There’s some good news in the world today, everyone—no I’m not kidding—and it means a little less hate on the Internet… let’s hope. Milo Yiannopoulos, AKA the notorious islamaphobic, racist, misogynist, Trump supporter who recently rallied his followers to spew racial hate at Leslie Jones just got permanently banned from Twitter. In the past couple days, the deeply offensive comments about Jones’s appearance in the new Ghostbusters forced her to leave the platform, as Yiannopoulos and company whipped hateful messages at her constantly.
This is awesome news—one less Trump-loving bigot getting away with harassing people of color, right? Well, yes, but let’s not forget that Yiannopoulos has actually been doing this for years. Leslie Jones is not the first victim of these attacks! The British-born conservative journalist has spoken publicly against safe spaces, Muslim people, and even referred to followers of the Black Lives Matter movements as “extremists.” As happy as we are that this dude is finally getting off the tweet-sphere, it is surely not his only platform and it was surely not soon enough.
Unfortunately as well, he’s been getting some back up from folks claiming that Twitter is blocking his freedom of speech, no matter how harmful it’s been, as we can see from Jones’s public reactions. Yiannopoulos himself claimed that Jones was playing the victim with an overreaction to an innocuous review.
Um, no. This dude is a cyber leech, as we can see just by the title of his review (above), not to mention an arrogant racist. Here at BUST we are just happy this guy is off the platform, at least for the foreseeable future, and that our main boo Leslie and many others can perhaps see Twitter as a safer space to publicize their ideas. Here’s hoping the company follows up on this act and maintains accountability with their policy against those who target others with hate based on their gender, race, religion, and sexuality. Leslie has been getting a lot of love as well in the wake of all this, as BUST recently published here. This is one example of how important it is to take cyber hate seriously and also that love conquers hate.
To those still out there spewing their bigoted guts out we say:
Images via Twitter, Instagram.
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