Culture

Milo Yiannopoulos Just Got Banned From Entering The Country

Yiannopoulos once said he wanted to write a book called 'Australia, You're My Last Hope.'

by Joseph Earp  6 March 2019
Milo Yiannopoulos Australian tour cancelled

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Things have been going from bad to worse for Milo Yiannopoulos over the last year or so.

Problems began for the contrarian, Trump-supporter and ‘cultural critic’ (AKA one of those talking heads who tries to launch a career by parroting the President’s hard line on immigration) when he stirred up an army of trolls in a racist Twitter attack against Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones.

His part in the cyber barrage against Jones led to him getting permanently banned from the site, a significant blow given he had used the social media service as a place to spread his views and recruit new supporters.

Things got worse a year later when footage emerged in which Yiannopoulos made controversial remarks about paedophilia. That controversy lost the man his job at Breitbart, a far-right news site that helped spread dangerous conservative conspiracy theories like the Pizzagate scandal.

Suddenly, Yiannopoulos was without a regular job or platform, leaving him relying on a dwindling revenue source.  By December of last year, Australian promoters claimed that the contrarian had told them he was $2 million dollars in debt.

Now, Yiannopoulos’ luck has turned from bad to worse: as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, the Morrison government has reportedly knocked back the Visa application he needed to complete a forthcoming tour of the country.

The speaking tour isn’t doomed, necessarily — the alt-right figurehead still has a month to appeal the decision, and there’s always the chance that he could complete the tour via Skype, as Chelsea Manning did when her application was also knocked back. Whether that would sate his fans remains to be seen.

There is, of course, the possibility that this very Visa scandal will only serve to give the figurehead the attention that he entirely desires. Moreover, celebrating the government’s hardline immigration program is itself problematic, given its history of banning figures like Manning.

For his part, Yiannopoulos has a vested interest in making sure that the tour goes ahead. After all, he has previously cited Australia as one of the few places that he feels comfortable touring, and has expressed the desire to write a book about our country titled Australia, You’re My Last Hope.