Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Jan 04, 2017, 10:29AM

Milo Yiannopoulos Isn’t Worth the Publicity Boycotts are Giving Him

He’s just Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh with a better tailor.

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Why waste your time over Milo Yiannopoulos? I’m only mad at him because his last name is so fucking hard to spell. He’s the attention whore of all attention whores, so why give him a boost by complaining about his book deal with Simon & Schuster—or worse—calling him a fascist and a hate-monger? I’m no more interested in him than I am in Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh. They’ve made a lucrative living from hateful rhetoric for decades, and they reside in their corner. They thrive off outrage from the left. Milo’s merely a new wave of the same old partisan hacks. He just has a better tailor. The silly and histrionic boycotts are playing very nicely into his and his publisher’s marketing strategy. Milo’s not a household name yet, but give him a year and he’ll become one: he’ll get spots on Fox News, surpass Coulter, and become America’s most popular cynically outrageous pundit.

Simon & Schuster isn’t some bastion of neoliberal ideals. They sell books, and yes, their conservative division Threshold Editions is doing very well, with product out now by Limbaugh, Mark R. Levin, Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin and Dick Cheney. Yiannopoulos’ book—Dangerous—won’t be anything we haven’t heard before on Comedy Central or the movies of Sacha Baron Cohen. Milo’s not a very good comedian, and he’s an even worse pundit. Listen to him talk to Joe Rogan for three hours and hear him exhaust his set. I’ve no doubt the book will be a) mostly pictures, and b) recycled material from his “Dangerous Faggot” college tour. Jokes about women and minorities. Just let it die like The Brothers Grimsby. I think Milo picked the wrong field—he should be opening for Daniel Tosh. But he lucked into a much healthier gig getting everyone on the left so riled up that they’re the ones that make him famous.

Look, I don’t dig it at all, but the only way to defeat a troll is to ignore it. Jack Dorsey and Twitter gave Milo a big boost when they banned his account permanently over the summer. That was the first I heard of him. The New York Times says Leslie Jones was “temporarily chased off Twitter in July by an army of trolls hurling sexist and racist insults” allegedly egged on by Milo… why not just log off and ignore it like every other celebrity that gets idiots and creeps in their mentions every day? Jones’ profile was certainly boosted by all of this. The Times piece goes on: “He has bragged that ‘I don’t have feelings to hurt…Every line of attack the forces of political correctness try on me fails pathetically,’ he told The Hollywood Reporter last week. ‘I’m more powerful, more influential and more fabulous than ever before, and this book is the moment Milo goes mainstream. Social justice warriors should be scared—very scared.’” Barf. Feel free to walk off the set of his book rollout anytime—you’re being used. Loud, outraged people are the most key players in his publicity. Ignoring him is the only way he’ll never become a household name.

—Follow Nicky Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER1992

Discussion
  • But the left can't ignore him. What they're now very good at is making what they think they're trying to prevent actually happen. That's a real bad thing to be good at.

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  • So, I know someone who was slandered as a pedophile by Milo. He wrote about her on Breitbart, so her google name search is completely fucked, which is obviously something that affects employment opportunities. She receives continuous harassment, still, about it. She's trans; he published pictures of her pre transition, which still show up in harassment against her. He contacted her family members.// The woman who Milo outed on campus dropped out of school. People he targets get death threats; actaul stalkers sometimes show up.// If Milo went around punching people in the nose, I think it would be clear why "just ignore him" is not adequate. He's causing actual harm. How to deal with that is difficult, but he's got a large fanbase who will target people if he asks them to, and he has platforms which allow him to do real harm. Yes, he likes publicity, but just ignroing him is not superhelpful when he does real harm. On the other hand, reducing his legitimacy and his platforms is helpful. He's not able to target people on twitter anymore, which has been pretty straightforwardly a good thing.

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  • Oh, and he's really *not* just Ann Coulter. Coulter doesn't target people the way he does, which is why I really could care less where Coulter publishes. Her opinions are vile, but she's not actually outing people, or accusing random folks on twitter of being pedolphiles. I think that's a substantive difference.

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  • Did the person in question ever refer to themself as a pedophile?

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  • Anyway, if the person in question had already stated online that they were a pedophile and Milo reported on this I don't think it would count as slander. He hasn't been legally charged with it, to the best of my knowledge.

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  • yes, it is difficult to prove slander, especially when you are not either famous or rich, but are instead a marginalized person with little money, and so can't actually sue.// She didn't say she was a pedophile. Milo trumped up bs "evidence" and counted on having a lot more power than her. That's what he does.// why are you inventing reasons why it would have been okay? You don't know anything about it; why fall over yourself defending Milo like this? It just seems odd.

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  • Hmm, Noah, I think I disagree with you on this (surprise!). I know the Breitbart article you're talking about. Milo's article, while unnecessarily vicious, was not libelous. The woman in question did claim to be a pedophile; Milo's evidence was not "trumped up bs." Now, I do think that there's a lot of work to be done in re: distinguishing pedophiles from child molesters or sex offenders, but, to be fair, Milo did mention that the woman "insists that she has never molested anyone." Furthermore, her white nationalist comments do in fact complicate her current left-wing online personality. As you wrote in 2015, "caring about a writer’s legacy could mean not trying to protect the author from his or her own words, even if some of those words are ill-advised." In the same sense, why are you trying to protect someone from their own words?

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  • I didn't invent anything. I asked a couple questions based on information that's out there. You're the one falling all over yourself trying to make the case that the info's not there. I won't post any links because you'll say I was re-victimizing this person.

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  • She didn't say she was a pedophile; I really don't know where you're getting that.// They found a edgelord chatlog she'd participated in and inssited that it proved she'd distributed pictures of an underage relative. There aren't any actual pictures; there's no evidence she did anything wrong except sling shit in a web forum.// She didn't say make any white nationalist comments. I think you're getting this confused in part because Milo's accused so many people of pedophilia with poor evidence that it's difficult to sort out the different ones.

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  • Further she's not an "author". She has a twitter account with a fair number of followers, and wrote I think one article on a mainstream platform...about being harassed. The only reason she's notable is that people have harassed her; that is then used as an excuse to harass her further. Which is generally how these things work.

  • In addition to supporting the boycott of an entire major publisher, where do you stand on the doxxing of of students who arranged for Milo to speak on campus?

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  • First of all, Noah, she did say she was a pedophile. Milo reported on/published screenshots from a chatroom she participated in, and she verified their authenticity in a blog post, writing, "Chat logs from an IRC room I was in nearly a decade ago were leaked to gamergate […] much of what I said was gross and disturbing, and I have no interest in defending it." In those chatrooms, she wrote, in response to another user, "I've said I'm a pedophile and I'm attracted to [an underaged girl]. why is it surprising?" In regards to white nationalism, she wrote, "you can be proud of being white without hating other races. you can be concerned about white issues without wanting to kill the niggers" and "'racist is loaded word. I think white nationalists are 'racist' in the same sense that feminists are 'sexist.'" I would clear this up by posting links, but like Beck said, you would accuse me of re-victimizing the person; I'm sure we're talking about the same person, though. Also, Noah, she IS an author, insomuch as she self-identifies as one. Her Twitter bio says: "sometimes i write words for sites." I don't think it's up to you to decide whether or not she's an author.

  • Thank you for posting this. Like I said, I didn't invent anything.

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  • She was bullshitting in an edgelord chatroom. What the hell. It's like me saying, "I am a horrible person," and you writing an article with a big headlines saying, "Berlatsky admits he's a horrible person!" ffs.//The main words she's written for sites are about being harassed!// She wrote a bunch of inflammatory stuff years ago on an edgelord board. She's not notable. So a site with huge traffic finds inflammatory comments and paints her as a pedophile, complete with photos of her when she was underage, shirtless, pre tansition.// It's despicable, and I find it hard to believe that anyone thinks it's okay. But I guess folks can convince themselves of anything, if they try.

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  • At the very least, you all can surely see that this is *not the same as what Ann Coulter does*, right? Coulter doesn't target folks with virtually no platform like this. Even if you think it's fine, what the hell, smear random people on the internet, it shoudl be fairly clear that it's not what Coulter does. It's more what Gawker did...but they were foolish enough to target people with actual power. Much better to kick those without money, then you can say, "well we didn't get sued." Yeah, wonder why.

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  • So it was wrong to publish Norman Mailer after he stabbed his wife in the gut? His publisher should have been boycotted?

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  • What? The two things have nothing to do with each other. The reason to not give Milo a platform is because *he uses the actual platform to harm people'*. He outs trans women. He makes baseless accusations against people who are not notable and not in a position to defned themselves.// Mailer did something horrible, but allowing him to write didn't give him a chance to do the same thing again.// This isn't that complicated. Milo uses his platforms for slander, harassment, and bullying. I don't think he should be given a platform to do that.// I will say, though, that people can sign petitions and boycott anyone. That's an exercise of freedom of speech, which you claim to support.

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  • Ken White (popehat), a first amendment lawyer, points out that people often have a weird bias in favor of the first person who spoke. What Milo says is covered by free speech...but somehow people protesting against him isn't free speech, or actually infringes free speech. It's a status quo bias...and intellectually incoherent.

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  • Oh, and I'm against doxxing people. I didn't see the incident, but people who invited Milo to campus should not have their private info made public, imo.

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  • The argument isn't a free speech one anyway. Nobody says you don't have the right to boycott.

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  • Mailer stabbed a woman. Publishing him could be construed as condoning such awful behavior and rewarding him so he could do it again. He also used his platform to release Jack Abbott from prison and then Abbott killed a waiter. Why shouldn't there have been a boycott of Mailer after he used his platform irresponsibly and it got an innocent man killed? Take away his platform and he can't do it again.

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  • well...I'm not really into the kind of thinking where people who commit criminal acts are supposed to never be allowed to work or get money again. That's a really different idea from what I'm talking about with Milo, which is that he *actually uses the platform to hurt individual people in strikingly unethical ways.*// Again, if people wanted to boycott Mailer, that' would be fine, and an exercise of freedom of speech. I'd need to know more about the specific case to know whether I'd support it. I'm not very inclined to watch a woody allen movie, and will probably never listen to a Bill Cosby record again.// I mean, do you think Cosby should have had no career repercussions from raping dozens of women over decades? Or what?// But in any case, again, Milo's is a different case, and your effort to use these analogies strongly suggests that you either don't understand the difference (unlikely) or are arguing in bad faith.

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  • Noah, Breitbart didn't "paint her as a pedophile," they simply reported her own words. I don't like the site, I don't like Milo, and I don't think he should have written the article to begin with, but this long comment thread was started when you said that Milo's article was libelous. It wasn't, and you've been sidestepping that issue. Making false claims like that only hurt the left. Do her words not matter because they were written in a chat room, or because she's "not notable"? Should only "notable" people be held to their word? And who decides who is notable? Breitbart, yes, can be a despicable website, but you shouldn't have to distort the facts to prove that.

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