MILO dumps a load
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:
It’s just row after row of 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.
I’m not surprised that Milo’s gone full Nazi…only that it took him this long to do it.
Oh Yoo Hoo, flexitarian! I see what you did there.
I had an excellent cat named Milo (named after the Phantom Tollbooth kid). I’m pleased to see that the more pleasant Milos are bubbling back up to the top of the Google search algorithms. It’s the reverse Santorum effect.
Wait, so Milo is excited about death squads killing journalists, but isn’t he himself nominally a “journalist?”
How is this supposed to work out for him again?
Ahh, Phantom Tollbooth. I loved that book, for all the puns and references. Like the Ever-Present Word Snatcher, who loved to twist the things that people say. He said he was originally from a place called Context, but it was so boring, he spent most of his time out of it. Or the vehicle that would only move once everybody inside it stopped talking; after all, it goes without saying…
The Chuck Jones movie version was fun, but I can also see why the author wasn’t happy with it, as a lot of stuff did have to be cut out. And honestly, a story that relies that much on wordplay is going to have a difficult time crossing media.
OT: It was my birthday yesterday, but we had my party on the weekend with my family and as is my b-day tradition, I subject the Family Katamount to one of my Nightmare video board games. This was the first time playing Atmosfear: The Harbingers for them and they had fun. But as I was hauling the game out from the storage bin, I came across Myst III: Exile and having been so long, I just had to fire it up and give it a play. To my amazement, I actually remembered most of the solutions to the puzzles, but I had forgotten just how masterful not only the puzzles themselves were, but the whole experience of the journey. The music. The art design. The acting of Brad Dourif as Saavedro. All of it was just pitch-perfect. To me, it almost reaches the heights of Riven, but for only a couple silly moments (“paaadlocks”).
The reason I bring it up is kind of a larger thing I’ve had with games and why I haven’t really found myself engaging with them the way others have with RPGs like Final Fantasy since the 3D shift with FF7. When I enter what is ostensibly an immersive world, I question everything about it. What’s that? Why’s it there? Who put it there, and for whom? If I can have these questions answered to my satisfaction for even the smallest thing, that’s the kind of care and dedication that separates “good” or “great” with “outstanding” or “magnificent.”
Spoilers to follow, but the games are more than 17 years old at this point, so I don’t think I’m going to upset anybody who is really eager to play these games and hasn’t had the opportunity….
In Riven, you come across all sorts of devices you have to manipulate in order to proceed, but none of them are there just to be an obstacle; they’re functional apparatuses put there specifically by people for specific uses. The symbols you encounter have broader meaning for the in-game society and forces you to make the necessary interpretations to assess the honesty and character of the game’s antagonist. Has he really changed as he claims? Well, what have you seen so far? Does the sum of the world around you lead you to that conclusion?
Myst III has a similar conceit: you’re on a mission to confront a man who has stolen something valuable–something that has imperiled thousands of lives–and that man has spent twenty years preparing for that confrontation. Every step you take, every button you press, every switch you flip, was meant to teach a lesson, but this time Saavedro has deliberately changed the lessons to teach you the player something about what he’s gone through. You don’t take an action that he hasn’t calculated, and when that final confrontation comes, there’s no discussion to be had (literally, as the player never talks). You’re up against a man who is angry, desperate and has been isolated for twenty years; acquiescence will only result in disaster. So the only solution is to turn the tables, and Dourif acts the hell out of Saavedro’s torment at that moment where he’s trapped literally between worlds. It’s over the top in a lot of places, but it’s meant to be and that’s what Dourif does best. If a couple of the puzzles were integrated better into their worlds, it could have topped Riven, but as it is, the character component alone is worth the time investment.
I say all this to lament what I see as “the grind” of games. Even ones I like such as Diablo III require time investment into what amounts to nonsense if you think about it for more than two seconds. Piling up a specific resource to get random chances for better version of the same item… it’s a pure video game gimmick and it’s one every transactional game leans on heavily. Worse yet, it’s completely tangential to the game’s story. “Yes, things are dire… that’s why I’m beating up giant rats to get ten thousand bottles of orange goo to level up my sword….” Yeah, reeeeal dire, guys. It just takes you entirely out of the game and feels like a chore every time.
Weapons, organizations and manner of dress are another thing that just seem to be done without a thought further than “it looks cool.” That’s not good enough for me. It’s one thing if you’re dressing up to catch people’s eye at a social gathering, but if this is a narrative, I need a little justification for going around day to day looking like this:
By contrast, when we consider the appearance of Gehn in Riven, there’s a reason that he looks like this:
Everything in that image has a reason. The uniform, meant to evoke the fallen D’ni civilization and Gehn’s status as a dictator, with buttons and belt-buckle that carry Gehn’s crest. The cage, the same manner of control we’ve seen throughout the game. The D’ni script above the writing desk. Even the eroded rocks in the window, a testament to the harsh environment of the 233rd Age. It’s all there for a reason in-game.
But if that reason exists outside the game, be it achievements or microtransactions or fanservice… that kind of immersion breaking is tough to forgive, at least for me.
Thanks for indulging a rant, but I felt like gushing over the Myst games a bit.
This is outrageous! MILO sounds amazing, why don’t we have it here in America?
@Bina
Having spent my misbegotten teenagerdom as a hardcore Bloom County addict and now overjoyed Breathed has been publishing new strips online, I totally, totally, totally prefer having Milo Bloom at the head of my Milo mental register.
Having lost George Carlin and Robin Williams before this whole government debacle, Berke Breathed and all the salvos he’s flinging at politics is what is making dealing with this mess bearable for me.
@Katamount: Riven and its impeccable, immersive design is why I got into theatre design as a career.
Aaaaand Justice Kennedy is retiring. Trump gets another Supreme Court pick.
Welp, your democracy’s been fun, America. I’ll miss it.
@Katamount
Same here. And I live here in the US.
McConnell will slime another fascist through, and there’s nothing the Senate Dems can do to block it.
The worst part is that this will energize the evangelicals in November, who will turn out in droves at the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade.
Abortion will be illegal within 18 months. Brown vs. Board of Education will be repealed. All the progressive gains of the last 80 years will be gone. And just imagine how this court would rule regarding impeachment and self-pardon issues.
America was nice while it lasted.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/06/neo-nazi-leader-gives-admitting-became-humiliating-white-trash-spectacle/
Some briefly entertaining news?
A prominent white nationalist involved in a salacious affair with another white nationalist’s wife is out of jail and quitting “politics,” Talking Points Memo reports.
Matthew Heimbach lead a neo-Nazi group called the Traditionalist Workers Party until March, when he was arrested for a domestic disturbance involving his wife, stepfather-in-law and stepfather-in-law’s wife. Heimbach cuckolded his stepfather-in-law and then beat him up when the man and Heimbach’s wife confronted him at the stepfather-in-law’s trailer.
After police arrived, Heimbach beat up his wife in front of the couple’s two young sons.
The violence earned him 38 days in jail on a parole violation. And while behind bars he’s become ashamed of his actions.
“I decisively failed at my original mission which was to be a voice for working class white folks, and ended up in the middle of the most humiliating white trash spectacle of the year,” he told Talking Points Memo. “I could not have possibly done a worse job with my original plan and I give up.”
Under His eye. 😛
@Mish
Thank you for your kind and thoughtful answer. It’s a complex issue for sure and there’s definitely a “chicken and egg” element when discussing addiction and mental illness.
In my view (or at least in my lived experience of both addiction and mental illness) they are very much alike and neither is a “choice”.
For example, one of the manifestations of my OCD is trichotillomania (obsessive hair pulling). I can certainly choose not to engage in the behavior, but I still consider myself a trichster and certainly still suffer from OCD. And because it’s a compulsion, I know for a fact that there will be times when the compulsion overcomes the will to stop the behavior and it sure as hell doesn’t feel like a “choice”. For me, drugs and alcohol are similar drives. I may abstain, but there will come a time when the compulsion is too much and that also doesn’t feel like a “choice”.
@Alan
Thanks for the link. More food for thought
I care nothing for MILO, the swedish sweet-drinks-industry got it right with this phenomenal stuff that I am in no way addicted to, nu-uh!
With regards to the slimeball, I hope we will hear even less of him, along with any of his arm-stretch-buddies.
On a related note, has anyone ever actually verified Milo’s claims to Jewishness on his mother’s side? Is he still making that claim unchallenged?
@reggie, the neighbour’s cat: I stand by my theory that Dave McGahan is the universe’s most incompetent Time Lord.
Also, seconding the Phantom Tollbooth love. That book was an important discovery for ~11-year-old me.
So, who blackmailed Justice Kennedy and with what?
@ Ghost Robot
I’m not sure but it’s not unprecedented for someone of jewish heritage to be a raging anti-semite. See Johannes Pffererkorn or Samuel Brenz.
I wouldn’t be surprised if milo was lying but just as it’s homophobic to suggest that we should all go back in the closet like the 1950’s he can also be anti-semitic.
There’s also Milo, Maine, Milo, New York and Milo, Alberta, Canada.
@EVal78:
I’m not even gonna defend what I said, because shortly after the edit window closed, I realized how shitty it looked. And was mortified. I’m even more so after the awful events of today. What I said was intemperate and inexcusable. You were not the target, but that’s not the point. You got hurt. And I’m truly and awfully sorry.
@Bina,
I can only hope that next time I stumble, I face up to it with that much class. You’re amazing 🤗💜💖
@ Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Ha! I literally slapped my knee when I read that. 😀 Also, I never read the book, but I loved ‘The Phantom Tollbooth’ movie when I was a kid. A cat named Milo reminds me of the movie ‘Milo and Otis,’ as well. Now I’m all nostalgic.
Which is a far better than feeling ill at the thought of ANOTHER Trump appointment to SCOTUS. The damage done by his first was bad enough.
@ Bina
Thanks. I know I wasn’t the target, just something I’ve been thinking about and grappling with. I appreciate your gracious apology.
Thanks for giving me space to talk about it, all.
Sadly my Yahoo search for Milo only has the drink powder 3rd, but I do have a stash in my kitchen!
According to his Wikipedia page it is his maternal grandmother who was Jewish, which would mean his mother is by default. But it is only ‘claimed’. Presumably the person who wrote the Wikipedia page is aware that MY is an unreliable source.
I hope it is BS because this latest stunt makes him sound even more disgusting than usual, turning against his own heritage to satisfy his desire for notoriety and attention at any price is the ultimate dick move.