In the era of the meteoric raise of American far-leftist activism, from about 2010 to about 2015, give or take, when this activism was still mostly restricted to university campuses and was in its initial stages of taking over the rest of society, one of the most prominent, famous and popular critics of the far left was Milo Yiannopoulos.
Back in those days he was immensely popular among the "anti-SJWs" and a good portion of American conservatives. Not only was he really smart, very eloquent, very quick-thinking (eg. being able to respond to any criticism with very good answers on the spot), but on top of that he is very openly and flamboyantly gay, and married to a black guy, which greatly dampened accusations of him being "homophobic" and "racist" (both accusations being very weak because of his very evident status, which he happily flaunted around.)
Even though he is British, back in that era he was, indeed, one of the biggest American conservative speakers and influencers, who got regularly invited to speak at universities and other events, and sometimes even to television interviews. He was, in fact, one of the first such conservative speakers, perhaps even the very first one, that caused violent riots in university campuses by him merely being invited there. (It was indeed the time when political violence, ie. terrorism, was being quickly normalized among the American far left, and he was one of the very first targets of it.)
There were already some other quite famous and popular conservative / Republican public speakers and influencers back then, but he was in a way the most famous one.
Then, at some point, he fell to almost complete obscurity pretty much overnight. One day he was extremely popular and had invitations to multiple speaking events, a month or two later, perhaps even just a few weeks later, he had fallen to almost complete obscurity and was not being invited anymore, and people were not talking about him anymore (other than people talking about the reason why he fell into obscurity.)
It's, possibly, one of the most notable and fastest falls from fame on that front. From pretty much the very top, to almost complete obscurity in the span of just a couple of months, give or take. Perhaps even faster.
Did the far-leftist activists and terrorists finally get to him? Was their smearing campaign so enormous and successful that it finally succeeded? Was he perhaps intimidated by all the violence and harassment that he one day just gave up and quietly went away from the public eye?
Nope. The sad and scary thing is that it happened because he was backstabbed by his own side!
There was indeed a huge smearing campaign that successfully ruined his reputation and status almost overnight, but it was not organized by the far left. It was organized by right-wing conservatives!
To this day I'm not really sure why, but apparently some portion of the American conservatives decided that it was time for Milo to go, they dug up dirt from his past, and engaged in an incredibly and successful smearing campaign against him, throwing that dirt from his past into the public.
And it worked astonishingly well. His popularity fell like a lead balloon. In a period of just a few months, perhaps even faster, he went from absolute stardom to absolute obscurity, being suddenly shunned from the public, not being invited anymore anywhere, not being talked about. While he might have had some speaking gigs for a year or two afterwards, they were far and in between, and went mostly unnoticed.
I actually find it strange that nobody talks about the backstabbing by his own side. It seems that the smearing campaign was so successful, that the dirt that they dug up was so detestable, that even people who liked and promoted him back then have not been talking about him nor the incident for almost a decade. Pretty much everybody just let him go quietly into the night, and have not talked much about him since. Perhaps they don't want to get involved in the dirt, and have just chosen to move to other topics and discussing other people.
But still... Why did right-wing conservatives want to get rid of one of their biggest and strongest allies and speakers? To this day, I have no idea.
Part of me wants to believe that a portion of American conservatives didn't like him because he was so openly gay, and thus was, in their view, marring the reputation and image of American conservatism and Republicanism. This is certainly not a view shared by all, perhaps not even the majority of American conservatives, but I'm wondering if the section of that demographic that genuinely detests gays did it for that reason.
All of them are equally guilty, though, because almost nobody stood by his side. Almost everybody just quietly forgot about him and moved to other topics, washing their hands from the entire debacle. In other words, not only was he backstabbed by his own side, he was then also abandoned by his own side.
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