A modest proposal on angry privileged white internet trolls

I’D like to dedicate this week’s column to the Twitter memory of Milo Yiannopoulos, the great free speech martyr. You may not have heard of Yiannopoulos but following a recent oppressive attack on him by social media and, frankly, women, you’ll be sure to remember him for at least the next five minutes. Yiannopoulos, technology editor at conservative US news website Breitbart, no less, was slapped with a permanent ban from Twitter last week after expressing his heartfelt, honest opinions on the newly-released all-female Ghostbusters movie, which, to all intents and purposes, was an unconvincing, thinly-veiled assault on men across the world. Hiring women instead of men to dress up in boiler suits and run around pretending to catch ghosts was an affront to everything men have fought so hard to achieve throughout history, and Yiannopoulos was right to pour scorn on the movie’s four female stars. Yes, Twitter really showed its true colours when it took the “cowardly” action, as Yiannopoulos described it, of booting him off the platform after his noble attempts to let the world know that the women in the new Ghostbusters were fat, ugly and – God help us in the case of Leslie Jones – black. It was unfortunate that Jones took offence and complained about it – after all, Yiannopoulos didn’t say anything all that abusive directly to her, and it’s not his fault if his hundreds of thousands of followers quickly took the racist taunts too far. My heart goes out to him. I bow in admiration of Yiannopoulos and his like, who have bravely nurtured the rise of the internet’s “alt-right” movement to campaign against the terrors of modern feminism and racial diversity. Privileged white men are under serious threat in this dangerous world, and they need our support. When they single out women as targets of orchestrated campaigns designed to remind them of their places in the world and champion the rightful place of men, we should be tremendously grateful for their intellect. When other alt-right internet heroes like Roosh V, the infamous “pick-up artist”, let their favourable views on rape be known we should thank them for reminding us that it’s women who bear the greatest responsibility when it comes to violence. It’s not a man’s fault if he has urges, and it really isn’t fair that men like Yiannopoulos and Roosh V, who have dared to go public with their subversive views, are persecuted by fluffy progressives.

I’ll have to stop with the sarcasm there because in the age of the internet most people probably only read the first few paragraphs of an article before making a judgment and heading to the social media frontline to deliver their verdicts. There’s a chance that when this column lands online my editor will have a headache heading his way (sorry).*

I just find it hard to take any of these people seriously. Rather, I find them really quite funny. The “alt-right” movement, which takes itself so seriously, strikes me as a bunch of keyboard warriors too emotionally immature to have any idea how to handle the wonders of femininity. Part of me thinks they’re a bunch of clowns who don’t deserve these column inches, but the other part of me can’t help but be amused by them.

A great contrast, as I sit here writing about the notorious Yiannopoulos Twitter ban, lies with a news report I’m watching featuring new Prime Minister Theresa May meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as reported by the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg. I am the female editor of a news outlet in Scotland, a country led by a woman, Nicola Sturgeon, whose main opposition in the Scottish Parliament comes in the form of Ruth Davidson and Kezia Dugdale.

So I can’t help but chuckle that a bunch of often anonymous men think they can halt the progression of women’s rights by saying nasty things on the internet. I don’t want to minimise the damage these men can do – the racist and misogynistic abuse dished out to Leslie Jones, and many other women online, is a serious thing and it should be confronted at the appropriate level. But the notion that Yiannopoulos is the victim of a modern conspiracy aimed at devaluing men should be mercilessly mocked for the schoolboy politics it is. *As a fan of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, this is just the kind of satire I like ... Ed