2016 Conventions
#FreeMilo: Gay activist banned from Twitter, apparently for pro-Trump, anti-fascist views
Twitter, the social networking platform that once styled itself “the free speech wing of the free speech party,” yesterday issued a lifetime ban on gay anti-Islamofascism activist Milo Yiannopoulos. The ban was handed down 20 minutes before an event, held near the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, at which Milo, as he is known, was set to call for members of the LGBT community to support Donald Trump.
Although various media accounts suggested that Milo was banned for urging the harassment of comic actress Leslie Jones, those accounts did not offer any examples of such activity by Milo. Breitbart News, where Milo is technology editor, reported that “Milo was suspended [later, banned] despite the fact that he sent no abusive tweets to the actress.”
Jones recently quit Twitter, fed up with negative, often offensive comments she had received, including racist comments. Monday, Jones tweeted to approximately 254,000 followers: “Twitter I understand you got free speech I get it. But there has to be some guidelines when let spread like that.” [sic]
Milo’s supposedly offensive comments directed at Jones included his panning her new Ghostbusters movie as crude, sexist, and authoritarian; his joking reference to Jones as a “dude;” and his criticism of the grammatical skills (“barely literate”) that she displayed in her remarks on Twitter. In addition, he suggested that, as a celebrity, she should not be overly sensitive to negative comments. Jones, it should be noted, retweeted (reposted on Twitter) another person’s bigoted comment about Milo, calling him “the Uncle Tom of gays.”
After he was notified of the ban, Milo told the Los Angeles Times: “There’s a systemic bias against conservatives and libertarians [on Twitter]. The Progressive press is going to take their side, dishonestly suggesting that I was making life difficult for a black woman. . . . This is a political decision. With this they are sending a message to conservatives that they’re not welcome on Twitter.”
Twitter is known for its support of extremist causes. Notably, Twitter has promoted the racist group Black Lives Matter, which has demanded prosecution of innocent police officers in high-profile cases involving criminals who were shot by police or who died in police custody.
Breitbart’s Ben Kew reported Tuesday night (July 19):
. . . [T]he platform has demonstrated an unashamed bias towards Progressive causes like Black Lives Matter, ignoring open calls for violence against police officers that emerged following both the Dallas and Baton Rouge shootings.
In further indication of its political biases, Twitter also let death threats against Republican Senators remain on the platform for months without taking action. . . .
Supporters of Milo, who had more than 338,000 followers on Twitter prior to his suspension, have created the #FreeMilo and #FreeNero hashtags on the platform in protest at Twitter’s latest attack on the conservative commentator. It is currently accumulating approximately 20-30 tweets a minute. Unless Twitter artificially suppresses the hashtag, it’s likely to stay trending throughout the night.
#FreeMilo is currently trending in the United States, at number 6 and rising rapidly.
The event last night featuring Milo was held without incident, with a heavy police presence, at the Wolstein Center on the campus of Cleveland State University. In addition to Milo, the “Wake Up” event, a cross between a party and a political rally, featured Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders, and Chris Barron. Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, is best known as the sponsor of the “Draw the Prophet” cartoon contest in Garland, Texas in May 2015, which was targeted by two terrorists in the first ISIS attack on U.S. soil. Wilders is a Dutch politician, a leading contender for prime minister and his country’s leading opponent of Islamofascist assaults on women and gays. Barron, who was a co-founder of the LGBT conservative/libertarian group GOProud, now heads the organization LGBTrump.
Groups representing the Gay Establishment, such as the left-wing Human Rights Campaign, are supporting Hillary Clinton in lockstep. However, because of Donald Trump’s mostly libertarian attitude on social issues and his record of acceptance of LGBT people in his business organization, his candidacy is attractive to many in the LGBT community. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s record has earned her much derision—a record that includes promoting Islamofascism, actively or through incompetence, in Egypt, Libya, and the Islamic State territory; supporting the deal that ended sanctions on Iran and that will eventually give that LGBT-hating government the atomic bomb; soliciting and accepting money for the Clinton Foundation from leaders of countries that execute gays; and the decision to honor, at next week’s Democratic convention, the mother of Trayvon Martin, who was killed when he attempted a gay-bashing.
At last night’s “Wake Up” event, when it was his time to speak, Milo came to the lectern wearing what appeared to be a bulletproof vest. He soon removed the vest, revealing a T-shirt with the slogan “We shoot back.” That’s a reference to the Orlando terrorist attack, in which an ISIS terrorist killed 49 people at a gay nightclub. Leftists responded by seeking to divert attention away from Islamofascist terrorism to the unrelated issue of “gun control” laws. (The shooter in Orlando, who had travelled twice to Saudi Arabia, used a standard handgun and a standard rifle, and had been cleared of terrorist ties by the FBI. In the aftermath of Orlando, proponents of “gun control” offered no proposals that would have deterred the terrorist.)
In a message about Orlando directed to the LGBT community, Attorney General Loretta Lynch declared that “our most effective response to terror is compassion, it’s unity, and it’s love.” Her comment sparked outrage among those who believe that compassion, unity, and love may represent an inadequate response. The Obama administration’s willful blindness on this issue was spotlighted last week when the Washington Post reported that the FBI had found “no evidence” of anti-gay sentiment in the Orlando attack. That’s right—“no evidence” that the deadly assault on patrons of a gay nightclub, by a member of a group that supports the extermination of gays, was connected to anti-gay sentiment.
Milo announced during the “Wake Up” event that he would be leading a gay rights march through a Muslim enclave in Stockholm, Sweden. A 2014 study based on 2012 data showed that Sweden and Denmark had the highest rates of sexual assault in the European Union, fueled by mass immigration of men from Muslim countries where women are subjugated.
The Left has long claimed the simultaneous loyalty of most LGBT voters and of the supporters and enablers of Islamofascism. For the first time, the legitimacy of that claim is being challenged.