Professional garbage fire Milo Yiannopoulos finally had his book deal retracted. He also was also set to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference and that too was cut.
I’m not particularly happy at this change of events. Not because I want to hear him speak–I’d sooner swim through a sea of thumbtacks–but because it wasn’t his blatant racism, xenphobia, sexism or transmisogyny that was considered unacceptable. No, apparently all those are still fine, but if you advocate for pederasty, that’s the straw too much!
Let me be clear here: I do not think debate is the correct response for Milo. He knows he’s full of shit. He embodies the nihilistic performative sadomasochism endemic to 4chan. He is not there to expand the knowledge of his audience, he is there to pump them up with a victim narrative and set up a plethora of still-mistreated minorities as the villain of a cheap video game. I will stop just short of endorsing the Black Bloc’s disruptive tactics–Canadian Intelligence has something of a hate-on for anarchists and this post will inevitably be mined by them for dirt should I be arrested–but debate and protest don’t work on him. You need to deter him. You need pain, or the threat of it at least, to get him to give up. The Black Bloc achieved something where peaceful protest did not. That is undeniable.
And that’s what pisses me off. When he was running around the country, performing acts that would be considered criminal in sane democracies, everything was just fine because he was targeting other undesirables. Seriously, he got paid to sexually harass a trans woman so badly she had to flee campus for her safety. This is not a man embarking on a quest for knowledge. This is a man whose mission is to cause pain as some kind of divine retribution for succeeding where insecure basement dwelling entitled white men have not.
Why hasn’t the school been sued to oblivion for permitting this? Why does it seem like enough people don’t give a shit about his inciting violence against trans people?
No, none of that mattered. It was pederasty-while-gay that finally did the deal.
In canceling Milo’s book contract, Simon & Schuster made a business decision the same way they made a business decision when they decided to publish that man in the first place. When his comments about pedophilia/pederasty came to light, Simon & Schuster realized it would cost them more money to do business with Milo than he could earn for them. They did not finally “do the right thing” and now we know where their threshold, pun intended, lies. They were fine with his racist and xenophobic and sexist ideologies. They were fine with his transphobia, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. They were fine with how he encourages his followers to harass women and people of color and transgender people online. Let me assure you, as someone who endured a bit of that harassment, it is breathtaking in its scope, intensity, and cruelty but hey, we must protect the freedom of speech.
-Shiv
Edit Feb 22, 2017: Following reader feedback I have removed a poorly worded reference to Richard Dawkins’ dismissals of the impact of pederasty.
I see your point, but I still prefer the right result for the wrong reasons over the wrong result for the wrong reasons.
One suspects that the retraction of the book deal was a calculated financial decision, based on the fact that the only people likely to buy the thing would be rabid far-right maniacs and they’ve given him the seal of disapproval now. As you quote, the publishers are not responding because they think his views on paiderastia are unacceptable – they’re responding because the people who would buy the book are going off Milo. On moral grounds the withdrawal of the deal is not the problem. The problem is the fact that they made the offer in the first place.
I think the comparison of Richard Dawkins with Milo Yiannopoulos on this issue is a bit unfair though. Richard Dawkins has only ever said that some incidences of child abuse are milder and easier to cope with than others, and has always accompanied this point with a condemnation of all forms of child abuse. It’s tone deaf and unhelpful, but it’s nowhere near what Milo is saying – that paiderastia in the traditional Athenian aristocratic mould (not that he puts it that way) is actually a boon and a benefit to young gay men and should be encouraged. Milo doesn’t actually (seem to) think that it’s abuse at all. I think that’s quite a difference.
This attitude feeds in to the very worst stereotypes that people, particularly odious conservative religious people, have about gay men. I wish I could take some pleasure in watching this harm Milo’s travesty of a career (and I think it will), but I fear that it will just make his far-right audience all the more entrenched in their idea that gay men are all child molesters. If it stops him from causing more harm to trans people, immigrants, muslims and anyone else then I’ll appreciate that as a benefit, but if this is the end of his high-profile visibililty then he’s very much going out in a cloud of poison that will cause more harm in years to come.
It was with an expression of disgust that I read about this on Think Progress yesterday (his being 86ed from CPAC), because the article was full of an asshole fawning over the importance of frozen peaches for conservatives on college campuses, citing that as a reason it was soooo important to have Milo at CPAC, even though a number of members were upset. Oh, but then, the video surfaces with Milo yakking about sex with teens and so on (which is ephebophilia, but anyroad), and all of a fucking sudden, he’s untouchable.
Milo has said some of the most reprehensible things, and upholds absolutely repulsive views and behaviours, and that makes him the darling of conservatives, but the sex with teens business is a bridge too far? They are all hypocritical, evil dratsabs.
It’s very much like how all the big Republicans all of a sudden were outraged when the “grab them by the” transcript came out. They’re pro-rape and anti-women but from a cowardly safe distance behind legal jargon and laws. They don’t want to be connected to it by an explicit quote.
There is mainstream acceptance and money in white supremacy, misogyny and anti-LGBT bigotry. Not so much in sex with young teens. This is all it was. Nobody truly did the “right thing”. A company looking out for its finances happened to overlap with the right thing.
I kind of wish CPAC hadn’t cancelled his invitation though. I want him to speak his mind freely at CPAC and I want the camera to zoom in and focus on the major conservatives listening as the most vile shit is loudly heard coming out of his maw.
So I assume Maher and all the other sneering ‘liberals’ who lectured us about how the almighty Frozen Peach demands we let a raging bigot have a paid public platform will still take that position?
I mean this was never about what he said, you ‘liberals’ swore up and down that you oppose his views, but his right to say it! Him adding one more revolting belief to his repetoire shouldn’t change your principled stand for free speach!
But it will and we all know it. Most won’t publically admit their double standard, they’ll just quietly drop their defence of him. because it was never actually about defending his freedom of speach, they just secretly agreed with what he was saying.
Milo deserves all this and much more. That isn’t any less true because Richard Dawkins doesn’t deserve to have a career either.
This will of course result in splash damage against ordinary gay guys, reinforcing the gay = paedophile nonsense (which is what Milo explicitly endorsed)
The quote at the end presents the “cynical” interpretation that Simon & Schuster are merely making a business decision, and not a moral decision. However, if anything I think this is the more optimistic interpretation. “Moral decision” implies that a few people in places of power have standards. “Business decision” implies that a much greater number of people–their customers–have standards. It’s nice to know that people have standards, although one wishes that the standards were higher.
Like Cartomancer, I happen to think the Dawkins comparison is unfair. Dawkins doesn’t make me fear for my personal safety.
Siggy
You know what, fuck that. They have standards? They didn’t give a shit about his misogyny, racism, anti-semitism, transphobia. They were OK with trans people being hounded, with the racist attacks on Leslie Jones. Sure, they still have a line that MY apparently crossed, but that line is between different degrees of assholes.
While I’m mulling over the feedback, enjoy:
https://theestablishment.co/everyone-who-enabled-milo-yiannopoulos-shouldve-seen-this-coming-e6778af8f0a1#.gwusy0z20
CPAC are hypocrites on this issue. In 2015 they had Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty as a speaker. This was after Robertson made the comment that you should marry girls as young as possible, perhaps as young as 15, before they can have too many ideas of their own. I guess like a lot of people they believe that a man sexually abusing an underage boy is somehow worse than a man abusing an underage girl.
timguenguen
Well, they believe that girls are there to become their helpmeets, but boys are there to become the next generation of abusers. They are of course also homophobic as fuck, so they cannot imagine that there are actually gay teenage boys. Gay sex is an act against nature, but since they don’t think that there’s much difference between a teenage girl and a grown woman, that is a-okay.
And now, Milo has resigned from Breitbart. He claims it was completely his decision, but pretty sure that’s not true. So, even Breitbart has a line which can be crossed. Unfuckingbelievable. All the evil that little shit has pushed every single day, and all of it is just fine and dandy, but that thing about the kids…
I’m glad he got dumped en masse, but it won’t stop him, and it sure as hell won’t stop the next Milo, who has no doubt been waiting to jump into those shoes, who has stern views about sleeping with underage kids, but happily embraces every other manner of evil.
Precisely. This setback (and it will just be a temporary setback; remember some people thought Trump’s rapey stuff would undo him) he has had is only because of the sex with kids thing. If there’s a Milo out there who is everything this Milo is minus the teen rape, then he would be having a book out soon and being a draw on prime time TV and would be considered a legitimate voice to be featured on mainstream debates.
That’s exactly what I say about Trump too. His administration may be an incompetent mess and thus not cause the full extent of the damage that they intend to cause, but now we’ve seen how ready America is to have a white supremacist fascist. Imagine a clever and competent version of Trump laying dormant and running for office in a decade or two.
Saad @13
I suspect heterosexual teen rape would be considered perfectly acceptable.