Despite his numerous cancellations, Milo Yiannopoulos’ name has managed to return to the mainstream newscycle once again. Last month, the flamboyant provocateur made headlines for attending a dinner at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, and for revealing that he would be campaigning for Ye’s 2024 presidential bid. His name remained in the news, this time, for leaving the campaign after West’s comments lauding Hitler.

Yiannopoulos welcomes the various epithets used to describe him as compliments: ranging from “alt-right hate-monger” and “self-loathing homophobic anti-semite”, to “Trump troll with daddy problems” and (his own) “the dangerous faggot”. He seeks not approval from the public, but notoriety for its own sake. In this regard, he takes after his idol Oscar Wilde, a fellow gay Catholic Brit (well, technically he’s Irish), who once quipped, “there is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.”

Yiannopoulos has more in common with Wilde than most rainbow flag toting gays

Wilde and Yiannopoulos are often the subject of comparisons. The two have a flair for paradox, at once celebrating irreverent campy decadence and artistic, moral and religious traditionalism. By taking their reputations to the ultimate fringes of taboos, their self-immolating feats serve to hold up a mirror to the hypocrisy of “respectable” society, rendering themselves something akin to court jesters or prophetic martyrs. Both have garnered the vitriol of the public over their flippancy toward the matter of “hebephilic” affairs (though in the case of Yiannopoulos it has been solely for his words rather than his deeds).

Yiannopulos has seen his public “mission” as following in the tradition of transgressive gay men like Wilde and Quentin Crisp, who eschewed the normalisation of homosexuality within a bourgeois, conformist model. Rather than setting their eyes on a life of domesticity and lobbying for legal protections, Yiannopoulos reminds gay men that they are “chaos incarnate. We are gods of mirth, mischief, danger and innate perversion. As society’s subversive rebels”, he insists that “unencumbered by humdrum family ties, we can go further than anyone else. We can smash taboos. We can achieve greatness. We should never try to be normal”.

This kind of transgressive gay narrative is nothing novel; it was the predominant view amongst queer people before the Stonewall riots. Yet as the gay rights movement progressed, the nuances embedded in the pre-Stonewall narrative got absorbed into the quasi-gnostic Western ethos. “Gay is” now “ok” — meaning morally neutral and indistinct from heterosexuality. Today anyone who acknowledges that sodomy transgresses the design of nature (that is, of procreation) is rendered anathema.

Wilde once said “the Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone; for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do”. Yiannopoulos, owning up to being a “bad Catholic”, justified his “immoral” lifestyle by quoting St. Augustine’s saying, “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet”. He asserts that he is not selfish enough to demand that the Church changes its dogmas to conform to his sinful inclinations. The religious convictions of people like them are even more incomprehensible to the culture’s simplistic, paradox-averse way of thinking.

As much as Yiannopoulos has much more in common with Wilde than do most rainbow flag toting gays, his massive ego blinds him from seeing that his career lacks the substance and artistic integrity of his hero’s. Wilde may have bragged about wanting fame for its own sake, but the quality and longevity of his body of work proves that fame was not his main priority. Wilde’s plays, poems, novels and essays enabled him to gain the respect of the public after their vehemence toward his amorality and countercultural posturing subsided.

Milo’s affinity for provocation renders him the Oscar Wilde of the internet age

What will Milo have after the media ceases to be interested in condemning his “self-loathing”, “anti-semitic”, “white supremacist” and “pro-pedophilia” antics? All that will remain is a series of recordings of his lectures (mainly consisting of trolling the Left), blog posts, social media posts (nearly all of which have been removed from the internet) and self-published books. His moments of artistic triumph are nearly all performative, and they have failed to produce substantial and lasting products. His few moments of intellectual coherence and originality (most evident in his books and in a few of his lectures) are clouded by narcissistic musings and reactionary ideological fodder. Whilst his idols, including Wilde and Crisp, as well as others like Camille Paglia, Mariah Carey and Joan Rivers, have made a name for either their reactionary posturing or performative pastiche, these figures have also produced a body of work whose esteem transcends partisan lines and aesthetic taste, and thus withstand the test of time.

Milo’s affinity for provocation for its own sake (and for almost nothing else) has rendered him the Oscar Wilde of the internet age — which is to say, nothing more than a mere troll who will fade away amidst the plethora of other short-lived internet sensations. His shtick has been drained of substance due to his selling out to political causes. He may condemn the left for passing off moralistic, virtue signalling propaganda as art, but in essence he is no different. His work — ordered toward the political agenda of promoting anti-establishment Republican candidates and ideals — is the other side of the same coin to which he claims to be so adamantly opposed.

Yiannopoulos seems to have overlooked Wilde’s commitment to “art for art’s sake”, which is why Wilde never allowed his art to be reduced to political or moral propaganda. Wilde in this regard was a meta-troll. He used his art to critique the politics and morals of the public from “above”, avoiding the trap of “playing the same game” as his enemies. Rather than fighting fire with fire, Wilde understood that the ontological complexity of pure aestheticism transcends the puritanical logic of “respectable society”.

Wilde’s name remained in news headlines for years: his hit plays, controversial novels, very public prosecution for committing “crimes of gross indecency”, and later his artistic legacy. I’m sure Milo’s name will continue to appear in the news on and off for a few more years. His aversion to groupthink and flamboyant flair gives him the raw material to follow in the footsteps of Wilde. His refusal to refine that material, however, in addition to his narrow political concerns, has turned his name into a mere blip on the radar.

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book,” wrote Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray. “Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” Milo clamours about his Wildean amorality. It would’ve served him well to also take up the Wildean commitment to art.