Not Funny: On Easter Sunday, Milo Yiannopoulos Chooses "He is Risen" as Title for Comeback Video

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"He is Risen," the supertitle to the trailer for the Milo Yiannopoulos "comeback video," promoted on Easter Sunday, wasn't referring to Christ.

It was referring to Milo Yiannopoulos.

In the thirty-seven second trailer, we also see Yiannopoulos dressed twice as a Catholic priest, including in the final shot.

Of course, one of the recent controversies swirling around the ex-Breitbart journalist was the question of whether he had or had not been abused by a Catholic priest. 

How edgy.

"The Bitch is Back." Funny.

"He is Risen" (on Easter Sunday). Sick.

It's true that Yiannopoulos has done a huge amount of good. Among other things, he's given articulate and powerful defenses of the Catholic faith - much better than most contemporary bishops, for example. And, of course, he has claimed to be a believing Catholic.

I have no reason to doubt that he is.

But he obviously has huge problems. And, no, I'm not, here, specifically referring to his sex life.

As everyone knows, I've strongly defended Yiannopoulos in public.

In general, his enemies are my enemies. They're your enemies. 

But Yiannopoulos needs to get his personal issues resolved. If he doesn't, his ongoing implosion will greatly hurt the causes that he claims to represent.

Anti-Milo "Pedophile" Hit Piece Was From Never Trump PAC

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The left hates Milo Yiannopoulos. Many will do anything to stop him from writing and speaking, including using physical violence, as we saw recently in Berkeley.

I don't think anyone on the right hates Milo. A few do not like him. Some are uncomfortable with him. Many are skeptical or at least neutral.

However, there is a large contingent on the right that hates Donald Trump. Call them (as they like calling themselves), "principled conservatives."

A few days ago, some principled conservatives decided to get back at Donald Trump by trying to ruin the career of Milo Yiannopoulos.

That doesn't sound very principled or conservative, does it?

It doesn't even really make sense.

Or to put it more strongly: what sort of foul excuses for human beings would involve themselves in an effort as nasty and sick as that?

From Gateway Pundit:

On Sunday a #NeverTrump website called the Reagan Battalion released shocking audio of Milo Yiannopolous allegedly promoting sex with 13 year-olds. The audio was a clip from a 3 hour long podcast interview Milo had in early 2016.

Obviously, the Reagan Battalion was out to get Milo.

And they did.

Around noon on Monday CPAC announced Milo would no longer be speaking at their conference this year. [And later that day, Simon & Schuster canceled Milo's upcoming book Dangerous, even though it had been trending at #1 on Amazon through pre-orders.]

The Reagan Battalion – a group that pretends to be conservative – then gloated at the news that they had helped end Milo’s career.

The Gateway Pundit goes on to identify Reagan Battalion as a Never Trump PAC that served wholly or in large part to promote the Quixotic anti-Trump candidacy of Evan McMullin.

And indeed, the "About" tab on their Facebook page yields this URL:

www.stopdonaldtrumppac.com

Here is Reagan Battalion's gloat:

The blurb is telling. They don't even explicitly mention the "pedophilia" allegations. Instead they accuse Yiannopoulos of making "anti-semitic and hateful comments," and "spreading hateful views." In the manner of the most illiberal SJW they praise free speech but then claim that "hate, racism and intolerance" should not be given a "platform."

They might as well have put on their leather and bashed Milo's head in with a metal pipe.

But the last sentence reveals that it wasn't really about Milo after all:

This incident is proof that thorough vetting is required by conservative entities before they decide to elevate and promise (sic) people as conservative standard bearers.

Gee, who do you think they're really talking about there?

They couldn't touch Trump. He won, after all. So in a kind of hissy fit, they decided to go after Milo in an attempt to prove their stupid point about Trump.

Somehow, I doubt Ronald Reagan would have thought very much of Reagan Battalion or their tactics.

And by tactics, I mean lynching people.

But then, maybe I don't understand principled conservatism.

BREAKING: Milo Yiannopoulos Disinvited from CPAC

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Update (3:30 PST): Simon & Schuster just announced it was cancelling Yiannopoulos' upcoming book Dangerous. In addition, Breitbart is considering dismissing him as Technology Editor.

A few minutes ago, Matt Schlapp, Chairman of the American Conservative Union, announced on Twitter that the recent invitation to Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) had been withdrawn. Schlapp explained that this was due to Yiannopoulos appearing to endorse pederasty in a podcast interview about a year ago. Yiannopoulos had recently issued a "clarification" of the interview on his Facebook page, but Schlapp dubbed this "insufficient."

A few hours earlier, CPAC had announced that President Donald Trump would be speaking at the conference.

WARNING: GRAPHIC. Here is the long original version of the podcast (some of he relevant remarks begin at about 1:01:30). Yiannopoulos' "clarification" is here.

Predictit: Brexit Will Lose

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A few days ago, Milo Yiannopoulos filmed a video ad for Brexit, standing next to a stream in the Alaskan wilderness. As light rain began to increasingly pelt his $3,000 suit, "God Save the Queen" could be heard on the soundtrack.

That heroic effort probably won't be enough.

Though many polls have Brexit ahead, Predictit - one of the leading prediction markets - has Brexit trading at only 26 cents. That's 3:1 it won't win.

From what I can gather in the various comment threads, there's a lot of cynicism that in a close vote, the "establishment" will figure out some way to tilt things.

We'll see.

Notably, tomorrow is also the 17th of Ramadan - the anniversary of the Battle of Badr -  a day that Jihadists hold close to their hearts.

According to the Koran, it was on this day that Allah told Muhammad to "make great slaughter on the land" and massacre his captives.

Happy Feast.

Bandit Pianist "Klavierkunst" Plays Imagine at Cox Memorial Service

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It almost looks like he's wearing a hijab.

Yes, he also played Imagine outside of the Bataclan, a few days after the massacre there.

His schtick, for which he has earned swoons from the usual circles, is that he cycles to the scenes of demonstrations, wars and murders with a piano attached to his bike.

And then he plays various hits including that well-known Khmer Rouge theme song:

Imagine there's no heaven 

Imagine there's no countries 

And no religion too 

Imagine no possessions

He wanted to go to Orlando. No doubt Milo Yiannopoulos would have splintered his grand with a Pink Pistol.

Davide Martello, aka "Klavierkunst," is a twit.

He's an ambulance chaser without the socially useful upside.

Real men shoot back. They don't plonk on people's graves.

Milo Yiannopoulos Reports that Twitter is Now "Shadowbanning" Politically Incorrect Users

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Big Brother (Jack Dorsey of Twitter) is Shadowbanning you

If I hear one more time that this sort of thing is nothing to be concerned about because Twitter is a private company and it can do what it wants blah blah blah, I'll pull an epic Glenn Beck scream.

Private censorship (or "censorship" if you like) can be just as toxic and insidious as government censorship. Indeed, these days it is arguably more so, given that worldwide media and communications are largely private and mainly controlled by only a few companies.

Of course, these companies are also often actively collaborating with governments.

What's worse, having your local library refuse to stock D.H. Lawrence or having political opposition banned (or "shadowbanned") in many countries by a quasi-alliance between the ruling political parties and a few large media companies?

Breitbart Tech correspondent Milos Yiannopoulos (who himself has recently been the subject of Twitter harassment) suggests that concerned parties build their own unbiased platforms. That's a great plan in theory. Unfortunately, it may be about as possible now as concerned parties building their own governments.

Welcome to the End of History, guys.

By Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart, 16 February, 2016:

Rumours that Twitter has begun ‘shadowbanning’ politically inconvenient users have been confirmed by a source inside the company, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart Tech. His claim was corroborated by a senior editor at a major publisher. 

According to the source, Twitter maintains a ‘whitelist’ of favoured Twitter accounts and a ‘blacklist’ of unfavoured accounts. Accounts on the whitelist are prioritised in search results, even if they’re not the most popular among users. Meanwhile, accounts on the blacklist have their posts hidden from both search results and other users’ timelines. 

Our source was backed up by a senior editor at a major digital publisher, who told Breitbart that Twitter told him it deliberately whitelists and blacklists users. He added that he was afraid of the site’s power, noting that his tweets could disappear from users’ timelines if he got on the wrong side of the company. 

Shadowbanning, sometimes known as “Stealth Banning” or “Hell Banning,” is commonly used by online community managers to block content posted by spammers. Instead of banning a user directly (which would alert the spammer to their status, prompting them to create a new account), their content is merely hidden from public view. 

For site owners, the ideal shadowban is when a user never realizes he’s been shadowbanned. 

However, Twitter isn’t merely targeting spammers. For weeks, users have been reporting that tweets from populist conservatives, members of the alternative right, cultural libertarians, and other anti-PC dissidents have disappeared from their timelines. 

Among the users complaining of shadowbans are sci-fi author and alt-right figurehead Vox Day, geek culture blogger “Daddy Warpig,” and the popular pro-Trump account Ricky Vaughn. League of Gamers founder and former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern, as well as adult actress and anti-censorship activist Mercedes Carrera, have also reported that their tweets are not appearing on the timelines of their followers. 

The pattern of shadowban reports, which skews towards the alt-right, the populist right, and cultural libertarians, follows close on the heels of Twitter’s establishment of a “Trust and Safety Council” packed with left-wing advocacy groups, as well as Islamic research centre the Wahid Institute. 

It also follows my prediction that Twitter would use its influence to interfere in the 2016 presidential election by muffling conservative voices on the platform. 

For close to a year now, Breitbart has covered Twitter’s march towards political censorship. In May 2015 Allum Bokhari reported that the site had begun to experiment with shadowbans, ostensibly to protect users from abuse. Then, as now, it was suspected that “protecting users from abuse” was an excuse to implement a system that would later be used for political censorship. 

With shadowbans now confirmed by an inside source, there is little room for doubt that the platform is intent on silencing conservatives. Furthermore, it has demonstrated a complete lack of regard for transparency, concealing its shadowbanning system from users and hiding its political bias behind a veneer of opposition to online abuse. (In reality, the site turns a blind eye to abuse from left-wingers.) 

Users in search of a transparent, politically unbiased platform will soon have to find — or build — an alternative.