Ian Miles Cheong is a Malaysian far-right political commentator who is known for weighing in on United States politics. He previously worked as a game journalist and has contributed to RT, The Daily Caller and Rebel News.
Career
In the early 2010s, Cheong worked as a moderator for Reddit, where he moderated large subreddits such as r/politics and r/AskReddit. He was banned in March 2012 for spamming links to Gameranx, a gaming site for which he worked as news editor, as well as Uproxx and GlobalPost; the latter had hired Cheong as a "social media consultant". Cheong had not disclosed his ties to the sites he was promoting.
In 2014, old chat logs of Cheong praising Adolf Hitler were leaked, sparking controversy. Cheong responded by blaming the "toxic gaming community".
Cheong became known for his involvement in Gamergate, an online harassment campaign against women in the gaming industry. He defended female game developers such as Zoë Quinn and was one of Gamergate's most prominent critics, with Gameranx publishing articles about the harassment and death threats Gamergate's targets were subjected to. Cheong later changed his stance, tweeting that it was "a little sad seeing some people just tweet incessantly about how much they hate GamerGate." His politics began to shift to the far-right over the years.
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.
False claims
In August 2018, Cheong falsely identified a Reddit user as the perpetrator of the Jacksonville Landing shooting.
In July 2020, after Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster was fatally shot in Austin, Texas, Cheong falsely claimed on Twitter that Foster had fired first. Cheong's tweet was retweeted by then-U.S. President Donald Trump and cited by The Post Millennial; the tweet was later removed.
In August 2020, Cheong shared a selectively-edited clip posted by Ruptly, a Russian state-owned video news agency, that appeared to show Black Lives Matter protesters burning Bibles and an American flag. His tweet was shared by Donald Trump Jr. and Ted Cruz, and was used by alt-right conspiracy theorists such as Jack Posobiec as evidence of the protesters' supposed depravity.
In September 2020, Cheong falsely identified Darnell Hicks, a Black man, as the "number one suspect" in the shooting of two Los Angeles police officers. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department refuted Cheong's claim as "erroneous" and stated they had not identified any suspects at the time. Hicks told reporters that he had received harassment and death threats.
After the 2022 Buffalo shooting, Cheong led an online disinformation campaign to suggest that the perpetrator held left-wing views. The perpetrator held a far-right, self-described "fascist" ideology.
In October 2023, after Hamas launched an attack against Israel, Cheong posted a video of Israeli law enforcement that he claimed to show Palestinian fighters killing Israeli civilians.
Views
During Gamergate, Cheong initially described himself as a "turbo-feminist".
In February 2018, Cheong published a positive review of Black Panther on Milo Yiannopoulos's website Dangerous. On Twitter, he called Erik Killmonger a "SJW black supremacist" and likened T'Challa to Donald Trump. In July 2018, Cheong said in an appearance on the white supremacist podcast The Right Stuff that he supported both nationalism and socialism.
In 2019, Cheong said that he did not believe in climate change. In September 2023, Cheong came out in support of Russell Brand after he was accused of sexual assault by multiple women.
Personal life
Cheong lives in Malaysia.