Less than an hour after Milo Yiannopoulos was banished from Twitter on Tuesday night, the professional provocateur immediately went to a party and basically bragged about it.
The “fight” in question was a series of exchanges with actress Leslie Jones, who received a barrage of racist and misogynistic tweets after her appearance in the new all-female “Ghostbusters” movie. Yiannopoulos, using his now defunct handle @Nero, cheered on the attacks, marshaling his 340,000 followers. Twitter, in its ban, cited its policy “prohibiting participating in or inciting targeted abuse of individuals.”
At the party, Yiannopoulos seemed unfazed. A slender British man who wore sunglasses inside the party, he insisted he was embarrassed only because the controversy occurred over an “[effing] terrible feminist flop.”
He came to the lectern wearing what appeared to be a bulletproof vest — but quickly shrugged it off to display a sleeveless T-shirt bearing a rainbow handgun and the words: “We shoot back.”
This was the party that billed itself as “the most fab party at RNC.” It was held in a dingy multipurpose room at Cleveland State University, where the only decorations were “Trump-Pence” signs alongside poster-size photos of slender, barely clad young men wearing “Make America Great Again” trucker hats.
Revelers danced to Bruce Springsteen. Tables were piled high with freebie coloring books featuring a superhero Donald Trump.
But hey, Pamela Geller was there. She, of course, is the veteran Obama birth-certificate conspiracy theorist and anti-“Islamization” activist whose provocative contest in 2015 to draw the prophet Muhammad became the target of a shootout that resulted in the death of two gunmen in Texas. Also in the house: Geert Wilders, a far-right Dutch politician aspiring to become the next prime minister of the Netherlands.
But the de facto headliner was Yiannopoulos, who pivoted from his Twitter travails to declare Trump the most pro-gay candidate in history. He also criticized European immigration policies and previewed his plans for the near future.
“Next week, I’m going to Sweden,” he said. “And in Sweden, which has the humiliating distinction of being the rape capital of Europe — thanks to Islamic immigration, where Islamic immigration isn’t just hurting gays, as it did in Orlando — I will be leading a gay-pride march through the Muslim ghetto.”
He would ride in on a horse, he said. He would be followed by 20 people in a V formation. He said he would give a speech there, “‘Game of Thrones’-style,” though he did not elaborate on what he meant by that. One person in the crowd called out that Yiannopoulos could become the “Mother of [gay slur],” a play on the show’s “Mother of Dragons.”
“Ahhh!” Yiannopoulos exclaimed. He seemed to like the idea quite a bit.