Milo Yiannopoulos is teaching the internet how to hate

If you’ve never heard of Milo Yiannopoulos, stop reading. However much he would like you to, you don’t need to know about him. If the basement of the internet is filled with trolls, Milo is a goblin prince, looking up only to a select few, chief among whom is Donald Trump. Milo has taken to calling Trump “Daddy” in the latest chapter of his ongoing quest to court controversy and win fame. In this most recent incarnation, Milo is a prominent voice in the "alt-right" movement in America. This is a movement which yearns for respectability but has yet to prove itself more than the pseudo-political wing of online bigotry. It’s been associated with white supremacism, a hardline stance on immigration, and support for Donald Trump’s candidacy for the White House. Milo believes (among many things) that the gender pay gap is a myth, that death threats received by women "aren’t all they’re cracked up to be" and that “the newfound popularity of anal sex among young women is just signalling to fags that they’re happy to bite the pillow if it means bagging a sensitive husband who appreciates her choice of drapes.”

Milo’s most recent troubles have developed through his attempts to court the alt-right: the Breitbart editor is alleged to be sitting on cash raised to fund the “Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant” to give educational grants to white men, an initiative said to have been inspired by the charitable works of Mariah Carey. Milo has astutely realized that while the western world tries to be more diverse and inclusive, many angry white guys are feeling the pinch. Milo is a lightning rod to their cause. The Daily Beast has discovered that the fund has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 to date from angry white dudes poking one in the eye of modern society, but there’s no way to apply for the scholarships, none have been handed out, and Milo hasn’t filed the correct paperwork for the money. One of his collaborators on the scheme has stepped back.

Her name is Margaret MacLennan, and she was the only person willing to speak to me on the record. She said: “I was set to administer [the grant], but salary negotiations just kept getting pushed forward. I didn't have a budget. I didn't have access to any of the money. I can't administer a bursary fund if I'm blind.” This is just the latest chapter in the business career of the young internet celebrity who heads a small legion of devoted fanboys. As a result of these supporters, people are scared of Milo. I spoke to former UK colleagues of Yiannopoulos, and not one of them would go on the record. They fear the hassle from him and his fans that comes from criticising him. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one pointed to the real problem with Milo’s fundraising effort:

“Milo’s primary interest is Milo, it’s his personal brand and his celebrity which I think is part of the reason why his charity thing imploded was that it was a stunt to boost Milo’s profile not a genuine effort to help other people. I think you’ve seen that in the journalism that he does. He will write the stories even if they’re a bit sketchy because he knows he’ll increase his profile. That’s his primary motivator.”

The address in London attached to the bank account to which donations for Milo’s white guy grant were sent is the same address given for Sentinel Media Ltd, Hipster Ventures Limited, and Caligula Limited, all companies of which Milo was a director or secretary, and all companies dissolved without ever filing accounts. Milo’s life is a trail of corporate wrecks. As pressure mounts on Yiannopoulos to account for the money stateside, the fears of mismanagement are nothing new to UK journalists who’ve had dealings with him in the past. One told me “when I got to London in 2011, one of the first things I was told was ‘don’t talk to Milo’” as a result of his notoriously bad management of money. MacLennan was also disappointed with Milo’s business practices: “I'm sad to hear how many people who work for him are also unpaid. There's a lot of money going into the machine and very little coming back to pay the cogs.” Milo has issued veiled threats to former workers, and allegations of blackmail have been raised against him.

Milo’s UK website “The Kernel” could not meet bailiffs' demands for payment of £16,853 in 2013 after former contributor Jason Hesse was forced to take an employment tribunal claim against Milo. His leadership style at the website was erratic. A source told me, “There’d be times when he wouldn’t show up for days on end... usually he was asleep or unconscious somewhere.” One colleague agrees that money “is an issue for him... Milo relies on fame now. I don’t think he’s in it for the money, that’s just a weak point for him.” Another colleague suggests that fame is the source of his concerns: “He has a desperate, desperate need to be important, and he will do anything to get attention.” What does MacLennan advise anyone thinking of working with Milo? “Don't. Try Heat Street. I'm under the impression that they pay their contributors.”

Milo’s past is one of reinvention. Dropping out of both Manchester and Cambridge Universities, Milo has dabbled in several fields in his search for fame. Before he was a blogger, he wrote poems under the name “Milo Andreas Wagner” which leaned heavily on Tori Amos for inspiration and included lines from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a gay man, Milo has spoken about his concerns about homosexuality: “Is being homosexual 'wrong'? Something somewhere inside of me says Yes.”

He named his latest journey around America the “Dangerous Faggot” tour. An English/Greek Catholic who live-blogged a papal visit to Britain for the Catholic Herald, Milo has also claimed a Jewish identity, and has been photographed wearing an Iron Cross. A colleague who worked with him explained that “when he was there it was very much the Milo show.” The constant changes in Milo’s opinions and appearance lead some to suspect that Milo will say or do anything for attention, and that he means none of it. A colleague told me that “I don’t think Milo really believes the right-wing stuff he says, he has just got an absolute desperate need to be heard.” Some proof of this may be found in his stint working for the left-wing figure Bianca Jagger, before he went on to court the right.

In 2013, Milo was scornful of computer gamers, writing that “there’s something a bit tragic, isn’t there, about men in their thirties hunched over a controller whacking a helmeted extraterrestrial? I’m in my late twenties, and even I find it sad. And yet there are so many of them – enough to support a multi-billion dollar video games industry. That’s an awful lot of unemployed saddos living in their parents’ basements.” Today he claims to be a champion for gamers upset at women becoming involved in computer games, having seen the huge opportunity for fame presented by the #gamergate movement. The basement-dwellers needed an articulate, savvy voice to dress their misogyny up in something akin to intellectual respectability, and Milo gave them that chance.

“An army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers, are terrorising the entire community – lying, bullying and manipulating their way around the internet for profit and attention,” Milo wrote, as he suddenly became a convert to yet another cause. One colleague cited this as a profound example of his willingness to court publicity: “Look at gamergate, he had total contempt for gamers, still does probably.” MacLennan believes Milo “found notoriety and found it hollow. He's notorious now, but I don't think he likes it that much. It's old Machiavellian thinking to make sure to have lots of deputies and seconds-in-command so that when the storm gets rough, you can shift the blame and throw them overboard instead. He's discarded too many people, but the storm keeps getting worse. I don't think he's happy.”

Milo’s basement-dwelling gamers are – unsurprisingly – vocal on the internet, and in 2016 his 300,000 plus Twitter followers were appalled after the platform banned him, probably for tweets about the all-women remake of Ghostbusters. #FreeMilo began trending, but despite the protestations of his fanbase, he has not been allowed back. The film’s star Leslie Jones is far from the first woman Milo has attacked, having poured scorn on game developer Zoë Quinn and game critic Anita Sarkeesian before her. If there were any doubt about his views on women, Milo sells unisex hoodies from an online store emblazoned with the slogan “Feminism is Cancer.” Milo is surfing the backlash against feminism, and if the white guy scholarship fund wasn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, it was a way to gain some attention that Milo didn’t think through or plan for properly.

“Read up on borderline personality disorder” I am warned by someone who has worked with Milo on and off for some time, and the word that comes up frequently in conversations about him - though of course there is no diagnosis - is “sociopath.” People spoke to me of their fears of retribution, the power he now has to lead his fans to make life hell for his enemies. “Social media is his greatest strength and his greatest weakness” I’m told. I can’t publish most of the allegations people make against Milo because few people are prepared to go on the record, but the pattern of flying too close to the sun in search of fame is a recurring one. Perhaps the worst part of Milo’s life story is that he can be genuinely funny, compelling, and interesting. I’ve personally found him to be witty, and extremely talented at controversialism. It’s easy to be lulled by his superficial charm, and to forget for a while that – for example - he once said “I went gay so I didn’t have to deal with nutty broads”. Milo is “literally like a Greek tragedy” says one colleague, another concedes that “as a person he’s a lot of fun, but professionally the things he’s done, I’m not too keen on.”

The New Republic has described Yiannopoulos as “exactly what’s wrong with conservative politics” and it’s hard to see his brand of hateful, aggressive rhetoric appealing to the mainstream. If Milo has burnt his bridges with the alt-right over the mismanagement of this scholarship fund, there’s absolutely no chance he’ll go back into the shadows of private life. He knows he is too good at courting controversy, and perhaps he needs the attention too much. For too long he’s been given a free pass by TV producers in need of a talking head. He’s been given a platform just for his willingness to say shocking things, and he’s cultivated a following among those who relish the way he speaks the unspeakable. He is a creature of the modern internet, as adept at evolving to find new pockets of support as he is at burning bridges. Whether the path to redemption involves evangelical Christian re-birth, socialism, or something even more outlandish, it would be hard to be genuinely surprised by Milo. I tried to reach out to him for comment, but at the time of writing he hasn’t made himself available to talk. I expect the response will come soon enough online from the saps who he’s hoodwinked into believing that he really cares about them.