Alt-right figurehead Milo Yiannopoulos is trying to throw himself into the public spotlight once again.
This time, Yiannopoulos praised a wave of bombing attempts on the Obamas, Clintons, and other prominent Democratic politicians by saying it was “disgusting and sad that [the bombs] didn’t go off.” He even claimed he was upset “the Daily Beast didn’t get one.”
You’d expect an Instagram post praising a violent terrorist attack against two American presidential families would lead to immediate removal, but Instagram initially hesitated to take down the post after the site ruled it “does not violate our Community Guidelines,” the Daily Beast revealed.
Instagram finally took down the post “roughly two hours” after the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer reported on the photo. Yiannopoulos’ post received over 2,500 likes before it was pulled, with fans praising the post’s “dark humor” and calling its critics “honestly retarded.”
“This content violates our policies and has been removed from Instagram and Facebook,” Stephanie Noon, an Instagram spokeswoman, told the Daily Beast. “We prohibit celebration or praise of crimes committed, and we will remove content praising a bombing attempt as soon as we’re aware.”
While Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter in 2016 after encouraging harassment against actress Leslie Jones, he remains a somewhat popular alt-right figure throughout the internet. He sports over 386,000 followers on Instagram and over 2.3 million likes on Facebook, where he regularly posts about American politics. Ironically enough, Yiannopoulos turned to Facebook after the Daily Beast published its initial story, stating in all caps that he “WILL NEVER EVER STOP MAKING JOKES ABOUT WHATEVER I WANT AND NO ONE WILL STOP ME.”
“I DO NOT CARE WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES ARE,” Yiannopoulos wrote in all caps. “BAN ME FROM EVERYTHING. YOU WILL NEVER SILENCE ME. YOU WILL NEVER CENSOR ME. PERIOD.”
https://www.facebook.com/myiannopoulos/posts/1293760457428513?__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARC4jeP8gV6tiq2AGz1DkKY74OG3gcEw4RDWsMzlcBhf8qDFAghzBDIjpwY9Tb2_bI1eO8W2rGgsd9FU7sGWy23oWUY0H_99x0bPtZ9EkjuNI_cN-OxfOhZeEFR57Ut7xayNAN6t98CRCJZPF8ZPoDpfU65i-G6RuAPw2hijZ5Ysa_QYLqG_2OSepJb7ybAItZTtfmeKWg1k3C534JgWMqGeuTE&__tn__=-R
Yiannopoulos sounded less confident in a follow-up post shared on his Instagram, which confirmed the site removed his post because “it doesn’t follow our Community Guidelines.”
“It doesn’t matter whether your post violates their terms of service or not—only whether enough social justice warriors complain about it,” he wrote, this time in regular caps. “Mob rule.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BpXxFwVg1JI/?taken-by=milo.yiannopoulos
Twitter, on the other hand, was pretty happy that the Instagram post was eventually removed. Plenty made fun of his over-the-top posts.
MILO SAD pic.twitter.com/mFVEIjNVAe
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) October 25, 2018
— Matt Walsh is a GIANT TRANSPHOBIC TWAT “Parody” (@AlphaMaleDrG) October 25, 2018
Dinner is so dangerous now because journalists you guys and oh by the way I STILL EXIST OH PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO ME I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS LONELY
— Lib (@1MoreFightinLib) October 25, 2018
https://twitter.com/billysubway/status/1055571848212156417
https://twitter.com/SoulStealer2011/status/1055597172962574336
Others were furious that Instagram dragged its feet on removing the message, with many criticizing Instagram’s decision prior to the post’s removal.
Milo Yiannopoulos posted this on instagram. This is further incitement to violence. And instagram won’t take it down. pic.twitter.com/Qo8wCWtR7d
— the elections will not stop the fascism (@benFranklin2018) October 25, 2018
Let’s get real here. @instagram is encouraging terror. https://t.co/JGG6ncVBjp
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) October 25, 2018
https://twitter.com/pointforeword/status/1055542143345934341
https://twitter.com/XtianMcIntire/status/1055682179970162690
They should be deleting him off Instagram after those comments not just the post
— Stuart Dillon #COYI (@StuartDillon1) October 25, 2018
How does he still have a platform to spew his venom?
— Sean McInerney (@smcinern) October 25, 2018
#MAGABomber This isn’t really a matter of ‘social justice’ any more — This is literal terrorism that is being promoted and supported.
— Veritas (@Veritas_83) October 26, 2018
How can these right wingers wish that hundreds or thousands of completely innocent people are killed in terrorist… https://t.co/YyuRnWkir2
https://twitter.com/MDO_wx/status/1055788620127313920
READ MORE
- Who’s going to challenge Trump in 2020? Here are the early contenders
- What exactly is ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome?’
- The best political fact-checking sites on the internet
- The best political podcasts to keep you informed
While Yiannopoulos’ popularity has dwindled since his resignation from Breitbart News, he’s entered the news cycle a few times after his departure from Andrew Breitbart’s site.
After Yiannopoulos was chased out of a New York bar, Twitter basked in his self-pity. Then there’s Yiannopoulos’ original Simon & Schuster manuscript, which was found in court documents late last year. The internet promptly dug into it as users questioned why the company would give him a book deal in the first place.
Disclosure: Milo Yiannopoulos was the founder of the Kernel, a publication the Daily Dot acquired in 2014.
