- Yiannopoulos, Milo.
Diabolical.
New York: Bombardier Books, 2018.
ISBN 978-1-64293-163-1.
-
Milo Yiannopoulos has a well-deserved and hard-earned reputation as a
controversialist, inciter of outrage, and offender of all the right
people. His acid wit and mockery of those amply deserving it causes
some to dismiss what he says when he's deadly serious about
something, as he is in this impassioned book about the deep
corruption in the Roman Catholic church and its seeming abandonment
of its historic mission as a bastion of the Christian values
which made the West the West. It is an earnest plea for a new
religious revival, from the bottom up, to rid the Church of
its ageing, social justice indoctrinated hierarchy which, if not
entirely homosexual, has tolerated widespread infiltration of
the priesthood by sexually active homosexual men who have
indulged their attraction to underage (but almost always
post-pubescent) boys, and has been complicit in covering up these scandals
and allowing egregious offenders to escape discipline and
continue their predatory behaviour for many years.
Ever since emerging as a public figure, Yiannopoulos has had a target
on his back. A young, handsome (he may prefer “fabulous”),
literate, well-spoken, quick-witted, funny, flaming homosexual,
Roman Catholic, libertarian-conservative, pro-Brexit, pro-Trump,
prolific author and speaker who can fill auditoriums on
college campuses and simultaneously entertain and educate his audiences,
willing to debate the most vociferous of opponents, and who
has the slaver Left's number and is aware of their vulnerability
just at what they imagined was the moment of triumph, is the stuff
of nightmares to those who count on ignorant legions of dim
followers capable of little more than chanting rhyming slogans
and littering. He had to be silenced, and to a large extent,
he has been. But, like the Terminator, he's back, and he's aiming
higher: for the Vatican.
It was a remarkable judo throw the slavers and their media
accomplices on the left and “respectable right”
used to rid themselves of this turbulent pest. The
virtuosos of victimology managed to use the author's having
been a victim of clerical sexual abuse, and spoken
candidly about it, to effectively de-platform, de-monetise,
disemploy, and silence him in the public sphere by proclaiming
him a defender of pædophilia (which has nothing to do
with the phenomenon he was discussing and of which he was a
victim: homosexual exploitation of post-pubescent boys).
The author devotes a chapter to his personal experience and how
it paralleled that of others. At the same time, he draws a
distinction between what happened to him and the rampant
homosexuality in some seminaries and serial abuse by prelates in
positions of authority and its being condoned and covered up
by the hierarchy. He traces the blame all the way to the
current Pope, whose collectivist and social justice credentials
were apparent to everybody before his selection. Regrettably,
he concludes, Catholics must simply wait for the Pope to die
or retire, while laying the ground for a revival and restoration
of the faith which will drive the choice of his successor.
Other chapters discuss the corrosive influence of so-called
“feminism” on the Church and how it has corrupted
what was once a manly warrior creed that rolled back the
scourge of Islam when it threatened civilisation in Europe
and is needed now more than ever after politicians seemingly
bent on societal suicide have opened the gates to the invaders;
how utterly useless and clueless the legacy media are in
covering anything relating to religion (a New York Times
reporter asked First Things editor Fr Richard
John Neuhaus what he made
of the fact that the newly elected pope was “also”
going to be named the bishop of Rome); and how the rejection
and collapse of Christianity as a pillar of the West risks
its replacement with race as the central identity of the culture.
The final chapter quotes Chesterton
(from Heretics, 1905),
Everything else in the modern world is of Christian
origin, even everything that seems most anti-Christian. The
French Revolution is of Christian origin. The newspaper is
of Christian origin. The anarchists are of Christian origin.
Physical science is of Christian origin. The attack on
Christianity is of Christian origin. There is one thing, and
one thing only, in existence at the present day which can in
any sense accurately be said to be of pagan origin, and that
is Christianity.
Much more is at stake than one sect (albeit the largest) of
Christianity. The infiltration, subversion, and overt attacks
on the Roman Catholic church are an assault upon an institution
which has been central to Western civilisation for two
millennia. If it falls, and it is falling, in large part due
to self-inflicted wounds, the forces of darkness will be coming
for the smaller targets next. Whatever your religion, or
whether you have one or not, collapse of one of the three pillars
of our cultural identity is something to worry about and work
to prevent. In the author's words, “What few on the
political Right have grasped is that the most important
component in this trifecta isn't capitalism, or even
democracy, but Christianity.” With all three under
assault from all sides, this book makes an eloquent argument
to secular free marketeers and champions of consensual
government not to ignore the cultural substrate which allowed
both to emerge and flourish.
June 2019 