Sabo, Right-Wing Street Artist, Claims Responsibility for Defacing WeHo Bike Signs

Sabo, the Los Angeles right-wing street artist known for his signs attacking Democrats and liberals, is claiming responsibility for defacing signs for the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Pedals bike share program with promotions of a new book by controversial right-wing propagandist Milo Yiannopoulos.

“Let’s just say I’ve been busy this weekend,” Sabo said in a post on his @unsavoryagent Twitter page along with a photo showing WeHo Pedals bicycles bearing signs promoting Yiannopoulos’ “Dangerous,” a book scheduled for release on July 4.

The signs, wrapped about the bicycle baskets, use the “milo” brand. Some have appropriated the humorous and slightly risqué slogans of the WeHo Pedals program (“Ride Me. I’ll make you happy.”) Others directly promote “Dangerous” as “the book that will save Western civilization.”  While Sabo hasn’t explained his reason for targeting West Hollywood, its identity as an overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic city is likely a major factor.

A city spokesperson said this morning that the WeHo Pedals crew is already at work removing the images.

Sabo’s website describes his mission as “running around, creatively kicking liberals in the teeth.”

“I believe the Right has a great message, sadly the only people telling it are those on the Left and they do a damn fine job making us look like ass holes and what do Republicans do about it, NOT A DAMN THING!!!” Sabo says in an introduction to the website. … My aim as an artist is to be as dirty, ground level, and mean as any Liberal artist out there, more so if I can. Use their tactics, their methods, appeal to their audience, the young, urban , street urchins with a message they never hear in a style they own.”

Sabo’s work includes a poster titled “Hillary Rotten Clinton,” one calling for the impeachment of Congresswoman Maxine waters and various images and videos attaching Barack Obama.  He has refused to reveal his real name and in various interviews has insisted that he be filmed from behind so that his face cannot be shows. However images of him, such as the one below, exist online.

Yiannopoulos, who is a gay Englishman and an avid supporter of Donald Trump, himself has been somewhat of an expert in self promotion. A former senior editor for Breitbart News, the alt-right news website, he describes himself as a “cultural libertarian.” He has been a critic of everything from Islam, to social justice to feminism and especially of the pushbacks against bigotry that he has described as “political correctness.”

Yiannopoulos’ self-promotion has come with some negative consequences. He lost his job at Breitbart In February 2017 after a controversy over a video of him saying sexual relationships between 13-year-old boys and adults can be positive and “perfectly consensual” experiences for boys.

Yiannopoulos lost his contract with Simon & Schuster’s Threshold Editions for “Dangerous” after more than 100 authors said they no longer would do business with the publisher. That was an exceptional reaction given that Threshold Editions, whose vice president and editorial director, Mitchell lvers, is a gay man, has published books by former vice president Dick Cheney and broadcasters Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. Ivers also edited bestselling books by Donald Trump, Michelle Malkin, Tom Fitton, Jose Rodriguez, James O’Keefe, Ben Shapiro, Jason Mattera and John Stossel.

Mattera, who Ivers recruited as a writer, received national attention in September 2003 when, as editor of a student newsletter for college Republicans at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, he wrote an attack on the mother of Matthew Shepard, a college student who was beaten and murdered for being gay. Mattera accused her of “preying on students’ emotions and naivety’ [sic] so that she could become ‘a mascot for the homosexual agenda.” He also published a “lurid description of the homosexual rape of a young boy and threw in a joke about ‘pedophiles nationwide’ who condemned the FDA’s food pyramid as ‘bigoted’ and ‘hateful’ because ‘anus’ and ‘penis’ were not listed as separate food groups.”