Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos on Thursday insisted on Thursday that he « wasn’t being serious » when he recently told two reporters that he “can’t wait…
Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos on Thursday insisted on Thursday that he « wasn’t being serious » when he recently told two reporters that he “can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists.”
Yiannopoulos’s comments Thursday came shortly after a gunman opened fire in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Md., leaving at least five people dead and several others seriously injured. Authorities have taken a suspect into custody, but have not yet released an identity or a motive.
“You’re about to see a raft of news stories claiming that I am responsible for inspiring the deaths of journalists,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a Facebook post. “The truth, as always, is the opposite of what the media tells you.”
“I sent a troll about ‘vigilante death squads’ as a *private* response to a few hostile journalists who were asking me for comment, basically as a way of saying, ‘F—k off.’ They then published it,” he continued.
“Amazed they were pretending to take my joke as a ‘threat,’ I reposted these stories on Instagram to mock them – and to make it clear that I wasn’t being serious.”
Yiannopoulos reportedly sent Davis Richardson, a reporter for the Observer, a text message this week, saying: “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.”
The right-wing provocateur also sent the message to Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer, according to the Observer.
