Let Milo Yiannopoulos into the country

I wish there was a better character around than Milo Yiannopoulos whose rights to free expression I could defend. But that’s the way it works. It’s often those who hold views we despise that we need to go to bat for.

I say let him in.

Pauline Hanson claims both Yiannopoulos and former leader of the English Defence League, Tommy Robinson, should be allowed into the country and has written to Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, David Coleman urging a rethink so that both men can tote their wares in Australia in the name of free speech.

Free speech has its limits. Immigration even more so. All non-citizens entering Australia must meet the character requirements set out in the Migration Act. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is a convicted criminal. On that basis alone, he would not be welcome here.

Robinson’s criminal record includes convictions for violent crime, assault police, financial and immigration frauds, drug possession, public order offences, and contempt of court. That’s quite the rap sheet. Robinson has served three separate terms of imprisonment. He was not granted a visa to visit the United States late last year, which may or may not be due to the fact he has been convicted of entering the US with a false passport.

Right now, almost as we speak, Robinson and his cohorts are running a harassment campaign against an Australian history teacher-turned journalist living in England, Mike Stuchbery. The campaign includes door stepping, where Robinson and others have turned up at Stuchbery’s home banging on doors and rattling windows, ‘doxxing’ (the online publication of Stuchbery’s residential address and contact details) and various threats left at Stuchbery’s home.

Stuchbery’s offence was to promote the crowd funding of a defamation case that his been brought against Robinson for comments he made against a teenage boy who is a Muslim and a Syrian refugee.

Robinson’s conduct is precisely the sort of behaviour that is not wanted in Australia.

How Hanson can argue that Robinson should be given a platform in Australia on this basis defies human understanding. He fails the character test for entry to this country by every single measure.

But Milo Yiannopoulos has no criminal background and the show cause letter he was sent by DICMA is based on a string of unpaid bills he generated in his last tour in 2017, including a reported figure of $50,000 owed to Victoria Police, and violence caused by third parties outside some of the events he spoke at.

He has not been denied a visa as yet. He has 28 days to provide Australian immigration authorities with grounds for his admission into this country.

If he promises to behave himself, I can see no reason why he shouldn’t come to Australia.

The bigger question is why some Australians on the right would want to part with their hard-earned (tickets can run to $1000) to see his, shall we say, performative version of politics when the rest of the world has moved on. The last I heard of Yiannopoulos he was flogging Alex Jones’s liver supplements on Info-Wars.

Even back in 2017, Yiannopoulos’s tour reeked of Spinal Tap charting in Japan and getting the band back together for one last tour. Milo’s star was not just waning in the US, it had hit the deck leaving a pea-sized divot. He had been shown the door at Breitbart and the world in general had turned its back on him after a video surfaced where he came across as a pedophile apologist.

I was at a function during Milo’s last tour of Australia where I bumped into Ross Cameron. Cameron, who I know and like at a personal level, told me he was MC-ing the Milo Sydney show later that evening.

Ross and many others at the shindig were excited, like pre-teen children about to meet Santa. Or perhaps more like ageing KISS groupies without the make-up. It was, I was forced to conclude, all a bit sad.

Genuine conservatives wouldn’t give this fellow the time of day. Others on the right seem drawn to him for reasons I can’t explain other than to note some form of cultural cringe is at play.

Where are the Australian voices of ultranationalism? Why are there no rock star tours for them?

Pauline Hanson is a senator. She regularly appears on television and has every opportunity to articulate a political message. She invariable fails to do so, her remarks a garbled fact-free mess of non-sequiturs.

Recently, she was on SkyNews warning people that their houses or more particularly the solar cells on top of some of their houses were poisoning them.

Two days ago, Cory Bernardi was asked to prosecute the case that immigration was too high despite the nation’s accounts published that very day pointing to Australia being in recession if it was not for immigration. It was a fool’s errand and Bernardi could only babble about the type of people who came to Australia.

Alas, that’s what two per cent of the vote will get you.

One of the main reasons the outer reaches of right-wing politics in this country lack intellectual force is that its local spokespeople are obsessed with petty symbolism and virtue signalling. They’re also not very smart. They simply are incapable of articulating their views to some vague point of coherence. In this vacuum, their followers stare pathetically at the horizon for the arrival of a messiah that will give them heart and perspective.

So, let’s help them out and give Milo a visa. If they want to pony up a grand to see the bloke, that’s their business and their loss. His one and probably last tour of the country will only confirm the Australian hard right’s terminal decay.

This column was first published in The Australian on 8 March 2019