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.
Two thoughts:
First:
The reactionary Right in the West really is becoming a Ouroboros, actively consuming its own tail, isn’t it? The constant purity testing that’s been the driving force of conservative politics is reaching the very messy endgame.
Second:
I firmly support the adoption of the name “Milo et al Yiannopoulos” as his official designation on this site, and elsewhere.
Seconded.
“on a personal level.”
Question is, will Davis Aurini switch to being white nationalist (“on a personal level.”) as a term of identity.
the use of the term Alt-right just reads as “I am too cowardly to call myself a Fascist” to me.
@A Wolverine
Alternatively: “Those mean leftists made being racist unacceptable in this day and age, so instead of proclaming who I really am, I’m gonna call myself an alt-righter for people to take me seriously”.
Subversiveness is well, subverting the status quo. Not enforcing it. Racism is not subversive.
And fuck you, Milo for actually making me agree with Anglin about something. Lulz trolling is a weapon. Not a fun game. Of course, this is something we on the “SJW” side have been saying since the dawn of the internet, but hey.
Could someone explain this anime Nazi meme to me please. I mean, what do Japanese cartoons have to do with white supremacism?
He kvetches about his still-gone (and never-coming-back) little blue checkmark, but he doesn’t even write most of his own shit? AND the “alt”-right hates his ass? This is all too delicious.
I think it might have something to do with Japan allying themselves with Nazi Germany in WWII, but I think it’s also got something to do with the fact that anime fans are generally frowned upon in most of the world, and are seen as “basement-dwelling, socially-inept, possibly pedophilic mouth-breathers with creepy cartoon girl body pillows” by people outside of the community.
So, it’s them kind of being proud of their creepy anime obsessions, while most of the rest of us anime fans have to suffer for the (vague) association.
promiscuity, long hair and rock’n’roll
-all fun
outrageous caricatures, from the Jewish “Shlomo Shekelburg” to “Remove Kebab,” an internet in-joke about the Bosnian genocide.
-all used to cause harm to someone, not fun
they are losers who cling to their whiteness as the only thing they have going for them.
its easier to just blame their problems on racist conspiracy garbage instead of admitting that /they/ are the reason they have problems
So basically, Milo et al admits in the article that alt-right Anime trolls are immature children having an internet tantrum to get back at whatever authority figure made them angry? This is supposed to make them legit?
@Pen
I really don’t understand it myself. Maybe because they came from 4chan/8chan where anime memes are already popular (I don’t know for sure since I will never, ever go there)? It seems to be mainly a Trump thing, since among his powers to Make America Great Again some channer or other said he would “make anime real?” Other than that, I have no idea. There doesn’t seem to be a direct connection. I’ve pretty much given up trying to understand these people’s memes.
So as I read through this rolling KKKatamari of racism, a strange thing strikes me.
Stormfron’ts Anglin is actually showing consistency in his believes – as deeply racist and hateful dude. He is offended to see his beliefs co-opted by someone who’s existence he’s against. He is showing, in his own twisted, echo-chamber way, some integrity.
I’m dealing with the fact an Anime Nazi has more consistent principles than Milo and I feel bad.
-Anglin
I assume “they” refers to racist alt-righters, to which I agree: they *are* lesser. I think very lowly of racists. And if they could have their way, they would make all white people lesser with their inbreeding programs.
“lulz are a weapon of the race war.”
Wat the… fuck?
@Fang:
One of the weirdest things about Stormfront is that they often (not always, but often) have people who are genuine, sincere, well-mannered, honest and utterly evil. It makes a nice change from the normal nihilistic edgelords one sees on most hate sites.
Indeed, these Aryan supermen are completely superior to women and nonwhite people, which explains why they lurk all day on the Internet and have no success in the real world.
I wonder which of Milo’s unpaid interns wrote this ‘edgy’ piece of filth for him?
Another thing, these little brats are not subversive in any way. Being subversive actually means overcoming the prejudices and indoctrination you grew up with and challenging the status quo, sometimes even risking your life in. Being a basement-dwelling racist prick is as pro-status quo as you can get.
PI’s got most of it, with calmdown’s tie-in to the ‘chans largely completing the picture.
There’s also the fact that anime does include a lot of imagery that’s easy to exploit for this sort of co-opting. A great many characters have blonde hair/blue eyes, often in military outfits that are reminiscent of, if not direct callbacks to Nazi uniforms, and so on. And then there’s Hetalia….
I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. With the acceleration of ripping off the pretenses there’s no place for the Rational Actors in that spot. What’s next they both do the worst they possibly can to each other in a mad rush to come off as superior? I can only see Milo getting out of this unscathed if he either stops ghostwriting or start sucking up. After all I’ve seen from him and his deskmonkeys, I hope he can feel remorse knowing that this gig is up.
@Three Snakes
These people remind me of my former friends who kept arguing conservative points, and called my views skewed for being raised in a blue collar family. I imagine the alt right to be full of guys like them, and it just gives me a bitter taste in my mouth cause I didn’t have the points on me to refute their bullshit at the time.
http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-07/18/16/enhanced/webdr10/anigif_enhanced-1604-1405714380-33.gif
@Freemage:
Yes.
I’m offended by the fact that Milo compared the “ironic” racism of right wing asshats on the internet to death metal in the 80s.
@AsAboveSoBelow
Don’t worry, says the racist Asians, you won’t be attacked because you’re the Model Minority. It’s frustrating to see some people in my community decide that these people are the types that would totally not turn their backs, because no one said anything bad.
Agree with the explanations of ‘why anime nazis?’ offered above.
Hate the fact that anime is being used in this stupidity :(.
Love this overall post so very much.
I read a piece recently about the whole ‘Tay’ kerfluffle (Microsoft’s bot that quickly turned into a fascist etc etc), which presented 4chan and the rest in similar fashion to Milo. What was interesting though was that the author was a (fairly) prominent leftie/feminist. Anyone here from Aust. would know of Helen Razer, I think? Politics is getting awfully complicated.