Eli Lake, Columnist

Why Conservatives on Campus Love Milo Yiannopoulos

They have to endure the left's cruel censorship. They no longer have to endure it alone.

September 27, 2017 at 5:14 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Go ahead. Call him deplorable.
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Milo Yiannopoulos: the troll who aims to trigger. He laments comediennes who have "contracted feminism." He jokes about being sexually molested when he was a minor. He's a gay man who regrets that gay men no longer marry women and make babies. Don't get him started on Muslims.

For two generations, the right's intellectuals have bridled at being painted with the same "-isms" and phobias that breach the margins of respectable discourse. Yiannopoulos welcomes the labels. So why would conservatives treat him as a martyr for their cause? He's everything they've tried to avoid being.