By David Futrelle
It used to be that when you — and by “you” here I actually mean “I” — went to find pictures of Nazi-adjacent media provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos to use on your blog, all you had to do was to type his first name into Google Images and ta da! there were dozens to choose from.
Today, you get this:
Row after row after row of pics not of Mr. Yiannopoulos but of MILO, which Wikipedia tells me is a
chocolate and malt powder that is mixed with hot water and milk or milk to produce a beverage popular mainly in Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, South Africa, Colombia and some other parts of the world.
Milo — the person, not the chocolate and malt powder — must be feeling a bit sad about being ignored, because he’s once again cranking his obnoxiousness to eleven. From The Observer today:
Milo Yiannopoulos has started issuing reporters threatening messages when asked to comment for stories.
“I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight,” the right-wing nationalist told Observer over text message, in response to a longer feature in development about an Upper East Side restaurant he is said to frequent.
That seems like a somewhat harsh response to questions about one’s dining habits. But apparently he sends this message to all the journalists who contact him.
When asked to elaborate on who specifically had upset him, Yiannopoulos explained that the statement was his “standard response to a request for comment.”
Yiannopoulos also sent the message to The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer in an article examining the struggling U.K. Independence Party, which the conservative commentator is reportedly seeking to join as part of, what an Info Wars host describes as, a “soft coup” lead by nationalist figures.
Yiannopoulos posted a picture on Instagram of the veiled threat issued to Sommer, captioning it “where is the lie.”
In addition to making jokes-cum-threats about murdering journalists, Milo Not The Chocolate Powder seems to be really embracing his fashy side these days — sending $14.88 to Jewish journalist Talia Lavin and posting about it on Facebook, “1488′ being a popular alt-right signifier referring to the white supremacist “14 words” catechism and the phrase “Heil Hitler.”
Many on the right, and the far right, and the far, far right, including The Daily Stormer, have in recent days targeted Lavin, the former New Yorker fact checker who resigned after posting (then retracting, then apologizing for) a tweet wrongly suggesting that a tattoo on a particular ICE officer’s arm was a German Iron Cross, a symbol associated with Nazis.
Yes, that’s right, the Nazis at the Daily Stormer are mad at her for wrongly suggesting a non-Nazi was a Nazi.
Anyway. I’m sure Milo Not the Chocolate Powder’s fans will say he was just being “ironic,” that he’s not really a Nazi, but it seems to me that if you’re sending a literal Nazi catchphrase (catchnumber?) to a Jewish journalist who’s being targeted by The Daily Stormer, all the while joking about death squads killing journalists — well, let’s just say there’s no real functional distinction between you and a completely non-ironic, Hitler-worshipping/Holocaust-denying-but-approving capital-N Nazi.
Where I’m from (Indiana), Milo is a brand of ice tea. Never tried it, since I prefer to brew my own instead of buying it premixed. But it sells enough for the store to keep some in stock.
Wow, so much for Milo the Gay Jew Who Married a Black guy. And so much for pretending not to see the assholes heiling Hitler while he sang crappy karaoke. Now he’s suddenly worshipping a man who ordered the wholesale murder of gays and Jews, and who took his cues from US racists who murdered black people.
His drinking problem is even worse than I thought.
@Bina He also seems to hate atheists according to an interview with Rubin (complaining why they’re ugly) and seemed to justify South African apartheid: https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/milo-yiannopolis-controversial-book-sells-152-copies-uk/
Honestly, people like these guys want me to have communism or something like The Purge (but every day) instated ASAP. Better to have no law than a law that completely fucks you over. The far right stands for the latter.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just jaded AF at this point, but this comes off as petulant bullshittery to me. He sounds like a fourth grader who has just figured out that threats of violence shock people and he finds it hilarious.
@Kate
He does this to bait the left and give him media attention for $$$ and to hype up the far right. Unfortunately, the current administration has acted on these fascist tendencies, starting from gagging the EPA.
@rv
Yep. After all, this is the same guy who whined about being hassled at a restaurant or whatever. I find him and his alt-right-wannabe-dandy schtick pathetic more than anything else.
@Kate
I find it scary that his type are influential. YouTube’s all over guys like him, and Nathan Larson (the pedophile fascist) is running for Congress in Virginia without the cops on his ass.
@rv
What’s worse is that he’s obviously leveraging his marginalized identity as a gay man (sometimes as a gay man who’s married to a black man) to absolve himself.
If/when Larson loses, I’m afraid it will be like when Roy Moore lost: by the grace of God (or whoever).
Maybe he’s mad that the first hit you get when you google “Milo” is the chocolate drink mix and his sorry Nazi ass is second.
Milo’s not exactly subtle, is he.
My only question is… what’s he gonna do when he runs out of edge ? He can one-up himself all he wants, people will still get bored after a week or two, and soon he won’t be able to find any shock value left that he hasn’t already milked out.
@Sinkable John : Pansy Ass Pinko, Regicidal Beast-of-Burden
I think he may cozy himself up to the left as a proxy and then spout out his far right cancer again. He finds it easy to piss off feminists by virtue of him being gay and supposedly marginalized.
rv:
Yeah Sidling up to the left isn’t going to work. He’s got a history now.
@rv
Calling for death squads on someone isn’t a funny joke.
My uncle Milo was a complete sweetheart. Born in the late 1800s, I met him when he was already ancient…but he had a soft spot for pre-K me, and to this day I remember his cerulean blue eyes. He was a farmer, but never too busy to play with us kids when we visited.
Milo is delicious, especially in winter with warm milk and sugar. Or poured over vanilla ice-cream. The drink, that is, not the alt-right cockwomble.
Couple of rather violent posts here, aren’t there? Despite the rage we all feel at times (or permanently), we don’t normally give vent to that kind of thing here.
Mish, agreed.
rv, I deleted a couple of your comments that went over the line.
Whenever I hear or read the name Milo I always think of The Phantom Tollbooth first.
Now it will be The Phantom Tollbooth, that cute ginger kitty from the movie, a chocolate drink powder which sounds a lot like Ovaltine, a regional brand of premade tea, and that nattering neo-Nazi nincompoop as last as possible.
Has anyone watched The Good Fight? I thought they skewered him fairly well but I’d love to hear other opinions.
Milo also comes in chocolate cereal and bar form, but the drink is still the best.
Australia has our own neo nazis and wannabes. The most active seems to be the ‘antipodean resistance’ who bravely hide their faces behind swastikas on their facebook pics of their bush camps. Maybe non chocolate Milo should whine to them
Firstly, is Milo powder different from Nesquik?
Secondly, In Texas there’s Milo’s Tea, too! It sells enough units to warrant billboards. I have some in the fridge right now, and this post made me want to pour some up.
Unlike tea or drinkable chocolate, however, Milo Yiannopoulos is neither refreshing or enjoyable.
Sending Milo as an envoy to Australian neo-Nazis isn’t a bad idea…
OT:
My phone autocorrects neo to “bro”. So I edit a lot of “bro-con” “bro-Nazis” from my text >.<
Milo Bloom, the boy journalist from Bloom County, also has a soft spot in my heart.
@Turtle
My son like the bars, but I’m with you: the drink wins. Re our own neo-nazis, don’t forget the charming Blair Cottrell. He’s the perfect mix of violent misogyny and racist rage for these guys, and presents as an everyday working class bloke, which his base loves.
@PirateJennie
Brr, no thanks. He’s already been here once and that was quite enough. That was the time I saw neo-Nazis standing arm-in-arm with Jewish Zionists, facing down the anti-Milo protests, and I gave up on trying to understand 2018.
I find it so odd when people advocate for roving, legally sanctioned death squads. They seem to be very confident that THEY will never end up being a target of a group that is by its very nature able to kill with impunity. Seems like a very risky dice to roll, even if you have absolutely no empathy for any other people.
It’s especially odd when the death squad cheerleaders are a part of a demographic that has been previously targeted by death squads…
@Mish (is the abbreviation okay?) and all Australian mammotheers:
Please accept my sincere apology. I just got a giggle from picturing him striding into the bush to seek out his breathren, never to be seen again. I wish him on no one.
When I think Milo, I usually think of the cat from Milo and Otis, which I loved as a child and only learned after graduating from college that it was actually a re-edit of a Japanese film that has some troubling allegations of animal cruelty on set 🙁
Also, the main character from The Phantom Tollbooth, which eight-year-old Kinda absolutely loved to death.