The revelation that Breitbart’s star, er, journalist Milo Yiannopoulos apparently relies on dozens of unpaid “interns” to write most of his garbage is rather delicious.
Unfortunately, that bit of news — which doesn’t seem to be an April Fools gag — is drawing attention away from another huge embarrassment for Breitbart, and for Milo himself.
Earlier this week, you see, Breitbart gave a big wet kiss to the posterior of the internet’s white supremacists in the form of a 5000-word “Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right” written by Milo and his colleague Allum Bokhari (and presumably a small army of Milo’s interns).
Milo et al celebrated the can-do spirit of the proudly racist and anti-Semitic alt-right and tried, as best they could, to pretend that the virulently racist movement’s virulent racism was all a big goof.
Yesterday, Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer — the disconcertingly popular alt-right internet tabloid — told Milo and pals to eff off, in a post memorably titled “Breitbart’s Alt-Right Analysis is the Product of a Degenerate Homosexual and an Ethnic Mongrel.” It goes without saying that Anglin, who festoons his site with giant swastikas and animated gifs of Hitler, is not a fan of either of those demographics.
But before we get to Anglin’s objections let’s try to understand just what led Breitbart’s biggest star to celebrate — and try to align himself with — a movement that’s more racist than a barn full of racist uncles.
Ok, I’m done trying to understand, because the answer is blindingly obvious.
Milo rose to internet prominence, you may recall, as a shameless GamerGate panderer. But not that many people are talking about GamerGate these days, while interest in the burgeoning alt-right is soaring, particularly amongst the garbage people who made up the footsoldiers of GamerGate. You figure it out.
Milo et al’s sprawling article-cum-application-for-membership-in-the-alt-right is remarkable not only for its length but for its repeated attempts to pretend that a movement rooted in racism isn’t really racist at all, if you think about it.
The piece starts off by looking at the more “respectable” members of the alt-right — the would-be intellectuals of the movement who try to pretend that their racism is merely an appreciation of “human biodiversity” and gradually works its way towards the Nazis with anime avatars who so energetically flood Twitter with paeans to Trump and dire warnings of an impending “white genocide.”
Milo et al do their damnedest to hand-wave away the racism of this movement.
Halting, or drastically slowing, immigration is a major priority for the alt-right. While eschewing bigotry on a personal level, the movement is frightened by the prospect of demographic displacement represented by immigration.
Oh, they’re not bigots “on a personal level.” They just hate Mexicans and Muslims categorically, and would like them expelled from the country as soon as possible, please!
But it’s in the section on what some people call the “anime Nazis” where the apologias for blatant bigotry become truly pathetic.
All those people Tweeting racist memes mocking “dindus” and declaring that “with Jews you lose” aren’t real bigots, Milo et al claim. They’re just a bunch of enthusiastic young people with an appreciation for “politically incorrect” humor and internet fun!
The alt-right is a movement born out of the youthful, subversive, underground edges of the internet. 4chan and 8chan are hubs of alt-right activity.
If you think about it, they’re just like the hippies of the sixties!
Just as the kids of the 60s shocked their parents with promiscuity, long hair and rock’n’roll, so too do the alt-right’s young meme brigades shock older generations with outrageous caricatures, from the Jewish “Shlomo Shekelburg” to “Remove Kebab,” an internet in-joke about the Bosnian genocide.
Golly, what kind of Grumpy Nofunnington could possibly object to racist genocide jokes?
Oh, sorry. Totally not-racist genocide jokes.
Are they actually bigots? No more than death metal devotees in the 80s were actually Satanists. For them, it’s simply a means to fluster their grandparents.
They look like bigots, and quack like bigots, and dox their enemies like bigots, but really they’re just a bunch of lovable scamps. When they rail against race-mixing and joke about the Holocaust, they’re doing it “almost entirely satirically.”
Just like that “ironic” white supremacist who “satirically” assaulted a black woman at that Trump rally.
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/705010478200717312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Milo et al do admit that maybe there are some at-rightists who could be a teensy bit racist for real — the “humorless ideologues” who embrace the symbolism of the literal Nazis and actually take the horrible bigoted crap they spew seriously. These are the dreaded 1488ers.
They can be found on Stormfront and other sites, not just joking about the race war, but eagerly planning it. They are known as “Stormfags” by the rest of the internet. …
[T]here’s just not very many of them, no-one really likes them, and they’re unlikely to achieve anything significant in the alt-right.
To Anglin at The Daily Stormer, these are fighting words.
In his 3500 word response to the 5000 word Breitbart post, Anglin assures Milo et al that yes, he and his colleagues in the alt-right really do hate the people they say they hate. “Seriously,” Anglin tells Milo et al, “we sincerely are racists.” And those who claim otherwise are lying.
Saying that we don’t hate them, and it’s all a big joke because we want to anger our parents, is not just spin, it’s an outright lie.
Maybe it was true in 2005 that we made racist jokes about Jews and hajis for teh lulz,but then things got real. Now we know for a fact these people are trying to destroy us.
Why would we not hate them?
The so-called Anime Nazis, Anglin assures us, are just as sincere about they say they love; they actually do “love anime and the Nazis.” Yes, they make jokes, post ridiculous memes, and engage in wanton acts of trollery. But they do so with a purpose:
lulz are not an end in themselves.
lulz are a weapon of the race war.
Those who embrace the hatred and bigotry of the alt right don’t do it, as Milo et al contend, “because it seems fresh, daring and funny.” According to Anglin, they go the racist way
because they’re sick of being genocided by kikes.
They’re sick of not having a future. They’re sick of being forced to bow down before women and monkey people from anywhere. They’re sick of being told they are lesser, while looking at themselves and seeing that they are better in every conceivable sense than any of these people they are being told to submit to.
This isn’t some big joke.
We actually, literally hate these people who are trying to destroy us.
We are going to fight them and we are going to win.
Anglin also points out that Milo et al largely ignore the rampant anti-Semitism of the alt-right, a fact that is as remarkable as it is telling. As anyone who’s ever waded into an alt-righty hashtag on Twitter can tell you, these guys won’t shut up about Jews.
As Anglin sees it, “stopping [the] Jews” is the fundamental goal of most serious alt-righters, so much so that he feels the need to warn his readers to
[b]eware of anyone who isn’t talking constantly about Jews. They are probably up to something. They are at best useless. Any attempt to downplay the Jew role in the destruction of Western civilization should be looked at as subversion.
This Breitbart article is the first large-scale attempt to co-opt the movement and remove the Jews. I expect Breitbart to do follow-ups, pushing this same narrative. Probably, they’ve been awarded this task by other Jews.
Spoken like the sincere anti-Semite that Anglin is.
While Anglin’s anti-Semitic conspiracy theory is not only offensive but a bit silly, he’s right to be suspicious about Breitbart’s intentions in posting such a long and deeply dishonest paean to the alt-right.
You don’t need to posit some vast conspiracy by the Elders of Zion to understand why Breitbart would pretend that the racism of the alt-right is just for lulz.
Milo and his bosses at Breitbart clearly see the alt-right as a vast repository of potential traffic for the site.
But embracing a blatantly racist and anti-semitic movement could undermine Breitbart’s already tenuous claims to respectability — and risk offending advertisers and staffers who’d really rather not have the site go full-on Nazi.
The solution? Embrace an essentially racist and anti-Semitic movement without admitting that’s what it is. Hell, Milo pulled off something pretty similar when he went GamerGate.
How very ethical it all is.
To say nothing of the fact that a lot of western people tend to assume that all the pale people in anime are supposed to be white when in reality, they’re usually supposed to be seen as ethnically Japanese unless otherwise stated. I’ve seen a few articles about some fan asking manga/anime artists “why is everyone white?” and the artist being like “what are you talking about, they’re Japanese.” (not to say anime has no issue with whitewashing, it often does, just look at One Piece as time has gone on, Usopp barely has a tan these days).
Um, no. The rest of the internet isn’t as big on homophobic slurs as the far-right is.
This is the one true thing I’ve seen out of any of these bozos.
A shitty, stupid, inept one.
“Genocide” is not a verb, and the Jews aren’t inflicting it on white people. Being white people themselves for the most part would make that pretty damn awkward.
And they show their “superiority” by acting like toddlers with poopy diapers. And we’re supposed to bow down to THEM…why?
They’re not trying to destroy you, you’re not doing much real fighting, and you’re gonna lose.
Loser.
Another one bites the dust…first it was Roosh, now Milo.
I like to think I internet pretty good, but thankfully I don’t know any in-jokes about genocide, Bosnian or otherwise.
Is this supposed to be a Who’s the Worst contest? If so, they all win!
Hey David, can you start bleeping or redacting slurs in your quotes? I’m having some weird brain problems that might be anxiety or OCD and when I see a slur I’m afraid I will repeat it and my brain keeps saying the word.
I find things like [n-word] and [r-word] censorship for more common slurs to be more effective in order to avoid this reaction.
I can’t be the only person with this problem and there are people who would just rather not see slurs that are typically aimed at them.
I’d like to second authorialAlchemy’s request, David. I’ve been having a pretty tough time in my headspace recently, which doesn’t make reading vile things any easier and I’d just prefer to not have any slurs, racial or otherwise, running through my mind no matter how inadvertently.
Thank you for understanding. 🙂
I quite like Anglin’s response, because it’s so telling to me.
I’m speaking for personal experience, but the idea of not having a future is something a lot of young people go through. We imagined we would be something at this point in life and then we aren’t, so we get scared. With the current economic and political climate, we feel even more uncertain, and I don’t find it hard to believe that straight-white-cis(and etc.) young men, will feel even more scared and confused about this than other groups (because they’ve had all those advantages, and having them being taken from you can feel like an injustice). Also, if they grew up in a “pull yourself by your bootstraps” culture, the suggestion that they’ve had advantages in life can sting.
They might look at women in the workforce, and see their jobs being taken/their idea of a perfect domestic life being shattered; they might look at immigrants and people of other ethnicities and see “their things” (jobs and women) being taken, and their cultural identity diluted; they might look at poor people getting welfare and think their money is being stolen; they might look at trans people and see their gender being questioned; they might look at gay people and… I still haven’t thought about what they could think. Any ideas?
They feel impotent, which makes them feel angry, which makes them want to lash out at anyone they can point their fingers at.
Pearl said it better:
I do not agree with them, and I don’t think they’re justified at all – fascists can eat go eat a bycicle by me – but I think this could explain why those people become such virulent bigots.
But that’s just my one cent (No, not two. Just one.)
As for Milo, he can go eat a bycicle too.
EDIT: Holy Mozart, that was one teal dear!
I’m annoyed that the LMPD hasn’t made any arrests for the assault on the University of Louisville student at the Louisville Trump rally. I generally have good feelings about our police force, and I find this weird delay to bring charges when there is video evidence to be inexplicable. I hope it turns out that they are just being thorough, but that’s kind of grasping at straws.
In better news, a lawsuit has been filed against Trump, and another one against the two men who assaulted the U of L student:
http://www.wave3.com/story/31616828/lawsuit-filed-against-trump-following-louisville-rally
In a certain way it’s… relieving to hear a racist come out for their beliefs so plainly. It’s far too tiring to have to go through the trouble of learning all the terminology and dogwhistles that go around these communities.
Id be scared of the alt right but they think “lulz are a weapon in the race war”, so it’s hard to take them seriously. They believe that trolling Twitter and doxxing will advance some larger goal. It won’t, at best it will result in damage to individuals that they don’t like. Real nazis gave these pasty faced dweebs swirlies in high school
Like you aren’t a fucking racial warrior, you’re a fucking dork who thinks yelking about racism on Twitter can make him feel better about being a fucking loser.
@P.I.
Especially when you happen to be a fan of Satoshi Kon…
(Why, yes, I am talking about myself!)
I’m pretty sure the poor man is rolling in his grave – due to no one realizing how prophetic Perfect Blue was about the internet becoming a giant harassment machine back in 1997.
PoM, I feel it is only a matter of time before somebody is killed at a Trump rally.
And I feel that, naturally, Trump will turn it around to it being somehow the victim’s fault. He is quite good at distancing himself from the mayhem he causes.
That poor woman. They were shoving the hell out of her; clearly they were the aggressors.
This is plainly assault. Wtf.
At first I thought you were talking about Satoshi Kanazawa (who has nothing to do with anime, but he is a darling of the Internet Nazis…)
@Hu’s On First:
Oh God, no…
Satoshi Kon is the kind of person who’d despise these Anime Nazis and their ilk. He was easily one of the more feminist Japanese animators right next to Hayao Miyzaki.
To be fair, since Milo is an intern hivemind, he’s probably mostly gentile and straight.
@Kereea:
many asian people are as “white” as “white” people. i’ve watched anime off an on for a good 20 years now and it always seemed obvious to me that, at least in shows that take place in Japan, most of the characters are supposed to be Japanese.
but then, i also know that in real life very few people have naturally bright blue/purple/red/green hair. or eyes that take up 1/3rd of their face.
animated cartoons are not intended to perfectly portray reality.
Lawful Evil versus Chaotic Evil. Cultured, polite fuckhead or raging incoherent fuckhead, they’re all assholes.
A sobering read. Milo should know that attacking teh ‘feminazis,’ is one thing. Getting into bed with real nazis, that’s quite another.
They don’t use, ‘safe words,’ Milo.
@David
I’m seeing this:
“Sponsored links by Taboola”
There’s an arrow next to it.
Is this something that shouldn’t be showing up?
@calmdown
The irony in all this is that if Trump would make Anime real, he would be killed as a pathetic minor villain by the power of friendship/superior engineered robots/stronger willed protagonists etc. (the real villain would be of course someone better looking and more flamboyant).
But then again, I guess there are literally fascist X-men fans, too.
Holy shit!
Now this whole “Je suis Milo” bullshit from a while ago makes a lot more sense!
And Moggie wins the thread. Well played.
Those kinds of evil people make me shudder, to be honest because the evil is hidden behind a cloak of normalcy or even niceness. They tend to act normal and then one day say something that totally changes what you think of them. Like that nice couple next door who welcomes you with open arms when you move in, invites you to the annual block party, then one day mentions something about the neighborhood going to hell when a black family moves in down the way.
I appreciate Anglin`s honesty, if nothing else. I wish more assholes were as honest as he is. I`ll gladly take that over code-words, dogwhistles and pathetic pretenses of being ironic. I wish his reponse was posted all over the internet and in paper format all over the world as a way of saying: “This is who we`re dealing with. Beware!“