How to get noticed
Jesse Singal points out that Milo Yiannopoulos is not nearly as edgy and interesting as he pretends to be.
A lot of people fail to recognize this, but Milo Yiannopoulos, the Breitbart senior editor and right-wing provocateur, is much closer to being Sean Hannity than to being Adolf Hitler. It’s a bit of a secret, in part because Yiannopoulos devotes a great deal of time and effort to a form of ideological dress-up, pretending to be more edgy and out-there than he actually is. His college tour is called the “Dangerous Faggot” and his upcoming book is called Dangerous because Yiannopoulos wants to position himself as an incendiary liberal bête noire. He profits off of it — it’s his brand.
The uproar at Berkeley last night is just what he wants.
Yiannopoulos preened and joked and harassed his way into public-enemy-number-one status among some left-leaning folks despite the fact that his actual beliefs are, by the standards of mainstream reactionary conservatism, fairly boring and predictable. Just look around at his Breitbart author page: If you ignore the overheated headlines and constant references to his own greatness, it’s clear that Yiannopoulos is, for the most part, serving up microwaved portions of mass-market right-wing goonery.
Same goes for his college speeches. The transcript of one is headlined “MILO at Cal Poly State University: ‘No More Dead Babies.’” “Can you imagine, and I don’t think this is a stretch, the senior leaders of Planned Parenthood sitting in a conference room discussing the best timing for an abortion, to maximize their profits from the dead baby’s body?” he told his Cal Poly audience. “It’s horrifying, and it’s what feminists want more of.” It’s also the same argument you’ve heard on a Fox News segment.
That’s similar to what I’ve been saying, which is that he’s a big nothing, whose internet fame developed because of his passion for harassing people, not because he’s clever or interesting or informed. He’s random.
Yiannopoulos capitalizes on the fact that his youngest fans and detractors (and it’s not an accident his most ardent fans and detractors tend to be young) are typically only familiar and comfortable with a pretty narrow discourse — precisely what one finds on college campuses at the moment. Academic communities tend to be places where the bounds of acceptable expression and thought are significantly different than they are on, for example, right-wing AM radio. Ideas that are unfortunately commonplace in a nation of 350 million people, and especially among older demographics, seem more singular and uniquely dangerous (to use Yiannopoulos’s chosen term) on college campuses — especially when they’re coming from such a flamboyant, gleefully bellicose figure. The fact that Yiannopoulos has a tendency to harass people, both online and off-, only acts to further mask the staleness of his actual beliefs. His Leslie Jones tweets are the most famous examples, but there are plenty of others. During two of his recent talks, for example, he showed pictures of and denigrated members of the communities where he was speaking — one involving a sociology professor, whom he called a “Fat Faggot” onscreen, and the other a trans student — in a way that seems geared at inciting harassment. (Yiannopoulos is himself gay and once wrote an article giving his fans “permission” to call other people “fags.”)
Yiannopoulous’s fans also misconstrue his shtick as new or uniquely edgy, and from their point of view it’s a good thing. Since he first got famous stoking the anti-feminist fires of Gamergate, he has attracted an audience of resentful young people frustrated with “political correctness,” many of whom believe they aren’t “allowed” to say various offensive things. Now, it is plainly false that reactionary speech is severely restricted in the U.S.: Anyone who listens to the aforementioned talk-show hosts knows that there’s a huge market for misogynistic and racially dog-whistling language. This is a common conservative falsehood, that in a country that elected Donald Trump people are getting fired or blacklisted left and right simply for “tellin’ it like it is.” But again, if you’re a young person who hasn’t been exposed to that side of the discourse, and you’re suspicious of the liberal discourse that prevails on many campuses, Yiannopoulous is a shock to the system. He feels new and important, despite the fact that he isn’t.
But he’s making a nice living at it because people pay attention to him.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday:
UC Berkeley officials are warning the hosts of a Wednesday night event featuring right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos that his campus speech may be used to target individual students in the country without documentation.
“We are deeply concerned for all students’ safety and ability to pursue their education here at Cal beyond Milo’s speech,” the university’s Office of Student Affairs said in a letter Tuesday to the Berkeley College Republicans, the students hosting the event. “Milo’s event may be used to target individuals, either in the audience or by using their personal information in a way that causes them to become human targets to serve a political agenda.”
The letter expressed concerns that Yiannopoulos — a British writer for the right-wing opinion site Breitbart News — will use his appearance to kick off a campaign “targeting the undocumented student community on our campus,” and linked to an article published Tuesday on the site.
The article begins: “Milo and the (conservative think tank) David Horowitz Freedom Center have teamed up to take down the growing phenomenon of ‘sanctuary campuses’ that shelter illegal immigrants from being deported.”
I read the Breitbart article. It doesn’t talk about plans to target particular students. I’d like to think even Yiannopoulos isn’t a big enough shit to do that – but he really is an awful shit, so maybe he would have.
Saw this recently. Interesting take on him:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/barrierbreaker/milo-yiannapoulos-leading-catholic-guilt-evangelist/
Well, yes and no. He does delight in that impression but also points out at every media opportunity that this is what is going on.
Yes, but that ‘dangerous’ schtick is a joke, that’s the point, and po-facedly refusing to recognise that just plays into his hands and makes his critics look absurd.
“Can you imagine…the senior leaders of Planned Parenthood sitting in a conference room discussing the best timing for an abortion, to maximize their profits from the dead baby’s body?”
Actually no, I literally can’t imagine this at all. I’m disappointed in my alma mater–there are plenty of conservatives at Berkeley (and being a conservative at Berkeley is very hip–Jo Guldi comes to mind) but I have no idea why anyone at Cal would host a guest speaker who’s just plain dumb.
I tend to assume, anytime anyone puts words like ‘dangerous’, ‘rebel’, or so on in their self-promotion, it’s, erm, likely to turn out to be aspirational at best…
Even when other people give you the label, you probably want to ask yourself: how seriously would I take it if said person said this about anyone else? The ‘edgy’ defenders of preserving or widening existing disparities are a dime a dozen. And it’s frequently lucrative, besides…
(Shorter: often as not you can safely translate ‘edgy rebel’ as ‘tedious wanker’. Milo being, really, nothing new under the sun.)
Oh, and seriously, Stewart, thanks for that. I actually had no idea about that end of it. In retrospect, I guess, I’m only really surprised, I guess, that he’s so clumsily blatant about it.
Seems a lot of the Breitbart and Trump axis are pretty comfortable with paternalist, nationalist religious head fuckery. I’m sure this will also endear them ever the more to Putin and friends. And no surprise they’re pretty happy with more than a few other theocratic regimes… (Provided the dollars are there, of course.)
Pinkeen, yes, sure, it’s “a joke,” but so what? The fact that he finds the whole thing hilarious doesn’t mean we all have to. It’s “a joke” but it’s also very real harassment and abuse, that his targets don’t ask for and don’t want and don’t find funny. Dapper Laughs was “a joke” too; Bill Cosby is a funny guy; the Steubenville boys thought that whole thing was wet-yourself funny. Calling it “irony” is a deflection device that a great many bullies are using these days.
Regarding your final point about the targeting of individual students: he has done that, you know. He outed a transgender student at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, projecting a photo of the student and displaying their name.
Yes, I do know. That’s why observers think he’s likely to target individual students again. No doubt he’ll do it “ironically” and “as a joke.”
Not to mention, of course, the protester here who was shot by one of Yianno’s fans.
Oh and I quoted where Singal says that – “During two of his recent talks, for example, he showed pictures of and denigrated members of the communities where he was speaking — one involving a sociology professor, whom he called a “Fat Faggot” onscreen, and the other a trans student — in a way that seems geared at inciting harassment.”
I think the sociology professor is here (at the U of Washington). He received an avalanche of hate mail and threats, had to disrupt his life to hide as much as he could without giving up teaching altogether. It’s disgusting. Yiannopoulos is horrific.
Yes, I saw those quotes, but I was looking at your last comments. Milo, not a big enough shit? Mmmm.
What is also disgusting is the lack of forceful response from university administrators. What has Anna Marie Cauce said about the doxxing of the instructor at UW-Seattle? Are Boards of Regents and university presidents that unaware of the tactics used by these scum? In my opinion, Y’s repeated actions like that, and the threat they imply, are enough to refuse him a platform.
Ah yes – what I meant was, not a big enough shit to target particular students who could be deported as a result. He has a history of targeting people by taunting them (while knowing that his fans would pile on), but getting them deported is another level. No doubt that’s way too generous to him, but I err on the side of caution when publicly speculating about potential acts. If you see what I mean. I don’t really think he has any scruples to speak of, but I don’t feel justified in accusing him of future monstrosities.
Yesterday I was arguing on line with some of his fans and defenders here in NZ. Heavy overlap with known Trump worshippers, no surprise. It was not an edifying experience and they had no interest in addressing facts or honest argument, let alone discussion.
Rob, my experience is that most of his supporters believe he is telling truths that are too dangerous to the feminazi globohomo agenda for them to allow him to speak. He is speaking truth to power, in their view. It never occurs to them that he is lying to protect the current power structure (white males) from hearing some harsh truths themselves.
Oh yes, the even quoted CHS at me in his defence. Oh gracious how I laughed.
AJ Milne:
The thing is that he always seems to be mouthing off in all directions and one needs to sift through all the insults (which I admit I hadn’t been doing myself) to see what ends up being exempt from criticism.