Milo Yiannopoulos Tries to Break Into the World of Furries, Is Brutally Rejected

Here is the best news I have personally read today: notorious far-right grifter and overall racist, misogynist, and general white supremacist Milo Yiannopoulos is trying to pivot to being a furry—but the furries don’t want him.

Jared Holt over at Right Wing Watch has the scoop from monitoring Milo’s Telegram messaging channel, the small corner of the internet he’s been quarantined to after being kicked off pretty much every other major platform and going flat broke. Per Holt’s story:

Yiannopoulos posted an email screenshot to one of the few platforms he has left—his Telegram messaging channel—on Saturday and claimed he registered for Midwest FurFest, a convention “to celebrate the furry fandom” hosted in the suburbs on Chicago this December. “Furries,” as they’re often called, are groups of people who have interest in animal personas with human characteristics; people who participate in the subculture often present themselves as non-human characters via art and costumes.

Yiannopoulos also claimed on Telegram that he had submitted a form to suggest he host a panel called “The Politics of Fur.” He asked his followers who plan to attend Midwest FurFest to message him to arrange “dinner, drinks, photos or anything else.”

Unfortunately for Milo, the politics of fur do not appear to be disposed to his particular brand of self-expression. Midwest FurFest has not officially ruled on whether or not Milo will be allowed to attend, but it certainly appears they’ve gotten some pushback from members of the community that aren’t interested in platforming white supremacists.

The fur community is not a monolith, however. A group called “Furry Raiders,” whose leader dresses up as a fox with a red paw-print armband, spoke out in support of Milo, posting a picture with what appears to be his “fursona.”

Furry Raiders’ political leanings, from a few blog posts on their site, appear to be relatively the run-of-the-mill “free speech” schlock, mostly whining about getting called Nazis at various fur events and being ostracized from the community (which might have something to do with the explicit Nazi symbolism in some of their costume designs). Pretty clear how Milo fits in with that! Personally, I wish him the best in his continued exploration of his identity. Midwest FurFest, of course, has no legal reason to allow him to explore that at their event, and it’d probably be better for everyone involved (except Milo) if we never saw hide nor hair of him again.

Update, 3:40 p.m. ET: Milo is officially not welcome at Midwest FurFest.