Ian Miles Cheong vs. transgender people

Ian Miles Cheong, aka Exitum, stillgray, and SolInvictus, is a Malaysian far-right political commentator and anti-transgender activist. Cheong worked as a game review blogger and was a prominent figure in the 2014 Gamergate controversy.

Cheong has contributed to many anti-trans publications, including Heat Street, UPROXX, RT, The Daily Caller, and Rebel News.

Background

Ian Miles Cheong Wen Xian was reportedly born on May 27, 1988 in Ipoh, Malasia.

Cheong was a prominent moderator on reddit, moderating large subreddits including r/gaming, r/games, r/politics, and r/AskReddit. In 2012, Cheong was banned from reddit for spamming links to Gameranx, UpRoxx, and Global Post without disclosing connections to those publications, some of which were paid positions.

In July 2016, Heat Street hired Cheong; he took over the website after its founders Louise Mensch and Noah Kotch departed. In January 2017, Cheong announced he would be leaving Gameranx to focus on Heat Street. Cheong wrote for The Daily Caller until May 2018. As of May 2020, Cheong was working as managing editor for Human Events.

Anti-trans activism

When trans game developer Brianna Wu reportedly fled home due to threats during Gamergate, Cheong was among the first to report that as fact. Cheong was later critical of Wu, updating the original report with a note at the top: “September 2016 Added Disclaimer: Brianna Wu has proven to be an unreliable source.” In 2014, old chat logs of Cheong praising Adolf Hitler were leaked during the Gamergate controversy, which Cheong attributed to toxic gaming culture.

Cheong has a long history of amplifying misinformation and hoaxes on social media, including about trans people. In 2022, Cheong shared a hoax created by Jack Despain Zhou and others that claimed some trans parents were medically transitioning their children without the children’s knowledge or consent. Cheong has described increased acceptance for trans people as a “trend” and claims that “transgenderism isn’t actually real.”

References

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Dixit, Pranav (October 10, 2023). Social media platforms swamped with fake news on the Israel-Hamas war. Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/10/social-media-platforms-swamped-with-fake-news-on-the-israel-hamas-war “Imagine if this was happening in our neighbourhood, to your family,” posted Ian Miles Cheong, a far-right commentator…

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Valinsky, Jordan (June 2, 2023). How Chick-fil-A became a target for going “woke.” CNN.Shortly after, far-right personalities, including Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA and Ian Miles Cheong, joined in. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/02/business/chick-fil-a-fake-controversy/index.html

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Thakker, Prem (November 1, 2022). Twitter’s New Promise to Pay Content Creators Has One Big Catch. The New Republic https://newrepublic.com/post/174348/elon-musk-turns-twitter-mlm-scheme-far-right Ian Miles Cheong, a far-right user who once used his massive platform to falsely identify an innocent Black man as the “number one suspect” in the shooting of two police officers, said he received over $16,000 from Twitter.

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(September 17, 2020). Malaysia man criticized after naming Black man ‘number one suspect’ in US shooting. Coconuts https://coconuts.co/kl/news/malaysia-man-criticized-after-naming-black-man-number-one-suspect-in-us-shooting/

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Cheong, Ian Miles (December 26, 2016). The Unsavory Past of GamerGate ‘Victim’ and Congressional Candidate Brianna Wu. HeatStreet http://heatst.com/politics/the-unsavory-past-of-gamergate-victim-and-congressional-candidate-brianna-wu/ [archive]

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