Milo Yiannopoulous, the former Breitbart writer who repeatedly collaborated with white supremacists, has been making appearances on Sky News Australia, a television company owned by News Corp Australia. It is, effectively, the Murdoch-owned Australian edition of Fox News.
Yiannopoulous has started his own media company, Milo INC, which Robert Mercer is funding. Mercer has emerged as the most important funder of the far right: he made billions with his quantitative hedge fund called Renaissance Technologies, and bankrolls Breitbart as well as Trump’s campaign and legal funds.
In his most recent appearance on Sky News Australia, Yiannopoulous advanced a wild conspiracy about the Las Vegas mass shooting that left 59 people dead. Yiannopoulous said there was an “extraordinary lack of curiosity in the media” about the shooting because the perpetrator was a white man. He said the media “stopped asking about the security guard who went missing and then appeared on Ellen.” During that appearance, Yiannopoulous said, the guard was “sweating and panting like he’d been briefed to say certain things and not to say others.” He added that “Ellen, of course, has a relationship with the hotel chain.”
Milo Yiannopolous says mainstream media lacks curiosity. Full Interview https://t.co/8WdrvEvAWc pic.twitter.com/HjjStbtCmf
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) October 24, 2017
Yiannopoulous was appearing to promote his “Troll Academy” tour in Australia, which will take place in November and December. For the segment, Sky News’ Alan Jones introduced Yiannopoulous as “young, brilliant and charismatic.”
The conspiracy site InfoWars has also promoted the claim that Ellen could be involved in a Las Vegas coverup. Like Yiannopoulous, InfoWars’ frequently justifies advancing fringe conspiracy theories as question-asking in the name of intellectual curiosity.
In his interview with Sky News, he attempted to distance himself from white supremacists, but criticized then media for paying too much attention to them. Through leaked emails, BuzzFeed exposed how Yiannopoulous frequently collaborated with white supremacists including prominent neo-Nazi Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer and white nationalist editor Devin Saucier and laundered their racist views onto Breitbart.
None of Yiannopoulous’ associations, apparently, have cost him support from Mercer or News Corp’s Sky News Australia. “While they tried to crash you, you keep coming back… love it, love it, love it,” Alan Jones said, before concluding the interview by promoting his guest’s tour dates.