Draft:Ian Miles Cheong

• Comment: Even with recent additions relating to his criticism of Adolescence, there is not enough in-depth coverage of this commentator to warrant publishing this article. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ian Miles Cheong (3rd nomination), where it was pointed out that a heavily-referenced article on the subject was deleted in the second nomination. -- Reconrabbit (talk) 02:57, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

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Ian Miles Cheong
Citizenship	Malaysia
Occupations	Political commentator Journalist
X information
Handle	@ianmiles
Years active	2008–present
Topic	Political commentary
Followers	1.2 million

Ian Miles Cheong is a Malaysian right-wing commentator and journalist covering United States politics and formerly video games. He is known for his large presence on Twitter, where he frequently shares misinformation. He was formerly the editor-in-chief of Gameranx and subsequently in charge of Heat Street before it ceased publication in 2017. Cheong has also contributed to The Daily Caller, Rebel News, and RT.

Journalism

Cheong was the editor-in-chief of the gaming news website Gameranx. While working for Gameranx in 2013, Cheong broke the story that hackers had managed to download Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon ahead of its scheduled release while evading digital-rights management protection measures and subsequently shared it on the internet. Both Cheong and Gameranx were highly opposed to Gamergate in 2014, though Cheong's political views slowly grew rightward and he subsequently supported it. This shift in support from Cheong drew the attention of Heat Street, which hired him in July 2016 as a critic of social justice warriors who inhabited the gaming industry.

In September 2016, Cheong would publish an article in Heat Street to dispute a speech by Hillary Clinton in which stated that Pepe the Frog was a racist meme. This prompted a rare, later-deleted retraction and apology from Heat Street founder Louise Mensch, who wrote that Pepe was antisemitic. Cheong subsequently apologized on Twitter. On January 14, 2017, Cheong announced through Gameranx that he was leaving the organization to spend more time working for Heat Street, at which time he came to manage the publication following the departures of Mensch and Noah Kotch until it ceased publication on August 4, 2017.

In 2018, Cheong wrote a positive review of Black Panther for Dangerous, a website owned by Milo Yiannopoulos. This praise was unusual and significant as Cheong and his audience expected the film to push identity politics, popular among their political opposition. Cheong further commented on Twitter to describe the villain Erik Killmonger as "an SJW black supremacist" and the hero T'Challa as both "an isolationist-nationalist who adopts a neo-liberal stance. He doesn't believe in race." and "basically black [Donald] Trump".

In February 2024, Cheong was an active contributor to Rebel News and had made prior contributions to The Daily Caller and RT.

Social media

The New York Times has described Cheong as having garnered a large following on Twitter by "playing a right-wing American raconteur". He is known to make a significant income from his social media posts, having posted earnings of $16,259 dollars as part of a set of a $5 million total payout to creators on Twitter. Cheong's posts on Twitter are also known to be frequently interacted with by Elon Musk.

Cheong's social media history dates as far back as 2012, where his Reddit account SolInvictus was banned from after having served as a volunteer moderator for several of the platform's most prominent subreddits, including r/politics and r/AskReddit. Cheong had been using Reddit to post promotional spam and had been hired by the marketing agency of GlobalPost as a "social media consultant".

In 2021, Cheong amplified content related to the Wi Spa controversy in which a set of videos went viral of a woman confronting the staff of a Koran spa about an individual with a penis believed to be a trans woman changing in the women's area of the spa. Cheong tweeted 2 videos about the incident, which obtained hundreds of thousands of views.

Researchers for the Network Contagion Research Institute found that Cheong had amplified a fight video in Belgrave, Leicester between Indians and Pakistanis following an India-Pakistan cricket game as a part of the build-up to the 2022 Leicester unrest.

In mid-2023, Cheong was among a group of commentators who chastised and called for the boycotting of Chick-fil-A following the discovery of an executive whose purpose was to manage diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

On February 9, 2024, a Twitter thread went viral claiming that Cheong was a grifter who intentionally posted divisive content solely for financial gain, particularly in relation to the Gaza war. Cheong disputed these claims the next day in an interview with the New Straits Times, stating he supported peace between Israel and Palestine. Shortly afterwards, Cheong was subject to a post by activist Drew Pavlou which suggested that Cheong was going to face punishment from the Malaysian government for his social media activity. Just afterwards, he was subject to a hoax claiming he had been executed by the Malaysian government for pro-Israel posts regarding Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip under orders of Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, despite a moratorium on capital punishment in the country since 2018. The hoax was met with celebration among critics of Cheong. At that point, Cheong had amassed over 900,000 followers on Twitter.

On October 1, 2025, Elon Musk reposted a response to a post Cheong made as part of a series of tweets where he called for the cancellation of Netflix. Cheong had written "A Netflix show, CoComelon, features interracial gay dads attempting to raise a baby as transgender who make the toddler dance for them in drag. This is the woke version of Bacha Bazi."

Instances of misformation

In 2018, Cheong and other right-wing outlets misidentified the perpetrator of the 2018 Jacksonville Landing shooting as a 23-year old Reddit user from Minnesota, highlighting the account's frequently anti-Trump comments.

In August 2020, Cheong shared a video on Twitter which had been deceptively edited by Ruptly, a video news agency owned by the Russian state media company RT, as part of a disinformation campaign during the 2020 United States presidential election. The video depicted protesters in Portland, Oregon burning a stack of bibles and American flags as part of a Black Lives Matter protest. In the unedited video, protesters had burned only one or two Bibles as kindling with little reaction, through there was cheering for the burning of an American flag, and the fire had attempted to be put out by a protester group called Moms United for Black Lives Matter. The video was originally posted by an account with low followers listing Oklahoma City and Ahu Dhabi as its location before being reposted by Cheong, which he told the New York Times he found by searching Twitter for Portland "as [he] normally [does]". He further told the times that he did not see any stack of Bibles being burned in the clip, despite having stated so in his retweet, and that it was not his intention to solely promote the Bible burning story instead of the protests as a whole. Cheong's retweet attracted the attention of several high-profile American right-wing figures, including Senator Ted Cruz, Donald Trump Jr., and Jack Posobiec. The New York Times and The Independent wrote that they did not believe Cheong was complicit in intentionally spreading Russian propaganda due to his regular sharing of content from the protest.

In March 2025, Cheong made a post claiming that the TV series Adolescence was based on the 2024 Southport stabbings and the murderer, a Black British male, had been race-swapped and rewritten to be radicalized by "the red pill movement". He further described the series as "anti-white propaganda". This post gained further traction when it was shared by Elon Musk. In reality, the TV series had been in production before the Southport stabbings occurred. Show creator Jack Thorne stated that while the show had been inspired by real-life events, the written story was not based on a true one.

Views

Cheong's views has been described as right-wing and far-right, though The New York Times has described Cheong as "playing a right-wing American raconteur" and one viral Twitter thread highlighted by Time Magazine has accused him of being a grifter who generates controversy for profit.

In 2014, Cheong was a highly prominent critic of Gamergate, having tweeted about it over 300 times and feuding over it with Milo Yiannopoulos, leading to him attracting significant ire. Over time, however, Cheong's politics began shifting to the right and he increasingly became supportive of Gamergate until his views were opposite of what they once were. Cheong then began defending Yiannopoulos, accusing his critics of censorship.

Cheong has received criticism for views characterized as racist or anti-LGBT. Cheong has made posts in favor of Israel and the Gaza War, but has stated that he advocates for peace on both sides of the war. Cheong has stated that he likes his home country of Malaysia because "the food is great, it's peaceful, and it's a strong conservative nation."

Personal life

According to the New Straits Times in 2024, Cheong resides in Ipoh. Upon an update to Twitter in 2025 revealing the locations of accounts, Cheong's account was stated to be located in the United Arab Emirates.

References

Primary sources

In the text, these references are preceded by a double dagger (‡):