5. Those neo-Nazi videos.

A video published in October of this year features Yiannopoulos singing 'America, the Beautiful,' in a karaoke bar, while American white nationalists give him the Nazi salute.

In addition, a Buzzfeed News investigation uncovered a number of emails between Yiannopoulos and neo-Nazis, suggesting that he and the right-wing publication he edited, Breitbart, have had a significant role in mainstreaming white nationalist ideas.

In response to these accusations, he denied any affiliation with white supremicists, and said, "They hate me as much as I hate them."

You can listen to the full episode of Mamamia Out Loud, here.