Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right supporter of President Donald Trump and white supremacist, tried to back away Thursday from violent comments he gave to a newspaper threatening journalists after a mass shooter attacked a local newsroom in Maryland.

“I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight,” Yiannopoulos told the Observer in a text message earlier in the week.

Many noted that repugnant as such comments were in the first place, they looked even more vile and dangerous in the aftermath of the shooting.

But Yiannopoulos tried to pass it off as a joke.

“I sent a troll about 'vigilante death squads' as a *private* response to a few hostile journalists who were asking me for comment, basically as a way of saying, 'F—k off.' They then published it,” he said in a Facebook post.

“Amazed they were pretending to take my joke as a 'threat,' I reposted these stories on Instagram to mock them – and to make it clear that I wasn’t being serious,” he added.

Of course, many in the so-called "alt-right" have long used the guise of "humor" to defend their indefensible views. The problem is there are just some things decent people don't find funny — like political ideologues calling for violence on the free press. The ambiguity between genuine threat and joke also serves a nefarious purpose: to intimidate critics while maintaining a sheen of deniability.