Milo Yiannopoulos is defending being an Internet troll in a recent interview with Nightline. “Trolling is very important,” he told Terry Moran.” “I like to think of myself as a virtuous troll, you know? I’m doing God’s work.”
Of course, Yiannopoulos is known for being one of the trolls that bullied Leslie Jones so harshly after the Ghostbusters reboot came out, she briefly left. Twitter. His own account has since been suspended. He says he has “no regrets,” but he “would like [his] account back.”
He also believes that Jones was playing victim. He told Nightline, “This idea that celebrities are these fragile wallflowers. Give me a break. That the stars of Hollywood blockbusters are sitting at home crying into their iPhones.”
Moran goes after him in the interview, calling him an “idiot” and saying some of his behavior is “revolting,” but Yiannopoulos won’t have it. He uses the opportunity to call out the body positive movement, saying, “What’s revolting is this idea now that you can tell women that they’ll be healthy at any size. It tells women that you can be fat and you can be unattractive and you’ll be happy anyway. That’s a lie.”
If that’s not enough for you, he then decides to go after feminism, calling out Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer specifically. He says, “I would rather a healthier, equitable arrangement that existed between the sexes rather than the sort of vindictive feminism that seems to exist now. And by the way, most people agree with me. Fewer than one in five women in America describe themselves as a feminist, because they see what I see.”
“It is insisted upon us that we all pay obeisance to the cult of Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer that they put them on the cover of the magazines.”
[H/T Nightline]
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