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Out Magazine Profiled Gay White Supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos and Twitter Issued a Take Down

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Out Magazine has profiled, interviewed and provided a photoshoot to notorious racist, Islamophobe, transphobe, and all-around bigot Milo Yiannopoulos.

Towleroad has previously covered Yiannopoulos’ banning from Twitter, his ‘Gays for Trump’ party at the RNC, his attempts to profit from his racism with a reality TV show, and his seemingly corrupt scholarship foundation. Writing an opinion piece for this site, I have also looked at Yiannopoulos’ proclivity for fame-whoring at the expense of human decency. 

Out‘s profile, titled “Send In the Clown: Internet Supervillain Milo Doesn’t Care That You Hate Him”, elicited swift backlash online.

At multiple junctures, Out appeared to go out of its way to normalize Yiannopoulos, rather than highlight the ways in which he is the very definition of an extremist.

In the article’s headline, Yiannopoulos is described innocuously as an “Internet super villain.” As if this were a comic book and his actions didn’t have actual repercussions outside ‘the internet.’

And in the magazine’s photoshoot, Yiannopoulos is dressed and styled to amuse. Appearing in drag and also in a clown costume, the photos suggest that their subject is someone we should be entertained by rather than someone with whom we should be disgusted. Far from depicting Yiannopoulos as the anti-gay homocon white supremacist that he really is, he comes across as playful and harmless.

https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/778644481335844864

The profile left many wondering why Out would provide Yiannopoulos with an additional mouthpiece to spread his hatred, and why they would physically portray him so benignly. To look at the images and to read the interview, Yiannopoulos is a mere provocateur. Not the racist infantile xenophobe he has proven himself to be.

Out provided an editor’s note to try and explain its decision to interview Yiannopoulos:

“It should not need saying that the views expressed by the subject of this piece in no way represent the opinions of this magazine, but in this era of social media tribalism, the mere act of covering a contentious person can be misinterpreted as an endorsement. If LGBTQ media takes its responsibilities seriously we can’t shy away from covering queer people who are at the center of this highly polarized election year, and we ask you to assess Milos Yiannopoulos, the focus of this profile, on his own words without mistaking them for ours.”

https://twitter.com/__keating/status/778630972967415808

Reaction was immediate.

https://twitter.com/ira/status/778637233762865152

https://twitter.com/ira/status/778642546213818368

The decision to feature a racist such as Yiannopoulos so prominently in Out came across as particularly tone-deaf given the endemic killing of innocent young black people at the hands of police officers in this country, to say nothing of the fact that the Republican nominee for president has elevated white supremacists to an alarming position of privilege within his own campaign.

https://twitter.com/brandonrambles/status/778642118872924160

https://twitter.com/brandonrambles/status/778643102206603264

https://twitter.com/brandonrambles/status/778643259178352640

Out‘s profile on Yiannopoulos was also compared to Jimmy Fallon’s recent interview with Donald Trump, given the way each normalized their respective subjects.

https://twitter.com/jpbrammer/status/778649964960440320

Out‘s piece on Yiannopoulos also revived a long-standing conversation about racism in LGBT media and the LGBT community more broadly speaking.

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