Breitbart: Whitewashing white supremacists?
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.
The full story of the white supremacists who assaulted this Black student at a Trump rally.https://t.co/WPywX72tVOhttps://t.co/vpJrCxH1bP
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) March 2, 2016
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.
The fun thing about racism is that you can draw the lines for one’s own racial in-group and out-group however one pleases; any grouping is as arbitrary as any other. The “scientific” racists of the 19th and 20th centuries drew the line such that Jewish people (and even Irish) typically weren’t in the “White” group.
Besides, if genocide could only be used for [colour x] people killing [not-colour x], then you’re put in the awkward position of the Holocaust not being genocide, not to mention Rwanda, Turkey’s Armenian massacre and numerous others, genocide typically being carried out on one’s neighbours.
LinuxLea:
I think it should be something like “Je suis un quarantième de Milo”, though.
Blimey, at least Anglin has pointed out the absolutely bleedin” obvious to Milo – racists ARE racist! Who would have thunk it!
About that one thing…
So, yeah. It starts with a joke…
The other thing that quote shows, is that real fanatics are usually lacking in a real sense of humour.
There’s nothing funny about people who view everyone else as reduced to little more than breeding stock. Cattle.
However, ‘pure-bred,’ they may claim to be themselves, they’re really admitting to their own bestial nature. Hollow inside, they worship death, because life means little or nothing to them. There seem to be a lot more of them out in the open about it, these days.
This is why I never understood Milo. He thinks it’s all some great gag, yet he’d be one of the first ones to be murdered by the people he wants in control. The dude has some serious issues he needs to deal with. He’s both gay and I believe he even might be part Jewish, yet he’s trying to get involved with groups that literally hate people like him. They don’t care how much he sucks up to them, he’ll never be accepted. At best he’d be used as a useful tool for awhile. His self-loathing is unbelievable. He needs mental help, and I don’t mean that as an insult, just a fact that I think he really does have some serious issues and needs help.
You’re assuming Milo et al actually believes what he’s saying. If they win, he’ll be their useful tool, but if they never end up in control yet read his articles then they’re his useful tools. It’s a dangerous and foolish thing to try, because if he helps them enough they gain momentum he won’t be able to put on the brakes, but he has been raking in money so far.
guy: It should not matter whether or not Milo-the-kids-in-trenchcoat believes what he’s saying.
Because pure self-survival instinct should scream loudly “no, don’t side with people who are calling for extermination of gay people, because there’s no fucking way to be sure if they really believe what they say and if they do, I might be dead too, that’s way too huge risk”.
But, I suppose this is the “cool guy” syndrome — “they’ll accept me as one of their own”. Well Milo-the-Legion, let me tell you as a former “cool girl” (of ages past) that they won’t.
Point is, if they don’t actually get the power to exterminate gay people then they won’t kill him. So he’s gambling that they won’t actually win. Like I said, it’s a stupid gamble because if they do start winning he can’t stop playing. But it’s also hardly an uncommon gamble on the right, if usually with lower stakes, which is why the Senate Majority Leader lost his seat not all that long ago.
@Skiriki:
Any idea which X-comic that panel came from? I’m trying to ID those characters, but I’ve been out of the comic scene for too long to truly do so. I mean, I kinda doubt that’s Kitty Pryde, Rictor, and an older Colossus talking there…or did I ID them right against all odds anyway?
My thanks in advance.
Somehow I imagine the irony to be lost on Milo et al.
Redsilkphoenix: Sadly, I don’t recall, but you got the characters right.
@Redsilkphoenix
Years of Future Past #02
Perhaps Milo/Allum could have concluded something from that alone?
Skiriki: “guy: It should not matter whether or not Milo-the-kids-in-trenchcoat believes what he’s saying.”
Milo-the-kids-in-trenchcoat? Kinda like Vincent Adultman?
“He who rides the tiger fears to dismount.”
I’ve been reading about the edgelords and shitlords and other snarling bundles of fear, pain and hate for entirely too long. They remind me of the scene in “That Hideous Strength” when Frost explains to Studdard that he is to go through a very rigorous training. The purpose is to kill all human feeling, like a dentist would kill the nerve of a tooth. That way he will be fit to interact directly with the Macrobes, the higher form of life with which Frost and Wither* are in contact. The channers, et al., seem to take pride in being impervious to offense or insult, and consider those of us who still possess human feelings as weak and contemptible. I cannot imagine that they experience what we would consider pleasure, fun, joy or happiness.
*Nobody ever accused Lewis of subtlety in his naming of characters.
Nikki the Bluth Wannabe: Presuming it was not April Fool’s, BuzzFeed found out that Milo outsources his writing/reporting work to 40+ people or so.
@Robert
Well, they do, of course, but that’s part of why such subcultures encourage their members to only show or admit they enjoy certain approved things, to keep up the fiction that they’re separate(and by fiction logic, better) than other people. They’re still only human, wanting something to belong to that makes them feel valued and worthy.
I think it’s a little odd that Frost was the skinny one and Wither the fat one, given that frost is a very broad thing (to us)and withering makes stuff smaller .
Redsilkphoenix – It is from Years of Future Past, issue 2.
The premise is that Colossus and Kitty Pryde’s children are the last known mutants born in a reality where, like the 80s comic that inspired it, mutants are being hunted down and exterminated.
Colossus is attempting to help his daughter understand her role in the world as one of the last superheroes as well as trying to explain to her how the whole mess started
Comic Book Resource has a great interview with Marguerite Bennett on her inspiration for the story
http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/x-position-bennett-talks-years-of-future-pasts-teenage-mutant-savior-heroes
I’ve been lurking on this site for a very long time but never commented because I didn’t have any to add to the discussion that wasn’t said better by someone else. It’s nice to be able to contribute!
Wait, removing kebabs is about genocide in Bosnia? Oh god, I’ve joked about that in EU4 chats. I thought it was just a silly term for breaking the Ottoman Empire!
Admitely, all kebab joke make me uneasy. I see them as similar to call a French a cheese-eating surrendering monkey.
The alt-right is having in-between fights? The narrative is crumbling!!!
From the BuzzFeed article, “(1) feminism attention seeking for ugly people (2) wage gap (3) campus rape culture… a load of mean jokes” is probably the most concise statement of the alt-right’s founding argument that I’ve ever seen.
One thing I just don’t understand is where this shit comes from. Like obviously, Jews are not trying to destroy the rest of us, yet somehow these people are so full of hatred that they’ll pretend to believe that. Where did that come from in the first place? Just… ugh.
In large part it’s because Jews are a distinguishable minority that was easy to target in Europe for quite a long time. Rome responded to a 1st-century uprising by forcibly relocating most of the population of Judea and scattering them across the empire so they couldn’t coordinate another revolt; this was a common policy but usually on a smaller scale.
Additionally, Christians were prohibited from loaning money at interest (they could find ways around this), Jews were permitted to loan to Christians, and kings sometimes decided they’d rather persecute a minority than pay them back, so they spread rumors about desecration, blood sacrifice, etc. to whip up popular support.
There’s various religious aspects that were historically involved, but those reasons also motivated the persecution of plenty of other groups that don’t face the same modern prejudices and are not sufficient to explain modern antisemitism.
Jews were also forbidden in most places to own land, which meant that they had to make their living through finance and trade. It’s a fairly recent innovation that views traders and businesspeople as respectable professions. Middle Ages social structures put farmers and artisans above traders, because farmers create something whereas traders just extract wealth from commerce without creating anything.
Historically, in Europe, citizenship only belonged to people who had an unbroken family history of citizenship. Jews, because their family histories put their origins outside Europe, were always outsiders even if they had lived in a place for generations. The Roma also suffered from this. This made persecution easier, because their starting position was already an othered one.
Oh, they actually believe it. It’s not an act.
@Robert: “I cannot imagine that they experience what we would consider pleasure, fun, joy or happiness.”
They are of the “broken bottles, the dry and choking places.”
@Stempke
It’s nice to hear all kinds of voices. Welcome!
@Pietro_McM
I noticed how much these people long for some kind of apocalypse where “undesirables” of all sorts will be eliminated. Meanwhile, they will have their revenge and become great again. It’s like how fundamentalist Christians preach of Judgement Day where all the sinners (gay people, feminists, Wiccans, people who listen to rock) will all burn in Hell.
It’s rather ironic, because fascists will like to compare social justice movements to Christianity, calling them “resentful” and “slave morality”. But it is the fascists and other supremacists who fantasize about Judgement Day all the time where women, nonwhites, left activists etc. will be put in their place. And it doesn’t take a genius at all to see their constant, seething resentment. They flock into herds yet tear each other apart like wolves.
And it always annoys me when these people speak of philosophy and creativity. When they do, it is always about how they supposedly are so philosophical and creative and how their “inferiors” apparently aren’t. They clearly are appropriating Nietzsche, which also infuriates me, because their understanding of everything (philosophy, creativity, Nietzsche’s works) are very shallow. They only use them as a weapon. As a composer and writer, I can confidently say that they completely lack critical thinking, imagination, nuance, and sensitivity.
As Pietro_McM said, they’re hollow inside, which is why they long for death and destruction.
Read his poetry. It’s telling. At least based on the way it reads, he has unresolved issues with sexual abuse by at least one of his parents and/or a partner.
https://storify.com/athenahollow/chris-kluwe-and
OT but potentially wading into horribly controversial waters:
I just – and I know that some of you will disagree with what I’ve done – I’ve just made All Edge Brownies.
I wouldn’t normally weigh in on such a divisive topic as whether the edges or the gooey bits of brownies are best, but sometimes…
…sometimes you have to take a stand.
Two things:
One: Milo is a big Tori Amos fan, if his poetry is anything to go by. At least two of her lyrics made an appearance. I’m sure she’d be thrilled.
Two: OF COURSE the edges of brownies are the best bits! Mockingbird, you are a good and righteous baker.
Using Anglin as a way to express White Nationalism is liking using ISIS to express Islamic faith. Lol!
America was and was always a Western biracial nation. Not uniracial or multiracial. Fact.
The Civil war established that fact in the 13 and 14 amendment. The civil right act was hijacked to identify America as multiracil and hence the 1965 immigration act changed the American identity. fact.
The fuck does this have to do with #GamerGate?
A JEWISH GAY MAN = NEO NAZI. PURE LOGIC!