Breitbart bad boy Milo not silenced by Twitter ban
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Milo Yiannopoulos delights in provoking liberals, and has developed a fan base on college campuses. (Breitbart)
Breitbart journalist Milo Yiannopoulos lashed back at Twitter Wednesday after it banned the political provocateur for life, calling the 140-character platform a “safe space only for leftist ideology.”
Yiannopoulos condemned the social media site for silencing conservatives while freely carrying the hateful messages of anti-police groups. The openly gay conservative bomb thrower’s ouster had the hashtag #FreeMilo trending Wednesday as users from the left and right call for his return.
“[Twitter] targets conservatives while letting the left, Islamists, and in particular the social justice warrior vanguard of the millennial generation get away scot-free with abusive, racist and harassing behavior,” Yiannopoulos, a darling of the young conservative movement, told FoxNews.com in an email.
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@Lesdoggg Hi Leslie, following, please DM me when you have a moment
— Jack (@jack) July 19, 2016
Although Yiannopoulos himself didn’t post explicitly racist language, he was blamed when some of his followers directed a storm of racist tweets at “Ghostbusters” actress Leslie Jones following his scathing movie review in which he criticized her character for perpetuating black stereotypes.
Yiannopoulos said he doesn’t take responsibility for the tweets, and said the situation only escalated because Jones responded by “attempting to call her trolls names.”
Insisting he didn’t break Twitter’s terms of service, Yiannopoulos highlighted extreme ideology that has been permitted on the site, pointing to posts that call for the “celebration of the deaths of police” and offensive tweets against whites from Jones herself.
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Leslie Jones was the object of Twitter derision after Yiannopoulos' scathing "Ghostbusters" review.
“Besides ISIS and every other Islamist group planning and organizing on Twitter, you have the highest-ranking white member of Black Lives Matter, Shaun King, calling for a coup if Trump is elected,” he said, adding Jones ironically retweeted a message that called him “a gay Uncle Tom.”
Jones, who announced Monday she was quitting Twitter, had retweeted the racist messages she received, prompting a volley of disparaging tweets between Yiannopoulos and herself.
Yiannopoulos referred to Jones as a “black dude” and pegged her “barely literate.” The ban followed shortly after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted at Jones to privately message him.
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“People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online,” a Twitter spokesman told FoxNews.com in an email. “We know many people believe we have not done enough to curb this type of behavior on Twitter.”
According to Yiannopoulos, Twitter hasn’t banned Jones for racist language for the same reason it banned him, since the site “actively works to stifle opinions it doesn’t like.”
“The only important part of the equation is the politics and identify groups of the person sending the tweet---not the content of their message,” he said.