British far-right political pundit Milo Yiannopoulos. Photo / Getty
British far-right political pundit Milo Yiannopoulos. Photo / Getty
Wildly popular British provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos is doing something nobody saw coming.
The far-right commentator whose views were deemed so extreme that he was banned from entering Australia in 2019 by the Morrison government is now flogging religious statues on YouTube.
Having fallen off the radar for almost two years, the 37-year-old reappeared recently on the YouTube channel Church Militant, which is based in the US state of Michigan.
In videos for the channel, Yiannopoulos narrates The Psalms and Proverbs and tries to convince viewers to pay US$87.50 ($128.50) for a religious statue to support the extremist Christian group's fundraising efforts.
"I know the viewers' eyes will be wandering to this magnificent piece in the middle," Yiannopoulos tells the camera while gesturing towards a statue of the Virgin Mary on a table.
"We've got statues in the shop that are fully painted but the thing I like about her is this wonderful, burnished, bronzey, aged colour she's got – the face on this is especially good," he says.
The videos are a far cry from Yiannopoulos' previous online persona.
Milo Yiannopoulos now hocks religious statues on YouTube. Photo / Getty
In 2017, while in Australia, Yiannopoulos told Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm that everyone should read Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, saying people "should read the very, very worst as well as the very, very best that has been thought and written".
Before that, he had gained attention as a senior editor at the alt-right news website Breitbart, which used to be run by Steve Bannon before he was hired, and fired, by Donald Trump.
Yiannopoulos was forced to resign from that role in February of 2017 after saying sex between adults and children was sometimes "not that big of a deal" and describing victims as "whingeing selfish brats".
He said older men could help young boys "discover who they are" when they couldn't speak to their parents and offered "coming-of-age relationships".
He later denied supporting paedophilia.
That wasn't his first, nor his last controversy.
In 2018, PayPal suspended his account after he used the system to send a Jewish journalist $14.88.
White supremacists use the number 14 as shorthand for the 14 words slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."
The number 88 stands for "Heil Hitler" – the letter H is the eighth member of the alphabet.
One Nation Founder Pauline Hanson was among those to decry Yiannopoulos' ban from Australia.
"I am angry. I can't see what Milo has done to be banned from Australia," she told The Australian. "The left are pushing this. It's all about the election, it's all about votes.
"I think that is weak, I think it's gutless. He has no reason to stop Milo from coming into the country," she added.
"You may not agree with everything he says, as long as he doesn't go out there to advocate violence. If you want to actually stop someone, stop the protesters with their violence. They're the ones that should be stopped."
Yiannopoulos married his long-term boyfriend John in 2017 but earlier this year announced he was "ex-gay".
"When I used to kid that I only became gay to torment my mother, I wasn't entirely joking," he said.
"Of course, I was never wholly at home in the gay lifestyle – Who is? Who could be? – and only leaned heavily into it in public because it drove liberals crazy to see a handsome, charismatic, intelligent gay man riotously celebrating conservative principles.
"I'd love to say it was all an act, and I've been straight this whole time, but even I don't have that kind of commitment to performance art. Talk about method acting."
