When a bigot gets a taste of his own medicine

Few metaphors are as ironic as 'the shoe is on the other foot'. It conjures images of smug moralists or barking bigots suddenly discovering a giant corn on their feet. Enter Milo Yiannopoulos, once the British enfant terrible of right-wing provocation, Trump fanboy, ex-editor of Breitbart News, and defender of deportation (especially of Somali refugees), now terrified of deportation by ICE - after he was deported from the US back to Britain by ICE.

If irony were a sport, this would be that Messi (own) goal. Yiannopoulos now wants our solace. 'I didn't really understand the physical reality of how institutionalised the brutality is in America,' he said this week. Yes, he didn't quite understand why he - White and far right - of all volk, got booted out by brown shirts in tactical vests. He's not even Black, let alone an illegal immigrant!

Saturn can, indeed, devour his own children. This applies to everyone whose opinions are stronger than kitchen mustard. You rage and rant about a 'sort of people', and then you find yourself tarred and feathered for being that 'sort of people'. There is something tragicomic about watching, say, a casteist facing racism, or a sexist facing sexism, discover that the gun he or she trains on others is trained on him or her. Such backfiring is impervious to any appeal on the lines of, 'Oh, but I'm one of you!'