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By David Futrelle
So the loathsome Milo Yiannopoulos — the self-promoting alt-right enabler and serial harasser who’s been kicked off so many platforms I’ve lost track — has apparently gone bust, in a big way, landing himself more than $2 million in debt, according to documents examined by the Guardian Australia.
The details are deliciously schadenfreudey. The documents were leaked by some far-right Australian racist who’s apparently mad at Milo, and they reveal Milo’s now quite vicious feud with two Australian promoters who apparently spent much of the past year trying and failing to organize an Australian tour for Milo — and who now say they are being harassed by Milo’s toxic fans, including some thugs who broke into their car.
But in some ways the most delicious details in the whole mess have to do with who exactly Milo owes money to — a long list that not only includes lawyers, jewelers, and the company that put on his lavish wedding but also some names that will be very familiar to readers of this blog.
Looking through one of Milo’s “debt spreadsheets” that were posted on Twitter the other day, I discovered that Milo apparently owes $33,000 to the extravagantly Islamophobic pundit Pamela Geller and nearly $77,000 to his former Breitbart writer/manservant Allum Bokhari, the guy who actually wrote the notorious apologia for the alt-right that Milo took most of the credit for.
But there are a few other names on the list that literally made me laugh out loud. Milo owes $4500 to “journalist” and reactionary troll Ian Miles Cheong, $104 to noxious racist fantasy author Theodore “Vox Day” Beale, and $225 to former A Voice for Men attack dog Janet “Judgy Bitch” Bloomfield (Andrea Hardie), all of whom wrote for Milo’s now-shuttered Dangerous website.
Milo labeled his debts to Beale and Bloomfield low priority. Somehow I suspect neither one of them is ever going to see a cent of it.
As Bloomfield likes to say, though not usually to herself, suck it up, buttercup!
To underscore a point that Sam Seder made on his show about this: deplatforming works. It really does. There were a bunch of examples of that just this week, namely both Milo and Laura Loomer, but the example of Alex Jones looms equally large. Not only are they reduced to laugh-worthy parlor stunts, but Milo’s debts will ensure we never hear from him for a long time, if ever again.
As Peter Coffin says over and over again, attention is currency. If these people are not in a position to obtain your attention, their power–and more importantly, their income stream–evaporates. And they know this, which is why they kick up such a fuss about any efforts to deplatform them and why their goals are always to worm their way onto a podium with a university crest on it. They want the legitimacy and the cultural cache that comes with those specific eyeballs on them. That’s why when Steve Bannon came to Toronto, I saved my powder not for Bannon, but for the Munk Debates as an organization for platforming him in the first place. They had something to gain from his appearance, something monetary.
There’s something especially delicious about the desperate flailing of these people, knowing how tenuous their income streams were. I mean really, if you rely exclusively on a single (or even a couple) social media channel(s) for your living, that’s precarious at the best of times. Knock those out from under your feet and you’ll be forgotten quicker than the mid-90s swing revival, left handcuffed to a door in December without a coat.
Some people at least have pity
https://twitter.com/chick_in_kiev/status/1069631311629963264
(Just to clarify, Talia Lavin is a Jewish reporter and Milo once spent that amount of money just to make a statement in her PayPal. Just in case you’re wondering where the money has gone…)
@ Katamount:
Sigh. I miss the mid-‘90s swing revival. Though I agree with Big Rude Jake that anyone who really likes that style of music and dance probably continues to do so at smaller meet-ups and doesn’t care if they get media attention for it or not.
re: schadenfreude
It is a low pleasure, though a distinct one.
But the main thing to take delight in is that Milo’s entire business model – based on marketising hatred and exploiting more gullible but still hatefilled acolytes to do the heavy lifting on his copy and to fund his lifestyle – is under threat.
At one point it looked as if his modish horror speech was going to get him a huge book deal and a shedload of money on the advance, which could only encourage more people to follow suit.
I don’t have any sympathy with Milo: he can always clean floors or empty bins for a living, which would be a whole lot more honourable than doing what he’s been doing.
What pleases me is if it puts other Mini-Milos from seeing his “career path” as a strategy to follow.
I’m enjoying Milo’s utter horror at the prospect of having to scrub his own toilets:
Also enjoying the fact that the Mercers thought they were paying for Milo to open a new front in the culture wars and bring in the youth vote – he was supposed to be the next Alex Jones – and what they got instead was Instagrammed $11,000 restaurant bills and a Facebook page of stolen memes and reposted videos. They’re wealthy enough not to care, though. He’s just another failed hedge.
The alt right sure does love self-promoting con artists. They’ll pay huge sums of money for the spectacle of white men getting lavishly rewarded (with fur coats, speaking platforms, and political office) for behaviors that would get women and PoC raked over the coals or arrested. Like Milo, most grifters have very little talent or substance to back up their boasts. If they did, they’d be doing honest work.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Scamming money out of the stupid, angry right is pretty lucrative. Peterson, for example, has an “honest” dayjob, but pandering to entitled manchildren (menchildren? manchilds?) gets waaaaaay more money. If his patreon audience were to poof out of existence tomorrow, he’d still be able to pay the bills.
Where Milo tripped up was living far beyond his means and always expecting someone else to bail him out. Looking pretty and being a provocative asshole is a talent, of sorts, and he’d have been able to continue doing it for years more if he had any foresight or impulse control.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants:
Maybe that’s the point – if their supporters are made up of those who view themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” – they need to have that belief kept up by occasionally seeing a random white guy being elevated to Actual Millionaire and Powerbroker.
If the guy in question has no obvious talent to justify it, that just makes him easier for the base to identify with.
@ Lumpina:
THAT would be PRICELESS
@ Katamount:
And more so knowing that they are no longer relevant!!!
@Moon_custafer Exactly. Even if these guys have no realistic hope of ever scaling the heights, it gratifies them to see obviously inept white guys elevated. I think that was a huge part of Trump’s appeal. He crapped all over Obama’s barrier-breaking achievement by attaining the same office despite being vulgar, insulting, lazy, venal, corrupt, and incompetent. That sends an unmistakable message to Trump supporters: the best and brightest black man is still only (barely) equal to the worst white man. The worse Trump is at presidenting, the more they love it.
@Pie
It’s not that they can’t succeed at honest jobs, it’s that they don’t want to. Grifters sell their personality rather than their expertise. Sure, they’re quite charming and intelligent and can sling around verbiage that makes it sounds like they know what they’re talking about. They flatter their marks by offering “secret” knowledge. But when you look closely at what they’re peddling, there’s no there there. Peterson’s fans love him because he’s a provocative asshole who echoes their prejudices back to them, not because what he’s saying is new or actually useful in any way.
@Moon_custafer
Well I most certainly don’t… *hides Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Cherry-Popping Daddies CDs*
In all seriousness, I kinda do too. I still listen to “Zoot Suit Riot” and “Mr. Pinstripe Suit” on occasion. Americana Deluxe didn’t have a bad track on it. It’s a shame their time in the sun was so fleeting.
What really grinds my gears is that T-shirt he’s wearing. As if you could choose to be born into a rich family!
@Katamount
I’m with you. I wish the swing/lounge revival hadn’t been killed off.
Per Wonkette, someone (Christy Edwards Lawton, who LinkedIn lists as a fundraising consultant at Turning Point USA, the group that created the Professor Watchlist website in 2016 so students could complain if their professors were too liberal) is promoting a new right-wing dating app whose ads sneer at Bumble for giving women the choice whether or not to initiate contact: https://www.wonkette.com/oh-look-its-another-dating-app-for-unf-ckable-trump-supporters
My hot take: someone’s already working a new con on young conservatives
He’s still alive and marinating in his own bile. I feel as okay enjoying his downfall as I did Shkreli’s and Cosby’s, and will any and all Trumps’ when the time comes.
@Katamount + @Moon_custafer
re: 90’s swing revival…
I will say that swing is, in its own strange way, getting its way back up. Ever heard of electro-swing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2uHgIqc5jo
(There’s probably a lot of analysis to be done about negative trends in the genre, but damn it’s catchy.)
@ Troubelle: Moonbeam Malcontent, Bard of the New Movement:
I’ve only seen (on YouTube, not in RL) the Correspondents, who are pretty catchy.
I’m also very fond of Post-Modern Jukebox, but I’m not sure what genre they count as.
https://youtu.be/m3lF2qEA2cw
I’m only aware of The Correspondents.
I also like Post-Modern Jukebox, but I’m not sure what genre they count as.
Apologies if this double-posts.
Ooooh, The Correspondents! I did a drag [king] routine to Fear and Delight.
@Katamount, Troubelle, Moon_custafer:
Well, for electro-swing, there’s always Caravan Palace, which I got introduced to when the video for ‘Lone Digger’ was making the rounds, having looked like the artists were mainlining the French bande dessinee Blacksad. (Warning, video is definitely NSFW on multiple counts.)
For Post-Modern Jukebox, I’d say the genre they count as might be ‘mash-ups’, considering that most of what they do is play songs in other styles. Though playing ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ as a New Orleans Jazz number was truly inspired.
I’m one of those people who really doesn’t fixate on particular genres or styles of music. I’ve got things running from Gregorian chant to electro-swing to a capella to piano arrangements of Studio Ghibli songs to… well, whatever the Dirtbombs qualify as. (They play with two bass guitars and two drum sets. When the lead singer was asked what kind of music they did, he replied ‘loud music’.)
@Who?
TK… that would be the Marmot, I presume?
And, of course, Jon del Arroz is in the comments saying he did get paid. Which he may have, the spreadsheet listing the debts may not have been completely up to date, and I expect del Arroz wasn’t owed anywhere near as much as many of the others.
I had a swing loving phase after seeing the movie Swing Kids. This was maybe two or three years before it really got big. I felt a little smug about being ahead of the curve on that one as I was not otherwise a very cool teenager.
Jenora Feuer:
Yes, the tank is on the list.
My problem is that I don’t count del Arroz as someone I call belivable.
del Arroz? The guy who seems to think he’s Scalzi’s nemesis? (Spoiler: he’s not)
@Jenora:
Motown garage-rock?
It just got better. Milo figured – “Hey, Patreon is a thing, and I have fans.”
Banned within the day for associating with hate groups.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/5/18127994/milo-yiannopoulos-patreon-comeback-ban-hate-speech